Convent of Santa Saba.-A strange Picture.-Celebration of Good Friday.-Palm Sunday.-A Struggle for Life.-The Grave of a Friend.-A Convert.-Burial of a Missionary.

I SLEPT till nine o'clock the next morning. The first thing I did after breakfast was to mount to the tower at the top of the convent This is the largest Greek convent in the Holy Land; and I remarked that it was in a good state of repair, and that large and expensive improvements were then in progress. The tower commanded a view of the whole convent, built in terraces, in a sort of amphitheatre, in the side of the mountain. All around, particularly in the mountain opposite, were ranges of grottoes, formerly the residences of anchorites and hermits, admirably situated for cherishing pious thoughts and leading a holy life. An old, white-bearded monk, leaning on his staff, was toiling up its sides, leading a long procession of pilgrims, probably to some very holy place; and below me, apparently growing out of the rock, was a large palm-tree, planted, as they say, by Santa Saba himself in the fourth century. The cemetery is about halfway down, in a vault under an open area. The flat stone that covered the entrance was fastened down with cement. The monk told me that the bodies of the dead, were laid on stone benches, where lime was thrown over them, and, as soon as decomposition had taken place, the bones were removed, and thrown upon a pile in another part of the cemetery.

The chapel, like all the other Greek chapels, was full of gaudy and ridicidous ornaments and paintings; and, among the latter, there was one that attracted the particular admiration and reverence of the pilgrims. At the top of the picture sat the Father, surrounded by angels, and patriarchs, and good men; and on his right was a range of two-story houses, St. Peter standing before them with the keys in his hand. Below the Father was a large, powerful man, with a huge pair of scales in his hand, weighing sinners as they came up, and billeting on each the weight of his sins; below him were a number of naked figures, in a sitting posture, with their arms spread out, and their legs enclosed in long boxes extended horizontally. On the left a stream of fire was coming down from the Father, and collecting in the mouth of a huge nondescript sea-monster, while in front stood a great half-naked figure, pitching in the sinners just as the fireman on board a steamboat pitches in the long sticks of wood, and the damned were kicking about in the flames. On the right was Elias doing battle with Antichrist; and below was a representation of the last day, and the graves giving up their dead, in almost every conceivable variety of form and situation.

In another chapel, dedicated to John of Damascus, who formerly livvd there, behind an iron grating in a grotto of the rock was a large pile of sculls and bones, the remains of fourteen thousand hermits who dwelt among the mountains and were slain by the Turks..

The superior had been waiting some time to accompany me to Jerusalem. Will the reader believe it? This man had lived twenty years in the convent, and had never been to the Dead Sea! I was so disgusted with him that I rode on and left him; and, following the Valley of the Kedron, meeting on the way hundreds of Greek pilgrims, in three hours I was again in Jerusalem.

The next night being Good Friday, the monks of the Latin Convent performed the ceremony of the Crucifixion. The doors were open at an early hour for a short time, and then closed for the night, so that we were obliged to be there two or three hours before the ceremony began. Most of the pilgrims had prepared against the tediousness of waiting by bringing with them their beds, mats, and coverlets; and all around the floor of the church, men, women, and children were taking an intermediate nap. The proceedings commenced in the chapel of the Latin Convent, where priests, monks, pilgrims, Paul, and myself, all assembled, every one holding in his hand a long lighted candle. The superior, with his gold mitre and black velvet cloak trimmed with gold, my friend the Sicilian priest, and some other dignitaries of the church, were present, very richly dressed. On a large cross was the figure of a man, representing the Saviour, the crown of thorns on his head, nails in his hands and feet, blood trickling from them, and a gaping wound in his side. Before setting out on the procession the lights were extinguished; and, in total darkness, a monk commenced a sermon in Italian. After this the candles were relighted, banners and crucifixes raised, and the procession moved round the church towards Calvary. Stopping at the Pillar of Flagellation, at the prison where they say Christ was confined, where the crown of thorns was put upon his head, where his raiment was divided, &c., and giving a chant, and an address by one of the monks at each place, they wound round the church until they came to the stair. case leading to Calvary; and, leaving their shoes below, mounted barefoot to the place of crucifixion. Here they first went to an altar on the right, where, as they have it, Christ was nailed to the cross; and laying the figure down on the floor, although they had been bearing it aloft for more than two hours, they now went through the ceremony of nailing it; and, returning to the adjoining altar, passed the foot of the cross through the marble floor, and, with the bleeding figure upon it, set it up in the hole in the natural rock, according to the tradition, in the very spot where, eighteen hundred years ago, Christ was crucified. At the foot of the cross a monk preached a sermon in Italian, warm, earnest, and impassioned; frequently turning round, and, with both hands extended, apostrophizing the bleeding figure above him. In spite of my skepticism and incredulity, and my contempt for monkish tricks, I could not behold this scene unmoved. Every attendant upon the crucifixion was represented; for the Governor of Jerusalem was present, with a smile of scorn upon his handsome features, and Turkish and Mussulman soldiers, breaking the stillness of the scene with loud laughs of derision; and I could almost imagine that I heard the unbelieving Jews, with gibes and sneers, crying out, "If he be the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross!"

After the body had remained some time suspended, two friars, personating Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, approached the foot of the cross; and one of them on the right, with a long pair of pincers, took the crown of thorns from the head, waved it around slowly with a theatrically mournful air, kissed it, and laid it down on a table before him; he then drew long spikes from the hands and feet, and moving them around, one by one, slowly as before,. kissed them, and laid them also on the table. I never saw anything more affecting than this representation, bad as it was, of the bloody drama of the crucifixion; and as the monks drew out the long nails from the hands and feet, even the scoffing Mussulmans stopped their laugh of derision. I stood by the table while they laid the body upon it, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth; followed them when they carried it down from Calvary to the stone of unction; stood by the head of the stone while they washed and anointed it, and prepared it for burial, and followed it to the door of the sepulchre. It was now near two o'clock; the ceremony was ended, the Mussulman soldiers had retired, and Paul and I returned to the convent. We had no lamp; and as, in all the Turkish cities, every one is obliged to carry a lamp at night, and, in fact, it is necessary for his own security, we walked through the narrow streets of Jerusalem bearing the same long candies with which we had figured in the procession of the crucifixion.

On Sunday morning, being Easter, or Palm Sunday, I visited, for the last time, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was more crowded than I had ever yet seen it. The courtyard literally swarmed with venders of amulets, crucifixes, and holy ornaments; and within the church were tables of oranges, figs. dates, &c. The Arab baker was walking about, with a large tray on his head, crying his bread; and in each of the altars was a sort of shop, in which Greeks were making and selling chaplets and wreaths of palm-leaves. It was altogether a lively image of the scene when Christ went into the temple, and "cast out them that bought and sold, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers." The ceremonies of the day were in commemoration of that on which our Saviour entered into Jerusalem, riding upon an ass, when the multitude followed him, strewing their. garments and branches of palm-trees in his path, and crying, "Hosannah to the Son of David !" When I entered, the monks of the Latin Convent were celebrating grand mass before the holy sepulcbre; and, in the mean time, the Greeks were getting ready for their turn. Their chapel was crowded, and all along the corridors the monks were arranging the people in procession, and distributing banners, for which the young Greeks were scrambling; and in one place a monk, with a standard in his hand, which had just been handed down from above, with his back against the wall, was knocking and kicking away a crowd of young Greeks, struggling to obtain it for the procession.

