The Road to Gaza.-Unknown Ruins.-A Misadventure.-Pastoral Bedouins.-A Flower of the Wilderness.-The Ravages of War.-Testimony of an Eyewitness.

WE started at six o'clock the next day, the morning rather cool, though clear and bracing; we were again among the mountains, and at about eleven a track scarcely distinguishable to my eye turned off to Gaza. To a traveller from such a country as ours, few of the little every-day wonders he is constantly noticing strike him more forcibly than the character of the great public roads in the East. He makes allowance for the natural wildness of the country, the impossibility of using wheel-carriages on the mountains, or horses in the desert as beasts of burden, but still he is surprised and disappointed. Here, for instance, was a road leading to the ancient city of Gaza, a regular caravan route for four thousand years, and yet so perfect in the wildness of nature, so undistinguishable in its appearance from other portions of the wilderness around, that a stranger would have passed the little opening in the rocks probably without noticing it, and certainly without imagining that the wild track, of which it formed the entrance, would conduct him to the birthplace and ancient capital of David, and the holy city of Jerusalem. The solitary trail of the Indian over our prairies and forests is more perfectly marked as a road than either of the great routes to Gaza or Jerusalem, and yet, near the spot where these two roads diverge are the ruins of an ancient city.

Little, if anything, has been known in modern days concerning the existence and distinguishing features of this road; and it is completely a terra incognita to modem travellers. All the knowledge possessed of it is that derived from the records of ancient history; and from these we learn that in the time of David and Solomon, and the later days of the Roman empire, a great public road existed from Jerusalem to Akaba, the ancient Eloth or Ezion-geber; that several cities existed upon it between these terminating points, and that their ruins should still be visible. Believing that I am the first traveller who has ever seen those ruins, none can regret more than myself my inability to add to the scanty stock of knowledge already in possession of geographers. If my health had permitted, I might have investigated and explored, noted observations, and treasured up facts and circumstances, to place them in the hands of wiser men for their conclusions; but I was not equal to the task. The ruins which I saw were a confused and shapeless mass, and I rode among them without dismounting; there were no columns, no blocks of marble, or large stones which indicated any architectural greatness, and the appearance of the ruins would answer the historical description of a third or fourth rate city.

About three hours farther on, and half a mile from our path, on the right, was a quadrangular arch with a dome; and near it was a low stone building, also arched, which might have been a small temple. The Bedouins, as usual, referred it to the times of the Christians. For about a mile, in different places on each side of us, were mounds of crumbling ruins; and directly on the caravan-track we came to a little elevation, where were two remarkable wells, of the very best Roman workmanship, about fifty feet deep, lined with large hard stones, as firm and perfect as on the day in which they were laid. The uppermost layer, round the top of the well, which was on a level witk the pavement, was of marble, and had many grooves cut in it, apparently worn by the long-continued use of ropes in drawing water. Around each of the wells were circular ranges of columns, which, when the city existed, and the inhabitants came there to drink, might and probably did support a roof similar to those now seen over the fountains in Constantinople. No remains of such roof, however, are existing; and the columns are broken, several of them standing not more than three or four feet high, and the tops scooped out to serve as troughs for thirsty camels. On the other side, a little in the rear of the wells, is a bill overlooking the scattered ruins below, which may, some hundred years ago, have been the Acropolis of the city. A strong wall seems to have extended around the whole summit level of the hill. I remember that I rode up to the summit, winding around the hill, and leaped my horse over the broken wall; but there was nothing to reward me for the exertion of the undertaking. The enclosure formed by the wall was filled with ruins, but I could give form or feature to none of them; here, too, I rode among them without dismounting; and from here I could see the whole extent of the ruins below. As in the ruined city I had just passed, there was not a solitary inhabitant, and not a living being was to be seen but my companions watering their camels at the ancient wells. This, no doubt, was another of the Roman cities; and although, it was probably never celebrated for architectural or monumental beauty, it must have contained a large population.

