A Ride on Donkeyback.-Caipha.-Adventure with a Consul.-Mount Carmel.-The Plain of Jezreel.-Convent of Mount Carmel.-Kindness of the Monks.-Curiosity Gratified.

I rose next morning much fatigued. My strength had been greatly impaired by sickness and exposure, and I intended to give myself a day of rest, instead of which I committed an act of folly. The night before I left Jerusalem I had seen, at the house of my friend Mr. Whiting, the poetical pilgrimage of M. de la Martine; I had not time to read it through, and by chance opened it at the chapter containing the particulars of his visit to Caipha, and the glowing account which he gave of the two sisters of the Sardinian consul had inflamed in some degree my imagination. I had found it one of the most annoying circumstances attendant upon travelling in the East, that, in spite of the poetical accounts of Eastern beauty, though I had seen Georgian and Circassian women, I had never yet met with anything that to my mind was equal to the beauty of the European and American women. I had passed Caipha, and it was a direct retrograde movement to go there; but early in the morning, as I was walking on the ramparts of Acre, I looked back towards the little city, and the beautiful creations of the poet rose before me -in most ravishing colours. I was worn down. There was no physician in Acre; and, perhaps, to bask an hour in the sunshine of beauty might revive and restore me. Paul too was under the weather; ever since his fall from the dromedary he had wanted bleeding, and it might do him good. In short, I had been rambling for months among ruins and old cities, working as hard as if I were to be paid for it by the day; I had had enough of these things, and one glimpse of a beautiful girl was worth more to me at that moment than all the ruins of the Holy Land; but I would not admit to myself, much less to Paul, that I was making this retrograde movement merely to see a couple of pretty faces, and I ordered horses for Caipha and Mount Carmel. Horses, however, were not to be had, and we were obliged to take donkeys, which I considered unlucky. For the first time since I left Jerusalem, I brushed my tarbouch, my blue jacket, and gray pantaloons.

I started on donkeyback. Caipha is distant a ride of about three hours and a half from Acre, all the way along the shore of the sea. About half an hour from Acre we crossed the river Belus in a boat. It was on the banks of this stream that Elijah killed the four hundred prophets of Baal, gathered unto Mount Camel by the orders of Ahab. A dead level plain, fertile but uncultivated, stretched back for many miles into the interior, and in the front to the foot of Mount Carmel. We rode close along the shore, where the sand was every moment washed and hardened by the waves. The sea was calm, but the wrecks on the shore, of which we counted seventeen on our way to Caipha, told us that the elements of storm and tempest might lurk under a fair and beautiful face; all which was àpropos to my intended visit. On the way I thought it necessary to let Paul into part of my plans, and told him that I wanted to stop at the house of the Sardinian consul. Paul asked me whether I had any letter to him; I told him no; and, by degrees, disclosed to him the reason of my wanting to go there; and he surprised me by telling me that he knew the young ladies very well; and when I asked him how and when, he told me that he had assisted them in their cooking when he stopped there three year before with Mr. Wellesley. This was rather a damper; but I reflected that Haidee, on her beautiful little island, prepared with her own hands the food for the shipwrecked, and revived at the thought.

We were now approaching Caipha. The city was walled all around; without the walls was a Mohammedan burying. ground; and the gate, like the shields of Homer's heroes, was covered with a tough bull's hide. I rode directly to the consul's house; it was a miserable-looking place, and on the platform directly before the door stood a most unpoetical heap of dirt and rubbish; but I didn't mind that; the door was open, and I went in. The table was set for dinner, and I could not help remarking a few rather questionable spots on the table-cloth; but I didn't mind that; knives, forks, and plates were a spectacle to which I had long been unaccustomed, and my heart warmed even to the empty platters. I thought I had come at the witching moment, and I felt as sure of my dinner as if I had it already under my jacket. The consul was sitting on a settee, and I began the acquaintance by asking him if there was an American consul there. He told me no; at which I was very much surprised, as we had one at Jaffa, not so much of a place as Caipha; and I invited myself to a seat beside the consul, and made myself agreeable. I soon found, however, that I was not so pleasant a fellow as I thought. The consul answered my questions, but his manner might be interpreted,

"Don't you see you are keeping the dinner waiting?" I didn't mind that, however, but talked about the necessity of my government having a consul there, to entertain American travellers, and suggested that at Jaffa the government had given the appointment to the then acting Sardinian consul; still my friend was impenetrable. I tried him upon several other topics, but with no great success. During this time the mother entered, evidently in dishabille, and occasionally I got a glimpse of a pair of fine black eyes peeping at me through the door. At last, when I found that he was bent on not asking me to dine, I rose suddenly, made a hundred apologies for my haste, shook him cordially by the hand, and, with most consummate impudence, told him I would call again on my return from Mount Carmel. Paul rather crowed over me, for he had met and spoken to the young ladies, and in the same place where he had seen them before.