As soon as the Latins had finished, the Arab soldiers, whom I always found regular attendants at these scenes, as if they knew what was coming when the Greeks began, addressed them with loud shouts of "Yellah, yellah-come on, come on." A large banner was stationed at the door of the sepulchre; and the rush of the pilgrims to prostrate themselves before it, and to touch it with their palm-branches, was tremendous. A tall young Greek, with a large turban on his head, while his left hand supported the banner, was laying about him with his right as if he were really defending the sepulchre itself from the hands of the infidels. The procession advanced under a loud chant, preceded by a body of Turkish officers to clear the way; then came the priests, wearing their richest dresses, their mitres and caps richly ornamented with precious stones, and carrying aloft sacred banners, and one of them sprinkling holy water. Wherever he came the rush was terrible; the Greeks became excited to a sort of phrensy in their eagerness to catch a drop; and one strapping fellow, bursting through the rear ranks, thrust his face over my shoulder, and bawled out, "Papa, papa," in such an agonizing voice, that the "papa" aimed at him a copious discharge, of which my face received the principal benefit. When the largest banner came round, the struggle to touch it with the palm-branches was inconceivable. A Turkish officer had, until this time, covered me with his body, and, by dint of shouting, kicking, and striking furiously about him, saved me till the procession passed by; but after this the rush became dreadful. I could feel my ribs yielding under the pressure, and was really alarmed when a sudden and mighty surge of the struggling mass hurried me into the stock in trade of a merchant of dates and oranges. Instead of picking up his goods, the fellow grappled at me; but I got out of his clutches. as well as I could; and, setting up for myself, kicked, thumped, and scuflled until I made my way to the door; and that was my last visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I had regretted that I could not stay for the great Greek jugglery, the drawing down fire from heaven, when every pilgrim considers himself bound to light his taper at the sacred flame; and those who light first are considered the most fortunate and the most favoured in the sight of God. I could imagine the wild and frantic struggling among more than ten thousand bigots and fanatics for the first rays of the heavenly light; but, from what I saw that day, I felt that it would be putting life and limb in peril to be among them. Two years before a horrible catastrophe had happened at the enactment of this ceremony. The air of the church had become so contaminated by the exhalations from the bodies of the thousands crowded within it, that respiration became difficult; terror, confusion, and a rush for the door ensued; Ibrahim Pacha was carried out senseless, over the heads of the people, by a strong body of his soldiers; and between two and three hundred pilgrims were trodden down and trampled to death. Their bodies were laid out next morning in the court of the church; and so degraded is the character of these Christian pilgrims, that, as I was told by Mr. Nicolaisen, the English missionary to the Jews, who was looking among them for a servant of his own, the friends and relatives of the slain carried them away in triumph, as martyrs in the cause of Christ. My last visit in Jerusalem was to Mount Zion. I believe I have not mentioned that on this hill stands the tomb, or the supposed tomb, of David. It is covered by a mosque; the tomb is walled in, and, as the Arab doorkeeper told me, even the eyes of the pacha are not permitted to look within the holy place. Here, too, is the coenaculum, or chamber where our Saviour ate his last supper with his disciples; in the Armenian chapel is the real stone that was rolled from the door of the sepulchre; and here also is the house of Caiphas the high-priest, with a tree marking the spot where the cock crew when Peter denied his master. But there was one spot on Mount Zion far more interesting to me than all these, or even than anything in Jerusalem. It was the grave of my early friend, whom I had tracked in his wanderings from the Cataracts of the Nile, through the wilderness of Sinai, to his last resting-place in Jerusalem. Years had rolled away since I bade him farewell in the streets of our native city. I had heard of him in the gay circles of Paris as about to wed with one of the proudest names in France; again, as a wanderer in the East, and then as dead in Palestine. But a few short years had passed away, and what changes! My old school-mates, the companions of my youth and opening manhood, where were they? Gone, scattered, dispersed, and dead; one of them was sleeping in the cold earth under my feet. He had left his home, and become a wanderer in strange lands, and had come to the Holy Land to die, and I was now bending over his grave. Where were the friends that should have gathered around him in the awful hour of death? Who closed his dying eyes? Who received his parting words for his friends at home? Who buried him on Mount Zion? Once I had been present there at a scene which almost made me weep; the burial of an Armenian pilgrim. He was brought for burial in the clothes in which he had died; the grave was too small, and had to be enlarged; the priest stood at the head of the grave under a heavy shower of rain, and, as he offered me his snuff-box, grumbled at being obliged to wait; and when the grave was enlarged, and the body thrown in, and the wet dirt cast upon it, he mumbled a short prayer, and then all hurried away. And this was by the grave of my friend; and I could not but ask myself who had buried him, and who had mourned over his grave. The inscription on his tombstone afforded but vague answers to my questions, and they were of a painful character. It ran thus:

He had died at the convent, and died alone. His travelling companion had accidentally remained at Jaffa, had not heard of his sickness, and did not arrive in Jerusalem until poor B- was in his grave. It was necessary to be wary in my inquiries; for the Catholics here are ever on the watch for souls, and with great ostentation had blazoned his conversion upon his tomb. The first time I inquired about him, a young monk told me that he remembered him well, as on the day of his arrival, a fine, handsome young man, full of health and spirit, and that he immediately commenced talking about religion, and three days afterward they said mass, and took the sacrament together in the chapel of the convent. He told me the story so glibly, that I was confident of its falsity, even without referring to its improbability. I had known B- well. I knew that, like most young men with us, though entertaining the deepest respect and reverence for holy things, in the pride of youth and health he had lived as if there was no grave and I could imagine that, stretched upon his bed of death in the dreary cell of the convent, with "no eye to pity and no arm to save," surrounded by Catholic monks, and probably enfeebled in mind by disease, he had, perhaps, laid hold of the only hope of salvation offered him; and when I stood over his grave, and thought of the many thorns in his pillow in that awful hour-the distracting thoughts of home, of the mother whose name had been the last on his lips; the shuddering consciousness that, if he died a Protestant, his bones would be denied the rites of burial, I pitied, I grieved for, but I could not blame him. But when suspicion was aroused by the manner of the monk, I resolved to inquire further; and, if his tale should prove untrue, to tear with my own hands the libellous stone from my friend's grave, and hurl it down Mount Zion. I afterward saw the monk who had shrived him, and was told that the young man with whom I had conversed was a prater and a fool; that he himself had never heard -- speak of religion until after his return from the Dead Sea with the hand of death upon him; that he had administered the sacrament to him but three days before his death, when all hope of life was past, and that even yet it might be a question whether he did really renounce his faith, for the solemn abjuration was made in a language he but imperfectly understood; and he never spoke afterward, except, in the wildness of delirium, to murmur the name of "Mother." I have said that, in his dying moments, his feelings were harrowed by the thought that his body would be denied a Christian burial. Mr. Whiting, who accompanied me on my first visit to his grave, told me that the Catholics would not have allowed him a resting-place in consecrated ground; and, leading me a short distance to the grave of a friend and fellow-missionary who had died since he had been at Jerusalem, described to me what he had seen of the unchristian spirit of the Christians of the holy city. Refused by the Latins, the friends of Dr. Dodge had asked permission of the Greeks to lay his body for a little while in their burying-ground; and, negotiating with the dragoman of the convent, they thought that permission had been granted; but, while they were in the act of performing the funeral service, a messenger came in to tell them that the grave had been filled up. They protracted the service till the delay excited the attention of his unhappy widow, and they were obliged to tell her that they had no place where they could lay the head of her young husband. A reluctant permission was at length granted, and they buried him by the light of torches; and although there had been no graves in that part of the ground before, the Greeks had buried all around, to prevent any application for permission to lay by his side the body of another heretic.

Pilgrimage to the Jordan.-Pilgrim's Certificate.-The Tomb of Samuel. -Departure from Jerusalem.-Last View of the Dead Sea.--Village of Einbroot. -Departure from Judea.-Mounts Gerizim. and Ebal.- An Antique Manuscript.-Paas in Samaria.

THE next day I left Jerusalem; but, before leaving it, I was witness to another striking scene, which I shall never forget; the departure of the pilgrims, fifteen or twenty thousand in number, for the Jordan. At an early hour I was on horseback, outside St. Stephen's Gate. It was such a, morning as that on which I started for the Dead Sea, clear, bright, and beautiful; the streets, of the city were deserted, and the whole population were outside the walls, sitting under the shadow of the temple, among the tombs of the Turkish burying-ground; the women in their long white dresses, with their faces covered, and the men in large flowing robes, of gay and varied colours, and turbans of every fashion, many of them green, the proud token of the pilgrimage to Mecca, with pipes, and swords, and glittering arms; the whole Valley of Jehoshaphat was filled with moving beings, in every variety of gay apparel, as if the great day of resurrection had already come, and the tenants of the dreary tombs had burst the fetters of the grave, and come forth into new life and beauty.

I had received an invitation from the governor to ride in his suite; and, while waiting for him at the gate, the terrible Abougos, with his retainers, came out and beckoned me to join him. I followed him over the Brook Kedron and the Valley of Jehoshaphat to the Garden of Gethsemane, where I stopped, and, giving my horse to an Arab boy, I stepped over the low fence, and, seating myself on the jutting root of the tree marked by the knives of pilgrims as that under which our Saviour was betrayed, looking over the heads of the Turkish women seated on the fence below, I saw the whole procession streaming from the gate, crossing the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and filing along the foot of the garden. They were on foot and on horseback, on donkeys, mules, dromedaries, and camels, and here and there were well-equipped caravans, with tents and provisions for the monks of the different convents. It would be impossible to give any idea of this strange and extraordinary procession; here might be seen a woman on horseback, with a child on each arm; there a large pannier on each side of a mule, with a man in one and a woman in the other; or a large frame on the high back of a camel, like a diminutive ark, carrying a whole family, with all their quilts, coverlets, cooking utensils, &c. Among them, riding alone on a raw-boned horse, was a beggarly Italian, in a worn and shabby European dress, with a fowling-piece and a game-bag, and everybody made way for him; and there was a general laugh wherever he came. And now a body of Turkish horsemen, with drawn cimeters in their hands, rushed out of the gate, dashed down the valley and up the sides of the mountains at full gallop, clearing the way for the governor; aiid then came the governor himself, under a salute from the fortress, on a horse of the best blood of Arabia, riding as if he were part of the noble animal, preceded by the music of the Turkish drum, and bowing with a nobility and dignity of manner known only in the East, and which I marked the more particularly, as he stopped opposite to me and beckoned to me to join him. Then came the pilgrims again, and I sat there till the last had gone by. Galloping back to the gate, I turned to look at them for the last time, a living, moving mass of thousands, thousands of miles from their homes, bound for the sacred Jordan, and strong in the faith that, bathing in its hallowed waters, they should wash away their sins.