We were now coming into another country, and leaving the desert behind us; a scanty verdure was beginning to cover the mountains ; but the smiling prospect before me was for a moment overclouded by an unfortunate accident. Paul had lent his dromedary to one of the men; and riding carelessly on a baggage-camel, in ascending a rough hill the girths of the saddle gave way, and Paul, boxes, and baggage, all came down together, the unlucky dragoman completely buried under the burden. I was the first at his side; and when I raised him up he was senseless. I untied his sash and tore open his clothes. The Bedouins gathered around, all talking together, pulling, and hauling, and one of them drew his sword, and was bending over my prostrate interpreter, with its point but a few ihches from his throat. Poor Paul! with his mortal antipathy to cold steel, if he could have opened his eyes at that moment, and seen the fiery orbs of the Bedouins, and the point of a sharp sword apparently just ready to be plunged into his body, he would have uttered one groan and given up the ghost. It was a startling movement to me; and for a moment I thought they were going to employ in his behalf that mercy which is sometimes shown to a dying brute, that of killing him to put him out of misery. I pressed forward to shield him with my own body ; and in the confusion of the moment, and my inability to understand what they meant, the selfish feeling came over me of the entire and absolute helplessness of my own condition if Paul should die. But Paul was too good a Catholic to die out of the pale of the church; he could never have rested quietly in his grave, unless he had been laid there amid the wafting of incense and the chanting of priests. "The safety of the patient often consists in the quarrels of the physicians," says Sancbo Panza, or some other equally great authority, and perhaps this saved Paul; the Arabs wanted to cut open his clothes and bleed him; but I, not liking thq looks of their lancets, would not suffer it; and, between us both, Paul was let alone and came to himself. But it was a trying moment, while I was kneeling on the sand supporting his senseless head upon my knee. No parent could have waited with more anxiety the return to life of an only child, or lover watched the beautiful face of his adored and swooning mistress with more earnestness than I did the ghastly and grizzled face of my faithful follower; and when he first opened his eyes, and stared wildly at me, the brightest emanations from the face of beauty could not at that moment have kindled warmer emotions in my heart. I never thought I should look on his ugly face with so much pleasure. I put him on my horse, and took his dromedary; and in half an hour we came to a Bedouin encampment in one of the most singular and interesting spots I ever saw.

We should have gone on two hours longer, but Paul's accident made it necessary to stop as soon as we found a proper place; and I should have regretted exceedingly to pass by this without a halt. There was something interesting even in our manner of approaching it. We were climbing up the side of a mountain, and saw on a little point on the very summit the figure of an Arab, with his face towards the tomb of the prophet, kneeling and prostrating himself in evening prayer. He had finished his devotions, and was sitting upon the rock when we approached, and found that he had literally been praying on his house-top, for his habitation was in the rock beneath. Like almost every old man one meets in the East, he looked exactly the patriarch of the imagination, and precisely as we would paint Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He rose as we approached, and gave us-the usual Bedouin invitation to stop and pass the night with him; and, leading us a few paces to the brink of the mountain, he showed us in the valley below the vil- lage of his tribe.

The valley began at the foot of the elevation on which we stood, and lay between ranges of broken and overhanging rocks, a smooth and beautiful table of green, for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and beyond that distance broke off and expanded into an extensive meadow. The whole of this valley, down to the meadow, was filled with flocks of sheep and goats; and, for the first time since I left the banks of the Nile, I saw a herd of cows. I did not think I should ever be guilty of a sentiment at beholding a cow, but so it was; after my long journey in the desert, my feelings were actually excited to tenderness by the sight of these old acquaintances.