In about an hour we had reached the top of Mount Carmel; this celebrated mountain is the only great promontory upon the low coast of Palestine, and it is, beyond all comparison, the finest mountain in the Holy Land. The traveller at this day may realize fully the poetical description by the inspired writers, of the "excellency" of Mount Carmel. The pine, oak, olive, and laurel grew above a beautiful carpet of grass and wild flowers, and from amid this luxuriance I looked out upon the plains of Acre, the little city stretching out on a low point, like a mere speck in the water; and beyond, the mountains of Lebanon; on the left, along the shore of the Mediterranean to the ruins of Cesarea, the once proud city of Herod and of Cornelius the Centurion, where Paul made Felix tremble; in front, the dark blue sea, on whose bosom two transports, with Egyptian soldiers on board, were at that time stretching under easy sail from Acre to Alexandria; and behind, the great plain of Jezreel.

One word with regard to this great plain. I had travelled around, and about, and across it; had looked at it from hills and mountains, and I was now on the point of leaving it for ever. This plain, computed to be about fifteen miles square, is the "mighty plain," as it is called, of the ancients, and celebrated. for more than three thousand years as the "great battle-ground of nations." From here Elijah girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel; it was on this plain that Barak went down, and ten thousand men after him, and discomfited Sisera and all his chariots; it was here that Josiah, king of Judah, dis- guised himself, that he might fight with Necho, king of Egypt, and fell by the arrows of the Egyptian archers. The Assyrian and the Persian, Jews and Gentiles, Crusaders and Saracens, Egyptians and Turks, Arabs and Frenchmen, warriors of every nation, have poured out their blood on the plains of Esdraelon; and here, said a gentleman whom I met in Palestine skilled in the reading and interpretation of the prophecies, will be fought the great final battle with antichrist, when circumstances which are now supposed to be rapidly developing themselves shall bring together a mighty army of the followers of Christ, under the banner of the cross, to do battle in his name, and sweep from the earth his contemners and opposers.

The convent on Mount Carmel is worthy of the place where it stands, and, like the mountain itself, is the best in the Holy Land. The church, which is unfinished, is intended to be a very fine building, and the interior of the convent is really beautiful. I could hardly believe my own eyes when I saw, in rooms provided for travellers, French bedsteads with curtains, and French dressing-tables. The rules of their order forbid the Carmelite friars to eat meat; but they set me down to such a dinner, to say nothing of the wines of Mount Lebanon, that, so far as regarded the eating and drinking merely, I was glad I had not invited myself to dine with my friend the consul at Caipha. From my seat at the table I looked out upon the distant sea; the monks were all gathered around me, kind, good men, happy to receive and talk with a stranger; and it is no extravagance to say, that, after having been buffeted about for months, I felt at the. moment that I could be almost willing to remain with them for ever. I ought not to tell it, but the fact is, the extraordinary comfort of the convent, and the extraordinary beauty of the scene, drove away all the associations connected with this gathering-place of the prophets.

I wanted nothing but what I saw before me. The monks told me that there was fine shooting on the mountain. I could throw myself into the clearest of waters, and bathe, or, with my little boat, could glide over to Caipha or Acre. For an invalid in search of retirement, with every beauty that climate and natural scenery can offer, I know no place superior to the convent at Mount Carmel. It is one of the few places I ever saw where a man could be cheerful and happy in perfect seclusion. Books, the mountain, the sky and the sea, would be companions enough. It would be the sweetest spot on earth for a very young couple to test the strength of their poetic dreams; and knocked about and buffeted as I had been, when the superior told me that, in spite of the inscription over the doors of their convents, "clausura per le donna," I might build a house on the spot where I stood, and bring whom I pleased there, it instantly brought to my mind the beautiful birds of Paradise of De la Martine, and my engagements with my friend the consul at Caipha. The whole of the fraternity accompanied me down the side of the mountain; and I beg to except them all, including the cook, from anything I may have said bearing harshly upon the monastic character. The recollection of my engagement, however, began to hurry me. The friars were pussy and shortwinded; one by one they bade me good-by; and the cook, a most deserving brother, and unnaturally lean for his profession and position in the convent, was the only one who held out to the foot of the mountain. I crossed his hand with a piece of money; Paul kissed it; and, after we had started, turned his head and cried out to the holy cook, "Orate pro mihi," "Pray for me."