In a few moments I was at the convent; and, sending Paul before me to the Damascus Gate, I went to take my leave of the superior. He told me that, though I was an American (the only Americans he had seen were missionaries, and he did not like them), he liked me; and, bidding, me a kind and affectionate farewell, he put into my hands a pilgrim's certificate, which follows in these words-

Which, being interpreted, is as follows:--

Whereby the reader will see, that whatever may be his fate hereafter, a pilgrimage to the holy city gives a man temporal honours, and has transformed a republican citizen of America into an "illustrissimus dominus." With this evidence of my pilgrim character, I mounted my horse for the last time at the door of the convent. I lost my way in going to the Damascus Gate, but a friendly Jew conducted me to it; a Jew was the first to welcome me to the Holy Land, and a Jew was the last to speed me on my way from the holy city of Jerusalem. Paul was waiting for me; and for half a mile we passed mounds of ruins, the walls of the old city having extended some distance beyond the Damascus Gate. In about three quarters of an hour, a little to the right, we came to what are called the Tombs of the Judges, excavations in the rock, one of them full of water. I have no satisfaction in the recollection of these tombs, for there I lost my old companion, the terror of evil dogs, my Nubian club; which, since I bought it in Nubia, had seldom been out of my hand. In about three hours we were mounting Djebel Samyelo the highest mountain about Jerusalem, crowned with the ruins of Ramah, the birthplace and tomb of Samuel the seer. A few Arab huts are around the ruins; and a ruined mosque, the minaret of which has fallen, is the most prominent building on the mountain. We entered the mosque; at the farther end was a door locked, but with the key in it. I turned the key and entered a dark chamber. By the light from the door I could see at the far end a dark, sombre-looking object, and groped my way to the tomb of Samuel; I kept my hands on it, and walked around it; and, hearing some of the villagers at the door, I tore off a piece of the pall, as I had done from the tomb of Aaron; and hurried out. I stopped for a moment on the top of the mountain, and, looking back towards the holy city, saw for the last time the Mosque of Omar, rising proudly over the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the walls of Jerusalem, and the Dead Sea. My first view of this latter had been from the tomb of Aaron; and I considered it a not uninteresting coincidence that I was now looking upon it for the last time from the tomb of Samuel. In about an hour, riding over a rough road, we came to the village of Beer, supposed to be the Beer to which Jotham fled "for fear of his brother Abimelech." A ruined khan was at the entrance of the village, and near it a large fountain, at which the women were washing. About an hour beyond this, to the right, on a little elevation, are the ruins of Beteel, the ancient Bethel. It was here that the bears came out and tore in pieces the children that mocked the bald-headed prophet Elisha, and it was here that Jacob took "the stones of the place for his pillow, and dreamed, and beheld a ladder reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending thereon." Though surrounded by stony mountains, it was prettily situated; I rode among the ruins without dismounting. The place was solitary and deserted, and not a human being appeared to dwell in it. At one end were the ruins of a church, and near it was a large fountain in a stone reservoir; a single cow was drinking at the fountain, and at the moment a boy was driving past a flock of goats to his village home in the mountains. He was a Christian, and called me Christian and hadji or pilgrim, and gave me a wild flower which he plucked from under my horse's feet. It was a beautiful afternoon, and all was so still and quiet that I felt strongly tempted to lie down and sleep where Jacob did; but I had given away my tent and camp equipage, and I reflected that while I was sure of the patriarch's pillow of stone, I had but little prospect of being blessed with the promise that softened it, "that the land on which he lay should be given to him and his seed, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed."

In about an hour we came to the village of Einbroot, prettily situated on an eminence, and commanding on all sides a view of fertile and well-cultivated valleys. We were looking for Einbroot, and as the village to which we had come lay a little off the road, we were not sure it was the place we wanted. A woman told us it was not, a man assured us that the sheik was not at home, and there seemed clearly a disposition to send us on farther; and this determined us to stop. We rode up to the village and inquired for the sheik; the villagers gave us evasive answers, one saying that he was away, and another that be was sick; but a little boy, pointing with his finger, told us that he was there, praying; and, looking up, we saw him on the top of the house, on his knees, praying with all his might, and occasionally looking over his shoulder at us. By his not coming to welcome me, I saw that he did not wish me to stay; and, after my scenes with the Bedouins in the desert, having a comparative contempt for dwellers in houses, I dismounted and sat down, determined to see who would get tired first. In the mean time the villagers gathered around, as spectators of our contest, and the sheik, as if ashamed of himself, at length finished his prayers and came down to receive me. He told me that he had no place for us, and showed me to a large room, fifty or sixty feet square, which seemed to be the common resort and sleeping-place of all who had no particular home. After the comforts of the convent at Jerusalem, I did not like the looks of things in the beginning of my journey; but, consoling myself with the reflection that it was only for one night, I spread my mat in a corner, and had just time to stroll around the village before dark.

The houses were built of rough stone, a single story in height, with mud roofs, many of them overgrown with grass, and now presenting, towards sundown, the singularly picturesque spectacle, which I had often noticed in Syria, of the inhabitants sitting out upon the terraces and roofs of their houses, or, perhaps, the still more striking picture of a single old white-bearded, patriarchal figure sitting alone upon his housetop. One of these venerable personages called me up to his side; and I was well rewarded for my trouble, and could fully appreciate the satisfaction with which the old man, day after day, looked out upon the beautiful and well-cultivated valley, the terraces, and the smiling villages on the mountain side.

Several of the villagers were following us, and among them a fine old man, the brother of the sheik, and formerly sheik himself. He told me that, since the stormy times of Mohammed Aly, he had resigned the sheikdom, and comforted himself for the loss of station in the arms of a young wife; and before we parted we were on such good terms that he told me the reason of their unwillingness to receive us; namely, that they thought we were officers of Mohammed Aly, sent to spy out their condition, and ascertain the number of their men able to bear arms; but, satisfied that we were merely travellers, and warmed by my honest disclaimer of the imputed character, he invited me to his house, and both he, and the sheik, and all the villagers seemed striving now to atone for the churlishness of their first reception.

The old man was as kind as a man could be; in fact, his kindness oppressed me; for, having but one room in his house, he sent both his wives out of doors to sleep at a neighbour's. In vain I told him not to disarrange himself on my account; to make no stranger of me; to let them stay; and that it was nothing to me if the whole harem of the sultan was there; he was positive and decided. I catechised him about his wives, and he said that he had been a poor man all his life, and could never afford to keep more than one till lately; and now the companion of his youth and the sharer of his poverty was thrust away into a corner, while with all simplicity and honesty he showed me the best place in the house, appropriated to his young bride. He talked as if it had been the hardest thing in the world that he had been obliged to content himself so long with his first wife. Thus, it seems, that here, as with us, extravagance comes with wealth; and whereas with us, when a man grows rich, he adds another pair of horses to his establishment, so the honest Mussulman, indulges himself with another helpmate.

Two Turks and an Arab slept in the room with us; and before going to bed, that is, before lying down on the mud floor, and the first thing in the morning, they turned their faces to the tomb of the Prophet, kneeled down and prayed. In the evening one of them had complained of a headache, and another, standing over him and pressing his temples with the palms of his hands, repeated a verse of the Koran, and the headache went away. I asked him whether that was good for a sore throat; he told me that it was, but, after giving me a verse or two, said that his remedy could only have full effect upon true believers.

Early in the morning I set off, my host and the sheik and half the village gathering around me to bid me farewell and invoke blessings upon me. I did not know the extent of the sacrifice my host had made for me until at the moment of parting, when I got a glimpse of his young wife.

We were now entering the region of Samaria, and, though the mountains were yet stony, a beautiful country was opening before us. We soon came into a smiling valley full of large olive-trees, and rode for some time in a pleasant shade. Everywhere we were meeting streams of pure water, tempting us perpetually to dismount after the sandy desert through which we had been so long travelling. We passed. too, several villages, among which I remember was the village of Cowara, beautifully situated on the side of the mouutain, overlooking a fertile valley, and all the women of the village were in the field picking the tares from the grain.