But where were the dwellings of the pastors, the tents in which dwelt the shepherds of these flocks and herds? In Egypt I had seen the Arabs living in tombs, and among the ruins of temples; in the desert I had seen them dwelling in tents; but I had never yet seen them making their habitations in the rude crevices of the rocks. Such, however, were their habitations here. The rocks in many places were overhanging; in others there were chasms or fissures; and wherever there was anything that could afford a partial protection from the weather on one side, a low, rough, circular wall of stone was built in front of it, and formed the abode of a large family. Within the small enclosure in front, the women were sitting winnowing or grinding grain, or rather pounding and rubbing it between two stones, in the same primitive manner practised of old, in the days of the patriarchs. We descended and pitched our tents in the middle of the valley; and my first business was to make some hot tea for Paul, roll him up in blankets and coverlets, and thus repeat the sweating operation that had done him so much good before. He was badly hurt, and very much frightened. The boxes had fallen upon him, and the butt of a heavy gun, which he held in his left hand, had struck with all the momentum of its fall against his breast. He thought his ribs were all broken; and when I persuaded him that they were as good as ever, he was sure there was some inward bruise, that would be followed by mortification; and, until we separated, especially when we had any hard work before us, he continued to complain of his hurts by this unlucky misadventure.

Having disposed of Paul, I strode out to examine more particularly the strange and interesting scene in the midst of which we were. The habitations in the crevices of the rocks, bad as they would be considered anywhere else, I found much more comfortable than most of the huts of the Egyptians on the banks of the Nile, or the rude tents of the Bedouins. It was not sheer poverty that drove these shepherds to take shelter in the rocks, for they were a tribe more than three hundred strong, and had flocks and herds such as are seldom seen among the Bedouins; and, they were far better clad, and had the appearance of being better fed than my worthy companions. Indeed, they were a different race from mine; and here, on the borders of the desert, I was again struck with what had so forcibly impressed me in crossing the borders of Ethiopia, the strong and marked difference of races in the East. The Bedouins among whom we were encamped were taller, stouter, and had longer faces than the El Alouins; and sometimes I thought I saw in them strong marks of the Jewish physiognomy. Above all, they were whiter; and this, with the circumstance of the women being less particular in keeping their faces covered, enabled me to pass an hour before dark with much satisfaction. The change from the swarthy and bearded visages of my travelling companions to the comparatively fair and feminine countenances of these pastoral women was striking and agreeable, and they looked more like home than anything I had seen for a long time, except the cows. I cannot help thinking what a delight it would have been to meet, in that distant land, one of those beautiful fairies, lovely in all the bewitching attractions of frocks, shoes, stockings, clean faces, &c., of whom I now meet dozens every day, with the calm indifference of a stoic, since, even in spite of bare feet and dirty faces, my heart warmed towards the women of the desert. I could have taken them all to my arms; but there was one among them who might be accounted beautiful even among the beautiful women of my own distant home. She was tall, and fairer than the most of her tribe; and, with the shepherd's crook in her hand, she was driving her flock of goats up the valley to the little enclosure before the door of her rocky dwelling. There was no colour in her cheek, but there was gentleness in her eye and delicacy in every feature; and, moving among us, she would be cherished and cared for as a tender plant, and served with all respect and love; but here she was a servant; her days were spent in guarding her flock, and at night her tender limbs were stretched upon the rude floor of her rocky dwelling. I thought of her much, and she made a deep impression upon me; but I was prevented from attempting to excite a correspondent feeling in her gentle bosom by the crushed state of Paul's ribs and my own inability to speak her language.

In the evening the men and women, or, to speak more pastorally, the shepherds and shepherdesses, came up one after another, with their crooks in their hands and their well-trained dogs, driving before them their several flocks. Some entered the little enclosures before their rude habitations; but many, destitute even of this miserable shelter, slept outside in the open valley, with their flocks around them, and their dogs by their side, presenting the same pastoral scenes which I had so often looked upon among the mountains of Greece ; but unhappily, here, as there, the shepherds and shepherdesses do not in the least resemble the Chloes and Phillises of poetic dreams. In the evening we seated ourselves round a large bowl of cracked corn and milk, so thick as to be taken with the hands, unaided by a spoon or ladle, followed by a smoking marmite of stewed kid; and, after this exercise of.hospitality to the strangers, some withdrew to their rocky dwellings, others laid themselves down around the fire, and I retired to my tent. All night I heard from every part of the valley the lowing of cattle, the bleating of lambs and goats, and the loud barking of the watch-dog.