At Caipha we found the consul in the street. I do not know whether he was expecting us or not; but, whether or no, I considered it my duty to apologize for having stayed so long on the mountain, and accompanied him to his house. Unluckily, it was so late, that Paul said if we stopped we should be shut out from Acre; and when I looked at the sun and the distant city I had great misgivings. but it was only for a moment. The sisters were now dressed up. and standing in a door as I passed. Their dresses were Asiatic, consisting, from the waist downward, of a variety of wrappers, the outermost of which was silk, hiding the most beautiful figures under a mere bundle of habits. I went into the room and took a glass of lemonade with my watch in my hand. I would not speak of her in the morning, but now, in full dress, the interesting mother, so glowingly described by M. de la Martine, appeared in a costume a great deal beyond what is usually called low in the neck. I do not mention it as a reproach to her, for she was an Arab woman, and it was the custom of her country; and as to the young ladies-M. de la Martine had never been in America.

I had intended this for a day of rest; but I had, if possible, a harder task than on the preceding day to reach the city before the gates were closed. We pushed our donkeys till they broke down, and then got off and whipped them on before us. It was like the Irishman working his passage by hauling the towline of the canal boat; if it was not for the name of the thing, we might as well have walked; and when I lay down that night in my cell in the convent, I prayed that age might temper enthusiasm; that even the imagination of M. de la Martine might grow cool; and that old men would pay respect to their lawful wives, and not go in ecstasies about young girls.

St. Jean d'Acre.-Extortions of the Pacha.-Tyre.-Questionable Company.-Lady Esther Stanhope.-Departure from the Holy Land.-Conclusion.

I SHALL say but little of Acre. The age of chivalry is gone for ever, but there is a green spot in every man's memory, a feeble but undying spark of romance in every heart; and that man's feelings are not to be envied who could walk on the ramparts of St. Jean d'Acre without calling up Richard and Saladin, the Crusaders and the Saracens; and when the interval of centuries is forgotten, and the imagination is revelling in the scenes of days long passed away, his illusion rises to the vividness of reality as he sees dashing by him a gallant array of Turkish horsemen, with turbans and glittering sabres, as when they sallied forth to drive back from the walls the chivalry of Europe. Near the city is a mount which is still called Richard Coeur de Lion, and from which Napoleon, pointing to the city, said to Murat, "The fate of the East depends upon yonder petty town." Constantinople and the Indies, a new empire in the East, and a change in the face of the whole world! Eight times he led his veteran soldiers to the assault; eleven times he stood the desperate sallies of the Mameluke sabres. British soldiers under Sir Sidney Smith came to the aid of the besieged; the ruins of a breached wall served as a breastwork, the muzzles of British and French muskets touched each other, and the spearheads of their standards were looked together. The bravest of his officers were killed, and the bodies of the dead soldiers lying around putrefied under the burning sun. The pacha (Djezzar the Butcher) sat on the floor of his palace, surrounded by a heap of gory heads, distributing money to all who brought in the heads of Frenchmen, and he who was destined to overturn every throne in Europe was foiled under the walls of Acre. Three years ago it sustained, under Abdallah Pacha, a long and bloody siege from Ibrahim Pacha; and, when it fell into his hands, was given up to pillage and the flames. It has since been rebuilt, fortified with skill and science, and is now almost impregnable; full of the elite of the Egyptian army under Colonel Sêve (formerly aid to Marshal Ney), now Suliman Pacha, and constantly stored with five years' provisions. The pacha has lately been building fine hospitals for his soldiers, and an Italian apothecary, licensed to kill secundem artem, is let loose upon the sick at the low rate of a hundred dollars per annum.

I was so much pleased with the old Arab muleteer who went with me to Mount Carmel, that I hired his donkeys again for another journey. He was an old Egyptian from Damietta; four of his children had been taken for soldiers, and he and his old wife and three donkeys followed them about wherever they went. He had had two wives and sixteen children, and these were all that were left. They were all now stationed at Acre, and, when we started, two of them, not on duty at the time, were with the old man at the convent, arranging the baggage while he was taking his coffee and pipe; they accompanied us to the gate, received the old man's benediction, and returned.