I was now about entering one of the most interesting countries in the Holy Land, consecrated by the presence of our Saviour in the body, and by the exercise of his divine and miraculous powers. The Bible was again in my hand, and I read there that Jesus Christ had left "Judea and departed into Galilee; that be must needs pass through Samaria, and that he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.", And "Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, being weary with his journey, sat down on the well, and it was about the sixth hour. And there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water; and Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink." It is with no irreverent feeling that I draw the parallel, but I was following in the very footsteps of the Saviour; I too had left "Judea, and had departed into Galilee;" I too "must needs go through Samaria;" and I too was now coming to the city of Samaria called Sychar, and, before entering the city, I would fain sit down on the well of Jacob, where our Saviour talked with the Samaritan woman.

At Cowara I took a guide to conduct me to this well. In about two hours we were winding along the side of Mount Gerizim, whose summit was covered with the white dome of the tomb of an Arab saint; and passing one well on the declivity of the mountain, going down to the valley at its base, we came to Jacob's well, or the Beer Samarea of the Arabs. I knew that there was a difference of opinion as to the precise site of this interesting monument; but, when I found myself at the mouth of this well, I had no wish to look farther; I could feel and realize the whole scene; I could see our Saviour coming out from Judea, and travelling along this valley; I could see him, wearied with his journey, sitting down on this well to rest, and the Samaritan woman, as I saw them at every town in the Holy Land, coming out for water. I could imagine his looking up to Mount Gerizim, and predicting the ruin of the temple, and telling her that the hour was coming when neither on that mountain nor yet in Jerusalem would she worship the God of her fathers. A large column lay across the top of the well, and the mouth was filled up with huge stones. I could see the water through the crevices; but, even with the assistance of Paul and the Arabs, found it impossible to remove them. I plucked a wild flower growing in the mouth of the well, and passed on.

The ground which I was now treading is supposed to be the "parcel of ground" which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver, and gave to his son Joseph. Turning the point of the mountain, we came to a rich valley, lying between the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal. Crossing this valley, on the sides of the mountains of Ebal is a long range of grottoes and tombs, and a little before coming to them, in a large white building like a sheik's tomb, is the sepulchre of Joseph, as it is written, "the bones also of Joseph, which. the children of Israel brought up with them out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem." I dismounted and entered the building, and it is a not uninteresting fact that I found there a white-bearded Israelite, kneeling at the tomb of the patriarch, and teaching a rosy-cheeked boy (his descendant of the fourth generation) the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren.

It was late in the afternoon when I was moving up the valley of Naplous. The mountains of Gerizim and Ebal, the mountains of blessings and curses, were towering like lofty walls on either side of me; Mount Gerizim fertile, and Mount Ebal barren, as when God commanded Joshua to set up the stones in Mount Ebal, and pronounced on Mount Gerizim blessings upon the children of Israel "if they would hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord, to observe and do all his commandments," (Deuteronomy XXVIII,l) and on Ebal the withering curses of disobedience. A beautiful stream, in two or three places filling large reservoirs, was running through the valley, and a shepherd sat on its bank, playing a reed pipe, with his flock feeding quietly around him. The shades of evening were gathering fast as I approached the town of Naplous, the Shechem. or Sychem of the Old Testament, and the Sychar of the New. More than a dozen lepers were sitting outside the gate, their faces shining, pimpled and bloated, covered with sores and pustules, their nostrils open and filled with ulcers, and their red eyes fixed and staring; with swollen feet they dragged their disgusting bodies towards me, and with hoarse voices extended their deformed and hideous hands for charity.

We rode up the principal street, and at the door of the palace I met the governor just mounting his horse, with a large retinue of officers and slaves around him. We exchanged our greetings on horseback. I showed him my firman, and he sent a janizary to conduct me to the house of a Samaritan, a writer to the government, where I was received, fed, and lodged better than in any other place in the Holy Land, always excepting the abodes of those suffering martyrs, the Terra Santa monks.

I had just time to visit the Samaritan synagogue. Leaving my shoes at the door, with naked feet I entered a small room, about fifteen feet square, with nothing striking or interesting about it except what the Samaritans say is the oldest manuscript in the world, a copy of the Pentateuch, written by Abishua, the grandson of Aaron, three years after the death of Moses, or about three thousand three hundred years ago. The priest was a man of forty-five, and gave me but a poor idea of the character of the Samaritans, for he refused to show me the sacred scroll unless I would pay him first. He then brought down an old manuscript, which, very much to his astonishment, I told him was not the genuine record; giving him very plainly to understand that I was not to be bamboozled in the matter. I had been advised of this trick by the English clergyman whom I met in Jerusalem; and the priest, laughing at my detection of the cheat, while some of his hopeful flock who had followed me joined in the laugh, brought down the other preserved in a tin case. It was written in some character I did not understand, said to be the Samaritan, tattered and worn, and bearing the marks of extreme age; and, though I knew nothing about it, I admitted it to be the genuine manuscript and they all laughed when I told the priest what a rogue he was for trying to deceive me; and this priest they believe to be of the tribe of Levi, of the seed of Aaron. If I had left Naplous then I should probably have repeated the words that our Saviour applied to them in his day, "no good thing can come out of Samaria;" but I spent a long evening, and had an interesting conversation with my host and his brother, and in their kindness, sincerity, and honesty, forgot the petty duplicity of the Levite.

Much curiosity has existed in Europe among the learned with regard to this singular. people, and several of the most eminent men of their day, in London and Paris, have had correspondence with them, but without any satisfactory result. The descendants of the Israelites who remained and were not carried into captivity, on the rebuilding of the second temple were denied the privilege of sharing the labour and expense of its reconstruction at Jerusalem, and, in mortification and revenge, they built a temple on Mount Gerizim, and ever since a deadly hatred has existed between their descendants the Samaritans and the Jews. Gibbon, speaking of them in the time of Justinian, says, "The Samaritans of Palestine were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been planted on their holy mount of Gerizim, but the persecution of Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter; under the standard of a desperate leader, they rose in arms and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples of a defenceless people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the East; twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy." About sixty families are all now remaining, and these few relics of a once powerful people still dwell in their ancient capital, at the base of Mount Gerizim, under the shadow of their fallen temple. The brother of my host was particularly fond of talking about them. He was very old, and the most deformed man I ever saw who lived to attain a great age. His legs were long, and all his limbs were those of a tall man, but he was so hump-backed that in sitting he rested upon his bump. He asked me many questions about the Samaritans in England (of America he had no knowledge), and seemed determined to believe that there were many in that country, and told me that I might say to them, wherever I found them, that there they believed in one omnipotent and eternal God, the five Books of Moses, and a future Messiah, and the day of the Messiah's coming to be near at hand; that they practised circumcision, went three times a year up to Mount Gerizim, "the everlasting mountain," to worship and offer sacrifice, and once a year pitched their tents and left their virgins alone on the mount for seven days, expecting that one of thern,would conceive and bring forth a son, who should be the Messiah; that they allowed two wives, and, in case of barrenness, four; that the women were not permitted to enter the synagogue, except once a year during fast, but on no account were they permitted to touch the sacred scroll; and that, although the Jews and Samaritans had dealings in the market-places, &c., they hated each other now as much as their fathers did before them.

I asked him about Jacob's well; he said he knew the place, and that he knew our Saviour, or Jesus Christ, as he familiarly called him, very well; he was Joseph the carpenter's son, of Nazareth but that the story which the Christians had about the woman at the well was all a fiction; that Christ did not convert her; but that, on the contrary, she laughed at him, and even refused to give him water to drink.

The information I received from these old men is more than I have ever seen in print about this reduced and singular people, and I give it for what it may be worth. I cannot help mentioning a little circumstance, which serves to illustrate the proverb that boys will be boys all the world over. While I was exploring the mysteries of the Samaritan creed, it being the season of Easter, a fine chubby little fellow came to me with a couple of eggs died yellow, and trying them on his teeth, just as we used to do in my boyish days (did we learn it from them or they from us ?)-gave me a choice; and, though it may seem a trifling incident to the reader, it was not an uninteresting circumstance to me, this. celebration of my "paas" in'the ancient Sychem, cracking eggs with a Samaritan boy.

Sebaste.-Ruins of the Palace of Herod.-Mount Tabor.-Nazareth.-Scriptural Localities.-Tiberias.-An English Sportsman.-Bethsaida and Chorazin.-Capernaum.-Zaffad.-ArrivaI at Acre.