Early in the morning, while the stars were yet in the sky, I was up and out of my tent. The flocks were still quiet, and the shepherds and shepherdesses were still sleeping with the bare earth for their bed, and the canopy of heaven their only covering. One after the other they awoke ; and, as the day was breaking, they were milking the cows and goats, and at broad daylight they were again moving, with their crooks and dogs, to the pasture-ground at the foot of the valley.

We set off at an early hour, Paul again on my horse and I on his dromedary; the patriarchal figure who had welcomed being the last to speed me on my way. At every step we were now putting the desert behind us, and advancing into a better country. We had spent our last night in the wilderness, and were now approaching the Holy Land; and no pilgrim ever approached its borders with a more joyous and thankful heart than mine.

At nine o'clock we came to another field of ruins, where the relics of an Arab village were mingled with those of a Roman city. The hands of the different builders and residents were visible among them; two square buildings of large Roman stone were still standing like towers, while all the rest had fallen to pieces, and the stones which once formed the foundations of palaces were now worked up into fences around holes in the rocks, the burrowing-places of the miserable Arabs.

And here, too, we saw the tokens of man's inhumanity to man; the thunder of war had been levelled against the wretched village, the habitations were in ruins, and the inhabitants whom the sword had spared were driven out and scattered no one knew whither. On the borders of the Holy Land we saw that Ibrahim Pacha, the great Egyptian soldier, whose terrible war-cry had been heard on the plains of Egypt and among the mountains of Greece, in the deserts of Syria and under the walls of Constantinople, was ruling the conquered country with the same rod of iron which his father swayed in Egypt. He had lately been to this frontier village with the brand of war, and burning and desolation had marked his path.

Soon after we came to an inhabited village, the first since we left Cairo. Like the ruined and deserted village we had left, it was a mingled exhibition of ancient greatness and modern poverty; and probably it was a continuation of the same ruined Roman city. A large fortress, forming part of a battlement, in good preservation, and fragments of a wall, formed the nucleus of a village, around which the inhabitants had built themselves huts. The rude artisans of the present day knew nothing of the works which their predecessors had built; and the only care they had for them was to pull them down, and with the fragments to build for themselves rude hovels and enclosures; and the sculptured stones which once formed the ornaments of Roman palaces were now worked up into fences around holes in the ground, the poor dwellings of the miserable Arabs.

The stranger from a more favoured land, in looking at the tenants of these wretched habitations, cannot help thanking his God that his lot is not like theirs. When I rode through, the whole population had crawled out of their holes and hiding-places, and were basking in the warmth of a summer's sun ; and I could not help seeing the kindly hand of a benefactor in giving to them what he has denied to us, a climate where, for the greater part of the year, they may spend their whole days in the open air, and even at night hardly need the shelter of a roof. This is probably the last of the cities which once stood on the great Roman road from Jerusalem to Akaba. While riding among the ruins, and stopping for a moment to talk with some of the Arabs, I saw on the left, in the side of a mountain, an open door like those of the tombs in Egypt; a simple orifice, without any ornament or sculpture. A woman was coming out with a child in her arms, a palpable indication that here, too, the abodes of the dead were used as habitations by the living. In Paul's disabled state I could ask no questions, and I did not stop to explore.