A short distance from the gate we met a Turkish grandee, with his officers, slaves, and attendants. He had formerly been a collector of taxes under Abdallah Pacha, and would have done well as an office-holder under a civilized government, for he had abandoned the falling fortunes of his master in time to slip into the same office under his successor.

Looking back, Acre appeared to much better advantage than from the other side, and the mosque and minaret of Abdallah Pacha were particularly conspicuous. We rode for some distance by the side of an aqueduct, which conveys water from the mountains twenty miles distant to the city of Acre. In the plain towards Acre two upright pillars, in which the water rose and descended, formed part of the aqueduct. Our road lay across a plain, and several times we picked up musket balls and fragments of bombs, left there by the French and Napoleon. We passed two palaces of Abdallah Pacha, where the haughty Turk had revelled with his fifty or a hundred wives in all the luxuries of the East. The plain was very extensive, naturally rich, but almost entirely uncultivated. Over an extent of several miles we would perhaps see a single Arab turning up what on the great plain appeared to be merely a few yards; and the oppressive nature of the government is manifest from the fact that, while the whole of this rich plain lies open to any one who chooses to till it, hundreds prefer to drag out a half-starved existence within the walls of Acre; for the fruits of their labour are not their own, and another will reap where they sow; the tax-gatherer comes and looks at the products, and takes not a fifth, or a sixth, nor any other fixed proportion, but as much as the pacha needs; and the question is not how much he shall take, but how little he shall leave. Taxation, or rather extortion, for it is wrong to call it by so mild a name, from cantars of olives down to single eggs, grinds the Arab to the dust; and yet, said the old man, even this is better than our lot under the sultan; even this we could bear if the pacha would only spare us our children.

Along this plain we passed a large house, in a garden of oranges, lemons, almonds, and figs, with a row of cypress-trees along the road; formerly the residence of the treasurer of Abdallah Pacha. He himself had been a great tyrant and oppressor, and had fallen into the hands of a greater, and now wanders, with both his eyes out, a beggar in the streets of Cairo.

In about five hours we came upon the sea, on a bold point projecting out like Carmel, the white promontory of Pliny, the ancient Scala of the Syrians. On this point stood an old khan, and we sat down under the shadow of the wall for our noonday lunch. From here, too, the view was exceedingly fine. On the left were Acre and Mount Carmel; on the right the Turkish city of Sour, the ancient Tyre; and, in front, the horizon was darkened by the island of Cyprus. Almost at my feet was the wreck of a schooner, driven on the rocks only the night before, her shivered sails still flying from the masts, and the luckless mariners were alongside in a small boat, bringing ashore the remnant of the cargo. Near me, and, like me, looking out upon the movements of the shipwrecked sailors, and apparently bemoaning his own unhappy lot, was a long, awkward, dangling young man, on his way to Acre; sent by the sheik of his village to work in Ibrahim Pacha's factory for three rolls of bread a day. I asked him why he did not run away, but where could he go? If he went to a strange village, he would immediately be delivered up on the never-failing demand for soldiers. There was no help for him. He did not know that there were other lands, where men were free; and, if he had known it, the curse of poverty rested upon him, and bound him where he was. I had seen misery in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, and gallant, but conquered and enslaved Poland, but I saw it refined and perfected under the iron despotism of Mohammed Aly.

From hence the road continued, for about two hours, over a rocky precipice overhanging the sea, and so narrow that, as I sat on my horse, I could look down the steep and naked sides into the clear water below. In one place were the ruins of an old wall, probably, when the city before we was in its glory, defending the precipice. In the narrowest place we met a caravan of camels, and from here descended into a sandy plain, and; passing small rivulets and ruins of castles or fortresses, came to a fine stream, on the banks of which were soldiers' barracks; the horses, with their gay accoutrements, were tied near the doors of the tents, constantly saddled and bridled, and strains of military music were swelling from a band among the trees.

Near this are what are called Solomon's cisterns, supposed to have been built by King Solomon in payment for the materials furnished by Hiram, king of Tyre, towards the building of the temple. Circumstances, however, abundantly prove that these cisterns, and the aqueduct connecting them with Tyre, have been built since the time of Alexander the Great.

On the extreme end of a long, low, sandy isthmus, which seems to have crawled out as far as it could, stands the fallen city of Tyre, seeming, at a distance, to rest on the bosom of the sea. A Turkish soldier was stationed at the Gate. I entered under an arch, so low that it was necessary to stoop on the back of my horse, and passed through dark and narrow streets, sheltered by mats stretched over the bazars from the scorching heat of a Syrian sun. A single fishing-boat was lying in the harbour of "the crowning city, whose merchants were princes, whose traffickers were the honourable of the earth."