AT about eight o'clock in the morning we left Naplous; the lepers were lying at the gate as before; not permitted to enter the walls of the city, but living apart and perpetuating among themselves their loathsome race. The valley of Naplous was, if possible, more beautiful by morning than by evening light, shaded by groves of figs, olives, almonds, and apricots in full bloom, and bounded by lofty mountains, with a clear and beautiful stream winding and murmuring through its centre. Until I came to this place I had frequently said to myself that I would not give the estate of a wealthy gentleman in Geneseo for the whole kingdom of David; but there was a rare and extraordinary beauty here, even in the hands of the Arab Fellahs. Men and women were stealing among the trees, in gayly-coloured apparel, and, instead of the turban or tarbouch, the men wore a long red cap, with the tassel hanging jantily like that of a Neapolitan. For more than an hour we followed the course of the stream, and nothing could be more beautifully picturesque than the little mills on its banks; low, completely imbosomed among trees, and with their roofs covered with grass. and sometimes the agreeable sound of a waterfall was the first intimation we had of their presence. There was something exceedingly rural and poetic in their appearance. I went down to one of them, more than usually beautiful, hoping to be greeted by some lovely "maid of the mill;" but, as if it were determined that everything like illusion in the East should be destroyed for my especial benefit, the sight of one chamber, filled with sacks of grain, sheep and goats, and all kinds of filth, and a young girl sitting in the door, with the head of an old woman in her lap, occupied as is constantly seen in every miserable town in Italy, drove me away perfectly disgusted.

Leaving the valley, we turned up to the right, and, crossing among the mountains, in two hours came in sight of the ruins of Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, standing upon a singularly bold and insulated mountain, crowned with ruins. The capital of the ten tribes of Israel, where Ahab built his palace of ivory; where, in the days of Jereboam, her citizens sat in the lap of luxury, saying to their masters "come and let us drink," destroyed by the Assyrians, but rebuilt and restored to more than its original splendour by Herod, now lies in the state foretold by the prophet Amos her inhabitants and their posterity are taken away." The ancient Samaritans are all gone, and around the ruins of their palaces and temples are gathered the miserable huts of the Arab Fellahs. Climbing up the precipitous ascent of the hill, we came to the ruins of a church, or tower, or some thing else, built by our old friend the Lady Helena, and seen to great advantage from the valley below. The Lady Helena, however, did not put together all this stone and mortar for the picturesque alone; it was erected over, and in honour of, the prison where John the Baptist was beheaded, and his grave. I knew that this spot was guarded with jealous care by the Arabs, and that none but Mussulmans were permitted to see it; but this did not prevent my asking admission; and, when the lame sheik said that none could enter without a special order from the pacha, Paul rated him soundly for thinking we would be such fools as to come without one; and, handing him our travelling firman, the sheik kissed the seal, and, utterly unable to determine for himself whether the order was to furnish me with horses or admit me to mosques, said he knew he was bound to obey that seal, and do whatever the bearer told him, and hobbled off to get the key.

Leaving our shoes at the door, in one corner of the enclosure, we entered a small mosque with whitewashed walls, hung with ostrich eggs, clean mats for the praying Mussulmans, a sort of pulpit, and the usual recess of the Kebla. In the centre of the stone floor was a hole opening to the prison below, and, going outside, and descending a flight of steps, we came to the prison chamber, about eight paces square; the door, now broken and leaning against the wall, like the doors in the sepulchres of the kings at Jerusalem, was a slab cut from the solid stone, and turning on a pivot. On the opposite side were three small holes, opening to another chamber, which was the tomb of the Baptist. I looked in, but all was dark; the Mussulman told me that the body only was there; that the prophet was beheaded at the request of the wife of a king, and I forget where he said the head was. This may be the prison where the great forerunner of the Lord was beheaded; at least no man can say that it is not; and leaving it with the best disposition to believe, I ascended to the ruined palace of Herod, his persecutor and murderer. Thirty or forty columns were still standing, the monuments of the departed greatness of its former tenant. On one side, towards the northeast, where are the ruins of a gate, there is a double range of Ionic columns. I counted more than sixty, and, from the fragments I was constantly meeting, it would seem as if a double colonnade had extended all around.

The palace of Herod stands on a table of land, on the very, summit of the hill, overlooking every part of the surrounding country; and such were the exceeding softness and beauty of the scene, even under the wildness and waste of Arab cultivation, that the city seemed smiling in the midst of her desolation. All around was a beautiful valley, watered by running streams, and covered by a rich carpet of grass, sprinkled with wild flowers of every hue, and beyond, stretched like an open book before me, a boundary of fruitful mountains, the vine and the olive rising in terraces to their very summits; there, day after day, the haughty Herod had sat in his royal palace; and looking out upon all these beauties, his heart had become hardened with prosperity; here, among these still towering columns, the proud monarch had made a supper "to his lords, and high captains, and chief estates of Galilee;" here the daughter of Herodias, Herod's brother's wife, "danced before him, and the proud king promised with an oath to give her whatever she should ask, even to the half of his kingdom." And while the feast and dance went on, the "head of John the Baptist was brought in a charger and given to the damsel." And Herod has gone, and Herodias, Herod's brother's wife, has gone, and "the lords, and the high captains, and the chief estates of Galilee" are gone; but the ruins of the palace in which they feasted are still here; the mountains and valleys which beheld their revels are here; and oh, what a comment upon the vanity of worldly greatness, a fellah was turning his plough around one of the columns, I was sitting on a broken capital under a fig-tree by its side, and I asked him what were the ruins that we saw; and while his oxen were quietly cropping the grass that grew among the fragments of the marble floor, he told me that they were the ruins of the palace of a king-he believed, of the Christians; and while pilgrims from every quarter of the world turn aside from their path to do homage in the prison of his beheaded victim, the Arab who was driving his plough among the columns of his palace knew not the name of the haughty Herod. Even at this distance of time I look back with a feeling of uncommon interest upon my ramble among those ruins, talking with the Arab ploughman of the king who built it, leaning against a column which perhaps had often supported the haughty Herod, and looking out from this scene of desolation and ruin upon the most beautiful country in the Holy Land.

Descending from the ruined city, we continued our way along the valley. In about an hour we came to the village of Beteen, standing on the side of a mountain, overlooking a fertile valley: the women were in the fields, as I had seen them before, picking the tares from the wheat. Riding along through a succession of beautiful valleys, nearly all the way close to the banks of a running stream, and stopping under a fine shade of olives for our noonday meal, we came to Sanpoor, standing on an insulated hill, commanding an extensive view of the country, and once a strongly fortified place, with a tower and walls, supposed to have been built during the time of the crusades, but now totally demolished and in ruins. About three years ago it was taken, after a six months' siege, by Abdallah Pacha, the great soldier of the sultan; the insurgent inhabitants were put to the sword, and their houses burnt and razed to the ground. A little beyond this, the continued falls of rain have formed a small lake. In an hour and a half we passed the village of Abattia; and late in the afternoon we fell in with a party of Turkish travellers, one of whom was the "biggest in the round" of all the men I had seen in the East. His noble horse seemed to complain of his extraordinary burden. At about six o'clock we had left the beautiful country of Samaria, and were entering the little town of Jennin, or Janeen, standing on the borders of Galilee, at the commencement of the great plain of Jezreel.

Early in the morning, leaving the village of Janeen, we entered almost immediately the great plain of Jezreel. The holy places were now crowding upon me in rapid succession. I was on my way to Nazareth, the city of Joseph and Mary, where Christ spent nearly all his life; but I turned off the direct road to do homage on Mount Tabor, recognised as the scene of our Saviour's transfiguration. We passed two miserable villages, looking at a distance like little mounds or excrescences on the surface of the great plain; and, turning to the right, around the mountains of Samaria, saw afar off the lofty summit of Hermon, crowned with a sheik's tomb. On the right, towards the Sea of Galilee, was the village of Bisan, the Bethshan of the Bible, where the Philistines fastened the bodies of Saul and his three sons to the walls after they had fallen in Mount Gilboa.(Joshua, XVII., 11; 1 Samuel XXXI., 12; Kings, IV.,12.)