I cannot leave this interesting region without again expressing my regret at being able to add so little to the stock of useful knowledge. I can only testify to the existence of the ruins of cities which have been known only in the books of historians, and I can bear witness to the desolation that reigns in Edom. I can do more, not with the spirit of scoffing at prophecy, but of one who, in the strong evidence of the fulfilment of predictions uttered by the voice of inspiration, has seen and felt the evidences of the sure foundation of the Christian faith; and having regard to what I have already said in reference to the interpretation of the prophecy, " None shall pass through it for ever and ever," I can say that I have passed through the land of Idumea. My route was not open to the objection made to that of Burckhardt, the traveller who came nearest to passing through the land; for he entered from Damascus, on the east side of the Dead Sea, and struck the borders of Edom at such a point that literally he cannot be said to have passed through it. If the reader will look at the map accompanying these pages, be will see Burckhardt's route; and he will also see that mine is not open to the critical objections made to his; and that, beyond all peradventure., I did pass directly through the land of Idumea lengthwise, and crossing its northern and southern border; and, unless the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to passed on this same route, I am the only person, except the wandering Arabs, who ever did pass through the doomed and forbidden Edom, beholding with his own eyes the fearful fulfilment of the terrible denunciations of an offended God. And, though I did pass through and yet was not cut off, God forbid that I should count the prophecy a lie: no; even though I had been a confirmed skeptic, I had seen enough, in wandering with the Bible in my hand in that unpeopled desert, to tear up the very foundations of unbelief, and scatter its fragments to the winds. In my judgment, the words of the prophet are abundantly fulfilled in the destruction and desolation of the ancient Edom, and the complete and eternal breaking up of a great public highway; and it is neither necessary nor useful to extend the denunciation against a passing traveller.*

* Keith's celebrated treatise on the Prophecies has passed through fourteen editions, differing in some few particulars. In the sixth edition he says that Sir Frederick Henniker, in his notes dated from Mount Sinai, states that Seetzen, on a vessel of paper pasted against the wall, notifies his having penetrated the country in a direct line between the Dead Sea and Mount Sinai (through Idumea), a route never before accomplished. In a note to the same edition, the learned divine says, "Not even the cases of two individuals, Seetzen and Burckhardt, can be stated as at all opposed to the literal interpretation of the prophecies. Seetzen did indeed pass through Idumea, and Burckhardt traversed a considerable part of it; but the former met his death not long after the completion of his journey through Idumea (he died at Akaba, supposed to have been poisoned); the latter never recovered from the effects of the hardships and privations which he suffered there; and, without even commencing the exclusive design which he had in view, viz., to explore the interior of Africa, to which all his journeyings in Asia were merely intended as preparatory, he died at Cairo. Neither of them lived to return to Europe. "I will cut off from Mount Seir him that passeth out and him that returneth."' In the edition which I saw on the Nile, and which first turned my attention to the route through Idumea, I have no recollection of having seen any reference to 4 Seetzen. It may have been there, however, without my particularly noti- cing it; as, when I read it, I had but little expectation of being able myself to undertake the route.

Approach to Hebron.-A Sick Governor.-A Prescription at Random.- Hospitality of the Jews.-Finale with the Bedouins.-A storm.-A Calm after the Storm.-Venality of the A rabs.-Hebron.-A Coptic Christian.-Story of the Rabbi.-Professional Employment.