I left the gate of Tyre between as honest a man and as great a rogue as the sun ever shone upon. The honest man was my old Arab, whom I kept with me in spite of his bad donkey; and the rogue was a limping, sore-eyed Arab, in an old and ragged suit of regimentals, whom I hired for two days to relieve the old man in whipping the donkeys. He was a dismissed soldier, turned out of Ibrahim Pacha's army as of no use whatever, than which there could not be a stronger certificate of worthlessness. He told me, however, that he had once been a man of property, and, like honest Dogberry, had had his losses; he had been worth sixty piasters (nearly three dollars), with which he had come to live in the city; and been induced to embark in enterprises that had turned out unfortunately, and he had lost his all.

On my arrival at Sidon I drove immediately to the Arab consular agent, to consult him about paying a visit to Lady Esther Stanhope. He told me that I must send a note to her ladyship, requesting permission to present myself, and wait her pleasure for an answer; that sometimes she was rather capricious, and that the English consul from Beyroot had been obliged to wait two days. The state of my health would not permit my waiting anywhere upon an uncertainty. I was but one day from Beyroot, where I looked for rest and medical attendance; but I did not like to go past, and I made my application perhaps with more regard to my own convenience and feelings than the respect due to those of the lady. My baggage, with my writing materials, had not yet arrived. I had no time to lose; the Arab agent gave me the best he had; and writing a note about as "big as a book" on a. piece of coarse Arab paper with a reed pen, and sealing it with a huge Arab wafer, I gave it to a messenger, and, tumbling him out of the house, told him he must bring me an answer before daylight the next morning. He probably reached Lady Stanhope's residence about nine or ten o'clock in the evening; and I have no doubt he tumbled in, just as he had been tumbled out at Sidon, and, demanding an immediate answer, he got one forthwith, "Her ladyship's compliments," &c.; in short, somewhat like that which a city lady gives from the head of the stairs, "I'm not at home." I have since read M. de la Martine's account of his visit to her ladyship, by which it appears that her ladyship had regard to the phraseology of a note. Mine, as near as I can recollect it, was as follows:-" Mr. S., a young American, on the point of leaving the Holy Land, would regret exceedingly being obliged to do so without first having paid his respects to the Lady Esther Stanhope. If the Lady Esther Stanhope will allow him that honour, Mr. S. will present himself to-morrow, at any hour her ladyship will name." If the reader will compare this note with the letter of M. de la Martine, he will almost wonder that my poor messenger, demanding, too, an immediate answer, was not kicked out of doors. My horses were at the door, either for Beyroot or her ladyship's residence; and, when obliged to turn away from the latter, I comforted myself with a good gallop to the former. Her ladyship was exceedingly lucky, by-the-way, in not having received me; for that night I broke down at Beyroot; my travels in the East were abruptly terminated; and, after lying ten days under the attendance of an old Italian quack, with a blue frock coat and great frog buttons, who frightened me to death every time he approached my bedside, I got on board the first vessel bound for sea, and sailed for Alexandria. At Beyroot I received a letter from the friend who had taken me on board his boat at Thebes, advising me of the sickness of his lady, and that he had prevailed upon the English doctor at Beyroot to accompany him to Damascus and Baalbeek; here, too, I heard of the death of Mr. Lowell, a gentleman from Boston, who had preceded me in many parts of my tour in the East; and who had every where left behind him such a name that it was a pleasure for an American to follow in his steps; and here, too, I heard of the great fire, which, by the time it reached this distant land, had laid the whole of my native city in ruins. In the midst of my troubles,. however, I had three things that gave me pleasure. I met here my two friends with whom I had mounted the cataracts of the Nile, one of whom I hope one day to see in my own country; I received from the Austrian consul an assurance that the passport of my Jew friend at Hebron should be made out, and delivered forthwith to his friend there; and I saw Costigan's servant, from whom I obtained a map of the Dead Sea before referred to. For ten days I lay on the deck of a little Austrian schooner, watching the movements of a pair of turtle doves; and on the morning of the eleventh I was again off the coast of Egypt, and entering the harbour of Alexandria. Here I introduced myself to the reader; and here, if he have not fallen from me by the way, I take my leave of him, with thanks for his patient courtesy.