Before us, and the most striking and imposing object on the whole of the great plain of Esdraelon, was Mount Tabor. It stands perfectly isolated; rising alone from the plain in a rounded tapering form, like a truncated cone, to the height of three thousand feet, covered with trees, grass, and. wild flowers from the base to its summit, and presenting the combination, so rarely found in natural scenery of the bold and the beautiful. At twelve o'clock we were at the miserable village of Deborah, at the foot of the mountain, supposed to be the place where Deborah the prophetess, who then judged Israel, and Barak and "ten thousand men after him, descended upon Sisera, and discomfited him and all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him." The men and boys had all gone out to their daily labour, and we tried to persuade a woman to guide us to the top of the mountain, but she turned away with contempt; and, having had some practice in climbing, we moved around its sides until we found a regular path, and ascended nearly to.the top without dismounting. The path wound around the mountain, and gave us a view from all its different sides, every step presenting something new, and more and more beautiful, until all was completely forgotten and lost in the exceeding loveliness of the view from the summit. Stripped of every association, and considered merely as an elevation commanding a view of unknown valleys and mountains, I never saw a mountain which, for beauty of scene, better repaid the toil of ascending it; and I need not say what an interest was given to every feature when we saw in the valley beneath the large plain of Jezreel, the great battle-ground of nations; on the south the supposed range of Hermon, with whose dews the psalmist compares the "pleasantness of brethren dwelling together in unity;" beyond, the ruined village of Endor, where dwelled the witch who raised up the prophet Samuel; and near it the little city of Nain, where our Saviour raised from the dead the widow's son; on the east, the mountains of Gilboa, "where Saul, and his armour-bearer, and his three sons fell upon their swords, to save themselves from falling into the hands of the Philistines;" beyond, the Sea of Galilee, or.Lake of Genesareth, the theatre of our Saviour's miracles, where, in the fourth watch of the night, he appeared to his terrified disciples, walking on the face of the waters; and to the north, on a lofty eminence, high above the top of Tabor, the city of Saphet, supposed to be the ancient Bethulia, alluded to in the words "a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." But, if the tradition be true, we need not go beyond the mountain itself, for it was on this high mountain that "Jesus Christ took Peter, and James, and John his brother apart," and gave them a glimpse of his glory before his death, when "his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light; and a voice out of the cloud was heard, saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." I stood on the very spot where this holy scene was enacted. Within the walls of an old fortress is a ruined grotto, with three altars, built as Peter had proposed, one for Christ, one for Moses, and one for Elias; where, once a year, the monks of the convent, and all the Christians of Nazareth, ascending in solemn procession, offer adoration and praise to the Saviour of the world. The top of the mountain is an oval, about half a mile long, and encompassed by a wall built by Josephus when he was governor of Galilee; within this enclosure is a table of luxuriant grass and wild flowers, sending forth such an odour, and looking so clean and refreshing, that, when my horse lay down and rolled in it, I felt the spirit of boyhood coming over me again, and was strongly tempted to follow his example.

We descended and hurried on towards Nazareth. Winding along the valley, an accidental turn brought the mountain again full before me, alone, and strongly defined against the sky; the figure of a man could have been seen standing on the top as on a pedestal. I know not whether, in the splendid effort of Raphael that now adorns the Vatican, he had any idea of this particular mountain; but I remember that, looking back upon it at this time, it struck me that it was exactly the scene which the daring genius of the painter might have selected for the transfiguration of the Son of God.

In two hours and a half we were in the vale of Naszera, and approaching the city of Nazareth. The valley is fertile, surrounded by hills, and the city stands at the extreme end on the side of an elevation. . The houses are white, and in the place of Christ's residence, as of his birth, the mosque with its minaret is the most conspicuous object, and next to that the convent. A little on this side is a Greek church, built, as the Greeks say, over the spot where the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, and announced to her the birth of a son "of whose kingdom there should be no end." A little farther is a fountain, where the Virgin is said to have been in the habit of going for water; a procession of women, with large jars on their heads, was coming out from the city, and one of them, a Christian woman, gave us to drink; a comfortable-looking monk, taking his afternoon's promenade in the suburbs, was the first to greet us, and, following him, we dismounted at the door of the convent-one of the largest in the Holy Land.

In the city where Joseph and Mary lived, and where our Saviour passed thirty years of his life, there is of course no lack of holy places, and, as in the case of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as many of these places as possible have, with admirable economy, been brought under one roof, The Church of the Annunciation, within the walls of the convent, next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the finest in the Holy Land. There are two organs, and the walls and pillars are hung with red damask. Under the principal altar is the house of Joseph and Mary, consisting of several grottoes, kitchen, parlour, and bedroom. In front of the same altar are two granite columns, designating the spots where the angel and the Virgin stood at the time of the annunciation. One of them is broken off below, and the upper part hangs from the roof-the monks say by a miracle, but others by mortar; and all over Galilee the miraculous pillar is celebrated for its virtue in curing diseases. Outside the convent are the work-shop where Joseph wrought at his carpenter's trade, and the synagogue where Christ, by reading the book of Isaiah and applying to himself the words of the prophet, so exasperated the Jews that they rose up and thrust him out of the city. A lamp was burning dimly at the altar, and an Arab Christian prostrating himself before it; and, lastly, I saw the table on which, say the monks, our Lord dined with his disciples both before and after the resurrection, a large flat stone about three feet high, and fifteen paces in circumference. I was about knocking off a piece as a memorial, when the friar checked me, and, turning round a nail in one of the many holes in the surface, he worked off a little powder, laid it carefully in a paper, and gave it me

In my humour there was no great interest in visiting these so called holy places; but here was the city in which our Saviour had been brought up; I could walk in the same streets where he had walked, and look out upon the same hills and valleys; and a man of warm and impassioned piety might imagine that, in breathing the same atmosphere, he was drawing nearer to the person of the Saviour. I went back to the convent, joined the monks at vespers, listened to the solemn chant and the majestic tones of the organ, and went to bed.

Early in the morning, changing for the first-time the horses with which I had come from Jerusalem, I took a Christian of Nazareth for my guide, and started for Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. In about an hour we came to Cana of Galilee, where our: Saviour performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. At the entrance of the village is a fountain, where the women were drawing water in large jars, and near it a Greek church, built over the house of the young man at whose wedding the miracle was performed., Here, too, are large stone jars, being, as the monks say, the identical vessels in which the water was changed. War, bloody and relentless war, has swept over the little Cana of Galilee; fire and sword have laid waste and destroyed the peaceful village in which Christ met the rejoicing wedding-party.

In about two hours, leaving Mount Hermon and Mount Tabor on our right, we passed through the field where the disciples plucked the corn on the Sabbath day; about half an hour farther on is the mountain of the Beatitude, where Christ preached the sermon on the mount. Whether the tradition be true or no, it was just the place where, in those primitive days, or even in the state of society which exists now in the Holy Land, such an event might have taken place; the preacher standing a little distance up the hill, and the multitude sitting down below him. Indeed, so strikingly similar in all its details is the state of society existing here now to that which existed in the time of our Saviour, that I remember, when standing on the ruins of a small church supposed to cover the precise spot where Christ preached that compendium of goodness and wisdom, it struck me that if I or any other man should preach new and strange things, the people would come out from the cities and villages to listen and dispute, as they did under the preaching of our Lord.

Half an hour farther on we came to a large stone, on which, tradition says, our Saviour sat when he blessed the five loaves and two fishes, and the immense multitude ate and were filled. These localities may be, and probably are, mere monkish conjectures; but one thing we know, that our Saviour and his disciples journeyed on this road; that he looked upon the same scenes, and that, in all probability, somewhere within the range of my eye these deeds and miracles were atually performed. At all events, before me, in full view, was the hallowed Lake of Genesareth. Here we cannot be wrong; Christ walked upon that sea, and stilled the raging of its waters, and preached the tidings of salvation to the cities on its banks. But where are those cities now? Chorazin and Betbsaida, and thou too, Capernaum, that wast exalted unto heaven! The whole lake is spread out before me, almost from where the Jordan enters unto where that hallowed stream passes on to discharge its waters in the bituminous lake which covers the guilty cities; but there is no city, no habitation of man; all is still and quiet as the grave. But I am wrong; towards the southern extremity of the lake I see the city of Tabbereeah, the miserable relic of the ancient Tiberias, another of the proud cities of Herod, standing on the very shore of the sea, a mere speck in the distance, its walls and turrets, its mosques and minarets telling that it is possessed by the persecutors and oppressors of the followers of Christ.

We descended the mountains, and, passing under the walls of the city, continued on about half an hour to a large bath erected by Ibrahim Pacha over the hot springs of Emmaus, celebrated for their medicinal properties; and, finding that we could pass the night there, left our baggage and returned to the city. The walls and circular towers, Moorish in their construction, gave it an imposing appearance; outside the gate was the tent of a harlot, that unhappy class of women not being permitted, by the Mussulman law, to enter the walls; within, all was in a most ruined and desolate condition; a great part being entirely vacant, and, where the space was occupied, the houses or huts were built far apart.

Tiberias was the third of the holy cities of the Jews; and here, as at Jerusalem and Hebron, the unhappy remnant of a fallen people still hover around the graves of their fathers, and, though degraded and trampled under foot, are still looking for the restoration of their temporal kingdom. There were two classes of Jews, Eastern and European, the latter being Muscovites, Poles, and Germans; all had come merely to lay their bones in the Holy Land, and were now supported by the charity of their brethren in Europe. There were two synagogues, and two schools or colleges, and it was an interesting sight to see them, old men tottering on the verge of the grave and beardless boys studying in the same mysterious book what they believed to be the road to heaven.

I inquired for their rabbi, and they asked me whether I meant the Asiatic or European. I told them the greater of the two, and was conducted by a crowd to his house. I had no diffidence in those days, and invited myself to sit down and talk with him. He was an old man, and told me that they were all poor, living upon precarious charity; and that their brethren in America were so far off that they had forgotten the land of their fathers. Everything looked so comfortable in his house, that I tried to get an invitation to stay all night; but the old rabbi was too cunning for me. It was a féte day, but my notes are so imperfect that I cannot make out whether it was their Sabbath. All were dressed in their best apparel, the women sitting in the doors or on the terraces, their heads adorned with large gold and silver ornaments, and their eyes sparkling like diamonds.