I HAD followed the wandering path of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage to the borders of the Promised Land; had tracked them in their miraculous passage across the Red Sea to the mountains of Sinai, through "the great and terrible wilderness that leadeth to Kadesh Barnea;" and among the stony mountains through which I was now journeying must have been the Kadesh, in the wilderness of Paran, from which Moses sent the ten chosen men to spy out the land of Canaan, who went "unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and bare it between two upon a staff; and though they brought of the pomegranates and figs, and said that surely the land, flowed with milk and honey, and these were the fruits thereof, yet brought up such an evil report of the land that it ate up the inhabitants thereof; and of the sons of Anak, the giants that dwelt therein, that the hearts of the Israelites sank within them; they murmured against Moses; and for their murmurings they were sent back into the wilderness ; and their carcasses, from twenty years old and upward, were doomed to fall in the wilderness, and the children of the murmurers to wander forty years before they should enter the Land of Promise." (Numbers xiii., 23.) I followed in the track of the spies; and, though I saw not the Vale of Eshcol with its grapes and pomegranates, neither did I see the sons of Anak, the giants which dwelt in the land. Indeed, the men of Anak could not have made me tum back from the Land of Promise. I was so heartily tired of the desert and my Bedouin companions, that I would have thrown myself into the arms of the giants themselves for relief. And though the mountains were as yet stony and barren, they were so green and beautiful by comparison with the desert I had left, that the conviction even of much greater dangers than I had yet encountered could hardly have driven me back. The Bedouins and the Fellahs about Hebron are regarded as the worst, most turbulent, and desperate Arabs under the government of the pacha; but as I met little parties of them coming out towards the frontier, they looked, if such a character can be conceived of Arabs,, like quiet, respectable, orderly citizens, when compared with my wild protectors; and they greeted us kindly and cordially as we passed them, and seemed to welcome us once more to the abodes of men.

As we approached Hebron the sheik became more and more civil and obsequious; and, before we came in sight of the city, he seemed to have some misgivings about entering it, and asked me to secure protection from the governor for that night for himself and men, which I did not hesitate to promise. I was glad to be approaching again a place under the established government of the pacha, where, capricious and despotic as was the exercise of power, I was sure of protection against the exactions of my Bedouins; and the reader may judge of the different degrees of security existing in these regions, from being told that I looked to the protection of a Turk as a guarantee against the rapacity of an Arab. After clambering over a rocky mountain, we came down into a valley, bounded on all sides, and apparently shut in by stony mountains. We followed the valley for more than an hour, finding the land good and well cultivated, with abundance of grapes, vines, and olives, as in the day when the spies sent by Moses entered it; and I can only wonder that, to a hardy and warlike people like the Israelites, after a long journey in the desert, the rich products of Hebron did not present more powerful considerations than the enmity of the men of Anak. We turned a point of the mountain to the left; and at the extreme end of the valley, on the side of a hill, bounding it, stands the. little city of Hebron, the ancient capital of the kingdom of David. But it bears no traces of the glory of its Jewish king. Thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, wars, pestilence, and famine, have passed over it; and a small town of white houses, compactly built on the side of the mountain, a mosque and two minarets, are all that mark the ancient city of Hebron.

As soon as we came in sight of the city the sheik dismounted; and, arranging his saddle, made Paul take back his dromedary and give me my horse; and placing me on his right hand, and drawing up the caravan with the order and precision of a troop of "regulars," we made a dashing entry. It was on Friday, the Mussulmans' Sabbath; and several hundred. women, in long white dresses, were sitting among the tombs of the Turkish burying-ground, outside the walls. We passed this burying-ground and a large square fountain connected with the ancient city, being regarded at this day as one of the works of Solomon; and leaving the baggage camels at the gate, with our horses and dromedaries on full gallop, we dashed through the narrow streets up to the door of the citadel, and in no very modest tone demanded an audience of the governor. The Turks and Arabs are proverbial for the indifference with which they look upon everything; and though I knew that a stranger coming from the desert was a rare object, and ought to excite some attention, I was amused and somewhat surprised at the extraordinary sensation our appearance created. Men stopped in the midst of their business; the lazy groups in the cafés sprang up, and workmen threw down their tools to run out and stare at us. I was surprised at this; but I afterward learned that, since the pacha had disarmed all Syria, and his subjects in that part of his dominions wore arms only by stealth, it was a strange and startling occurrence to see a party of lawless Bedouins coming in from the desert, armed to the teeth, and riding boldly up to the gates of the citadel.