Returning, I noticed more particularly the ruins beyond the southern wall. They extend for more than a mile, and there is no doubt that this ground was covered by the ancient city. The plain runs back about half a mile to the foot of the mountain, and in the sides of the mountain are long ranges of tombs. It was from one of these tombs, said our guide, that the man possessed of devils rushed forth when our Saviour rebuked the unclean spirits, and made them enter into a herd of swine, which ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and were drowned.

Passing the bath, I walked on to a point where I could see the extreme end of the lake, forming near the other side into the Jordan. It was a beautiful evening, still and quiet as the most troubled spirit could wish. The sides of the mountains were green and verdant, but there were no trees, and no rustling of the wind among the branches; not a boat was upon the lake ; and, except the city of Tiberias, which, enclosed within its walls, gave no signs of.life, I was the only living being on its shores; I almost felt myself alone in the world; and surely, if ever there was a spot where a man might be willing to live alone, it would be there. There was no desolation, but rather beauty in the loneliness; and when the sun was setting I was bathing my feet in the waters of the hallowed lake, and fast falling into the belief that I could sit me down on its banks "the world forgetting, by the world forgot;" but just then I saw filing under the walls of Tiberias a long procession of men. They were coming to the baths of Emmaus; and, in a few moments, I, that was musing as if I were alone in the world, was struggling with naked Arabs for a place in the bathing apartment.

A large bathing-house has been built over the hot springs by Ibrahim Pacha; a circular building, with a dome, like the baths at Constantinople; and under the dome a large marble reservoir, twenty feet in diameter, and nearly six feet deep, into which the Arabs slipped off from the sides like turtles, darkening the white marble and the clear water with their swarthy skins. I could not bear the heat, which seemed to me scalding. A separate room, with a single bath, had been built expressly for the precious body of Ibrahim Pacha; and, as he was not at hand to use it, I had it prepared. for myself. Here was a theme for moralizing! I had stood on the top of the pyramids, on Mount Sinai, and the shores of the Dead Sea; I had.been in close contact with greatness in the tombs of Augustus, Agamemnon, and the Scipios; but what were these compared with bathing in the same tub with the great bulldog-warrior of the East, the terrible IbrahimPacha? I spread my rug in an adjoining chamber; the long window opened directly upon the Sea of Galilee; for more than an hour my eyes were fixed upon its calm and silvery surface; and the last sounds that broke upon my ears were the murmurs of its waters.

Early in the morning we started. Stopping again at Tiberias, the soldier at the gate told us that a European had arrived during the night. I hunted him out, and found him to be an Englishman, as I afterward learned, a merchant of Damascus, and a sportsman, equipped with shooting-jacket, gun, dog, &c. He was in a miserable hovel, and, having just risen, was sitting apart from the Arab family; his rug and coverlet were lying on the mud floor not yet rolled up; and he seemed in a most rueful mood, objurgating all travel for pleasure, and whistling earnestly "There's no place like home." I knew his humour, for I had often felt it myself, and could hardly keep from laughing. He was not more than half dressed, and reminded me of the caricature of an Englishman standing in his nether garment, with a piece of cloth in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, as not being resolved after what fashion to have his coat cut.

"I am an English gentleman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear; For now I will wear this, and now I will wear that, And now I will wear-I cannot tell what."

We spent half an hour together, and parted. He was an old stager, and did not travel for scenery, associations, and all that, but he could tell every place where he had bagged a bird, from Damascus to the Sea of Galilee.

Stopping for a moment at the only monument of antiquity, the church of St. Peter, a long building, with a vaulted stone roof, built, as the monks say, over the place where the house of St. Peter stood, and the corner-stone laid by our Saviour; a burly monk was in the confessional, and a young Christian girl pouring into his greedy ears perhaps a story of unhappy love, we left for the last time the gate* of the city, the tent of the harlot standing there still, and commenced our journey along the shore of the sea.

*About six months after this gate was swallowed up-by an earthquake; the wall and the whole of that quarter of the city were thrown down and demolished, and a great portion of the inhabitants buried under the ruins.

A short distance from Tiberias we crossed the point of a mountain running down into the lake, and in about an hour came to a small Mohammedan village, called Magdol, supposed to be the Magdala into which our Saviour came when he had sent away the multitude after feeding them with the seven loaves and two fishes. It was along this shore that Jesus Christ began to preach the glad tidings of salvation to a ruined world; eighteen hundred years ago, walking by this sea, he saw two brethren, "Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, casting their nets into the sea, toiling all day and catching no fish; and he told them to thrust forth from the land; and their nets brake and their ships sank with the multitude of fish; and he said unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; and they forsook all and followed him."

We were now crossing a rich valley, through which several streams were running and emptying into the lake; and towards the other end, at some distance from the sea, we came to a small mound of crumbling bricks and stones, almost overgrown with grass; and this is all that remains of the city of Bethsaida, the city of Peter, and Andrew, and Philip. If we had diverged a hundred yards one way or the other, I should have passed without seeing it. A short distance off, among the hills that border the plain, alike in ruins, is her sister city Chorazin.. Leaving the valley and crossing a rude point of the mountain, which runs boldly to the lake, the road being so narrow that we were obliged to unload the baggage-horse, we descended to the plains of Genesareth, the richest and most fertile plain on the shores of the lake, and, perhaps, for a combination of natural advantages, soil, beauty of scenery, climate, and temperature, exceeded by no place in the world. A short distance across the plain we came to a little mill, set in motion by a large, clear, and beautiful stream, conveyed in two stone aqueducts. Four or five Arab families lived there, in huts made with palm leaves; the men lay stretched on the ground, lulled to sleep by the murmur of the falling waters.

From here to Talhoun, the supposed site of Capernaum, the rich plain of Genesareth was lying a wild and luxuriant waste, entirely uncultivated and neglected, except in one place, where an Arab was ploughing a small plot for tobacco. Approaching, the single Arab footpath becomes lost, and the road which our Saviour had often followed upon his great errand of redemption was so overgrown with long grass, bushes, and weeds, that they rose above the back of my horse, and I found it easier to dismount and pick my way on foot.

The ruins of Capernaum extend more than a mile along the shore and back towards the mountain, but they were so overgrown with grass and bushes that it was difficult to move among them. Climbing upon a high wall, which, though ruined itself, seemed proud of its pre-eminence above the rest, I had a full view of the ruins of the city, of the plains of Genesareth, and the whole extent of the Sea of Galilee, from where the Jordan comes down from the mountains until it passes out and rolls on to the Dead Sea. It is about sixteen miles long and six wide; at each end is the narrow valley of the Jordan; on the east a range of mountains, rising, not precipitously, but rolling back from the shore, green and verdant, but destitute of trees; on the west are mountains, in two places coming down to the lake, and the rest is a rich and beautiful, but wild and uncultivated plain. It was by far the most imposing view I had enjoyed, and I am not sure that in all my journeying in the East I had a more interesting moment than when I sat among the ruins of Capernaum, looking out upon the Lake of Genesareth.

Travellers have often compared this lake with the Lake of Geneva. I could see very little resemblance; it is not so large, and wants the variety of scenery of the Lake of Geneva, and, above all, the lofty summit of Mount Blanc. The banks of ihe Lake of Geneva are crowded from one end to the other with villages and villas, and its surface is covered with boats, and all the hurry and bustle of a travelling population; this is in all the wildness of nature, all neglected and uncultivated; and, except the little town of Tiberias, not a habitation, not even an Arab's hut, is seen upon its banks, not a solitary boat upon its waters. A single pelican was floating at my feet, and, like myself, he was alone. He was so near me that I could have hit him with a stone; he was the only thing I saw that had life, and he seemed looking at me with wonder, and asking me why I still lingered in the desolate city. I was looking upon the theatre of mighty miracles; it was here that, when a great tempest arose, and the ship was covered with waves, and his disciples cried out, "Save us, or we perish," Christ rose from his sleep, and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm;" and here too it was that in the fourth watch of the night he appeared to his terrified disciples, walking on the face of the sea, and crying out to them, "It is I, be not afraid;" and again the wind ceased, and there was a calm.

But this scene was not always so desolate. The shores of this lake were once covered with cities, in which Christ preached on the Sabbath day, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, cleansed the lepers, cast out devils,.and raised the dead. Bethsaida and Chorazin I had passed, and I was standing among the ruins of Capernaum, the city that was exalted to heaven in our Saviour's love; where Christ first raised his warning voice, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" and I could feel the fulfilment of his prophetic words, "Wo unto thee, Chorazin, wo, unto thee Bethsaida; it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And thou,Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell, and it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee." I am aware that lately there has been some dispute whether this be the site of Capernaum, but I had now passed along the whole western shore of the lake, and, if this be not Capernaum, my horse's hoofs must have trampled upon the city of our Saviour's love without my knowing where that city stood. I thought to enhance the interest of this day's journey by making my noonday meal from the fish of the Lake of Genesareth; obliged to go back by the mills, and having on my way up seen a net drying on the shore, I had roused the sleeping Arabs, and they had promised to throw it for me; but, when I returned, I found that, like Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee, "they had toiled all day, and had caught no fish."

Here we turned away from the consecrated lake, and fixed our eyes on the end of my day's journey, the towering city of Zaffad. But the interest of the day was not yet over. Ascending for about an hour from the shore of the lake, we came to the great caravan road from Jerusalem to Damascus, and a little off from this to a large khan; and within this khan, according to tradition, is the pit into which Joseph was thrown by his brethren before they sold him to the Ishmaelites. The khan, like all other caravansaries, is a large stone building, enclosing a hollow square, with small chambers around it for the accommodation of caravan travellers. The pit is a solid piece of masonwork, like a well; and, when I saw it, was nearly full of water. Both Mussulmans and Christians reverence this as a holy place; near it are a Mussulman mosque and a Christian chapel; and few travellers pass this way, whether Mussulmans or Christians, without prostrating themselves before the altar of Joseph the Just.

In all probability, the legend establishing this locality has no better foundation than most of the others in the Holy Land; but I cannot help remarking that I do not attach the importance assigned by others to the circumstance of its distance from Hebron, at that time Jacob's dwelling-place. We know that Joseph's brethren were feeding their father's flock at Shechem; and, when Joseph came thither "wandering in the field, he inquired after his brethren, and a man told him they are departed hence, for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan; and Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan." If there be any good reason for calling this place Dothan, to me it does not seem at all strange, that, in the pastoral state of society which existed then, and still exists unchanged, Jacob's sons had driven their flocks to a pasture-ground two days farther on; and, affording a striking illustration of the scene supposed to have taken place here, while we were loitering around the khan, a caravan of merchants from Damascus came up, on their way to Egypt, and the buying or selling of slaves, white or black, being still a part of the trade between these places, I have no doubt that, if I had offered Paul for sale, they would have bought him and carried him to Egypt, where, perhaps, he might have risen to be a grand vizier. From hence we continued mounting again, the city of Zaffad seeming to detach itself more and more, and to rise higher and higher above surrounding objects, and the atmosphere growing perceptibly colder; and at four o'clock we had reached the city.

Zaffad is the last of the four holy cities of the Jews. My intercourse with the Jews in the Holy Land had been so interesting, that I determined to prolong it to the last, and, having heard a favourable report of a Jew, the English consular agent at Zaffad, I rode directly to his house. He was a very poor and a very amiable man. I went with him to the governor, showed my firman, and demanded permission to see the grotto of Jacob. The governor was sick, and told me that God had sent me there expressly to cure him. Since my successful experiment upon the governor of Hebron, I began to think doctoring governors was my forte, and, after feeling his pulse, and making him stick out his tongue, upon the principle that a governor was a governor, and what was good for one was good for another, I gave him an emetic which almost turned him inside out, and completely cured him. One thing I cannot help observing, not with a view of impeaching anything that is written, but as illustrating the state of society in the East, that if a skilful physician, by the application of his medical science, should raise an Arab from what, without such application, would be his bed of death, the ignorant people would be very likely to believe it a miracle, and to follow him with that degree of faith which would give credence to the saving virtue of touching the "hem of his garment."

From the palace of the governor we ascended to the ruined fortress crowning the very top of the hill, and from one of the windows of the tower I looked down upon an extensive prospect of hills and valleys; the Lake of Genesareth seemed almost at my feet; the stately and majestic Tabor was far below me, and beyond was the great plain of Jezreel, stretching off to the mountains of Carmel and the shores of the Mediterranean. In all my wanderings in the most remote places, I had been constantly seeing what I may call the handwriting of Napoleon. In Italy, Poland, Germany, and the burnt and rebuilt capital of the tzars, at the pyramids and cataracts of the Nile, and now, on this almost inaccessible height, the turrets of the fortress were battered by the French cannon.

We descended again to the Jews' quarter. Their houses were on the side of the hill, overlooking a beautiful valley. It was the last day of eating unleavened bread, and the whole Jewish population, in their best attire, were sitting on the terraces and on the tops of their houses, in gay, striking, and beautiful costumes, the women with their gold and silver ornaments on their heads and around their necks, enjoying the balmy mildness of a Syrian sunset; and, when the shades of evening had driven them to their houses, I heard all around me, and for the last time in the Holy Land, rising in loud and solemn chants, the Songs of Solomon and the Psalms of David.

There are about two hundred families of Israelites in Zaffad; they come there only to lay their bones in the land of their fathers; have no occupation or means of livelihood; spend all their time in reading the Bible and Talmud, and live upon the charity of their European brethren. The agent told me that during the late revolution they had been stripped of everything; that, as at Hebron, they had suffered robbery, murder, and rapine; that the governor had allowed them to take refuge in the fortress, where they remained, three thousand in number, without a mat to lie on or bread to put in their mouths; many of them had died of starvation, and the living remained beside the bodies of the dead till the whirlwind passed by; that, thinking himself safe under his foreign protection, he had remained below, but that his hat with the consular cockade had been torn off and trampled under foot; and his wife, a lovely young woman sitting by our side, then not more than nineteen, had been thrown down, whipped, and he did not tell me so, but I inferred that far worse had befallen her; and the brutal Turk who committed the outrage still lived, and he met him in.the streets every day.

During the evening a Christian from Nazareth came in, and it struck me as an interesting circumstance that I was introduced to him as a brother Nazarene.

A Jew welcomed me to the first of the holy cities, and a Jew accompanied me on my exit from the last. Both received me into their houses, and gave me the best that they had, and both refused to accept a price for their hospitality. I had a hard day's journey before me. My Jewish friend had told me that. it would be necessary to make a very early start to arrive at Acre that night, but it so happened that I set off late. We had a ravine to cross, the worst I had met in Syria. Paul and I were some distance ahead, when we heard the shouting of our muleteer; our baggage mule had fallen and caught on the brink of a precipice, where he was afraid to move until we came to his help; and this and the exceeding roughness of the road detained us so much, that, when we reached the other side of the ravine, my guide told me that it would be utterly impossible to reach Acre that day. I would have returned, but I did not want to throw myself again upon the hospitality of my Jew friend. I was in a bad condition for roughing it; but, at the risk of being obliged to sleep in some miserable Arab hut, or perhaps under the walls of Acre, I pushed on.

For two or three hours there was no improvement in the road; we were obliged to dismount several times, and could not do more than pick our way on a walk. We then came to the.village of Rinah, situated in a fine olive-grove. The villagers told us it would be impossible to reach Acre before night, but a bribe to my guide induced him to lead off on a brisk trot. Of every man we met we asked the distance; at length we came to one who told us he thought we might do it. I could almost always tell beforehand the answer we should get; when we came to a lazy fellow, sprawling on the ground and basking in the sun, he invariably said no; and when we met an Arab, riding nimbly on his mule, or striding over the ground as if he had something to do and meant to do it, his answer was always yes, and so we were alternately cheered and discouraged. We watered our horses at the stream without dismounting. About midday Paul handed me a boiled fowl, holding on by one leg while I pulled at the other; the fowl came apart, and so we dined on horseback without stopping. I am not sure, but I do not think that there was anything particularly interesting on the road; once, riding over a fine, well-cultivated valley, we saw at a distance on the right two handsome villages, and standing alone, something which appeared to be a large white mosque or sheik's tomb.

At about four o'clock we came in sight of the Mediterranean, the great plain of Acre, the low circular shore extending to Caipha and Mount Carmel, and before us, at a great distance, on an extreme point in the sea, the ancient Ptolemais, the St. Jean d'Acre of Richard and the Crusaders. Still we were not safe. The sun was settling away towards my distant home when we reached the shore of the sea. I shall never forget my sensations at the moment when I gained that shore; after the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, and the Sea of Galilee, it seemed an old acquaintance, and I spurred my horse into the waters to greet it. But I had no time to dally, for as yet I was not secure. I joined the last of the loungers outside the walls; the heavy gates were swung to as I entered; and when I pushed my jaded horse over the threshold of the gate I felt as happy as the gallant leader of the Crusaders when he planted the banner of England upon the walls of Acre. Soon in the peaceful cell of the convent, I forgot my toil and anxiety, as well as Richard and the holy wars. The night before I had slept by the quiet waters of Galilee, and now the last sounds that I heard were the rolling waves of the Mediterranean.