The janizary at the door told us that, the governor was sick and asleep, and could not be disturbed. He was, however, a blundering fellow; and, after a few moments' parley, without giving his master any notice, he had us all standing over the sleeping invalid. The noise of our entering and the clang of our weapons roused him; and, staring round for a moment, leaning on his elbow, he fixed his eyes on the sheik, and with a voice the like of which can only issue from the bottom of a Turk's throat, thundered out, "Who are you ?" The sheik was for a moment confounded, and made no answer. "Who are you?" reiterated the governor, in a voice even louder than before. " I am Ibrahim Pacha's man," said the sheik. "I know that," answered the governor ; "none but Ibrahim Pacha's men dare come here; but have you no name?" "Sheik El Alouin," said the Arab, with the pride of a chief of Bedouins, and looking for a moment as if he stood in the desert at the head of his lawless tribe. "I conducted the pacha's caravan to Aka- ba;" and pointing to me, "I have conducted safe through all the bad Arabs Abdel Hasis, the friend of the pacha;" and then the governor, like a wild animal balked in his spring, turned his eyes from the sheik to me, as for the first time sensible of my presence. I showed him my firman, and told him that I did not mean to give him much trouble; that all I wanted was that he would send me on immediately to Bethlehem.

I had no wish to stop at Hebron, though the first city in the Holy Land, and hallowed by high and holy associations. The glory of the house of David had for ever departed. I was anxious to put an outpost between myself and the desert; and I had an indefinable longing to sleep my first night in the Holy Land in the city where our Saviour was born. But the governor positively refused to let rne go that afternoon; he said that it was a bad road, and that a Jew had been robbed a few days before on his way to Bethlehem; and again lying down, he silenced all objections with the eternal but hateful word, "Bokhara, bokhara," "to-morrow, to-morrow." Seeing there was no help for me, I made the best of it, and asked him to furnish me with a place to lodge in that night. He immediately gave orders to the janizary; and, as I was rising to leave, asked rne if I could not give him some medicine. I had some expectation and some fear of this, and would have avoided it if I could. I had often drugged and physicked a common Arab, but had never been called upon to prescribe for such pure porcelain of the earth as a governor. Nevertheless, I ventured my unskilful hand upon him; and having with all due gravity asked his symptoms, and felt his pulse, and made him stick out his tongue till he could hardly get it back again, I looked down his throat, and into his eyes, and covering him up, told him, with as much solemnity as if I was licensed to kill secundem artem, that I would send him some medicine, with the necessary directions for taking it. I was quite equal to the governor's case, for I saw that he had merely half killed himself with eating, and wanted clearing out, and I had with me emetics and cathartics that I well knew were capable of clearing out a whole regiment. In the course of the evening he sent his janizary to me; and, expecting to be off before daylight, I gave him a double emetic, with very precise directions for its use; and I afterward learned that, during its operation, his wrath had waxed warm against me, but in the morning he was so much better that he was ready to do me any kindness.

This over, I followed the janizary, who conducted me around outside the walls and through the burying-ground, where the women were scattered in groups among the tombs, to a distant and separate quarter of the city. I had no idea where he was taking me; but I had not advanced a horse's length in the narrow streets before their peculiar costume and physiognomies told me that I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen people, the persecuted and despised Israelites. They were removed from the Turkish quarter, as if the slightest contact with this once-favoured people would contaminate the bigoted follower of the Prophet. The governor, in the haughty spirit of a Turk, probably thought that the house of a Jew was a fit place for the repose of a Christian; and, following the janizary through a low range of narrow, dark, and filthy lanes, mountings and turnings, of which it is impossible to give any idea, with the whole Jewish population turning out to review us, and the sheik and all his attendants with their long swords clattering at my heels, I was conducted to the house of the chief Rabbi of Hebron.

If I had had my choice, these were the very persons I would have selected for my first acquaintances in the Holy Land. The descendants of Israel were fit persons to welcome a stranger to the ancient city of their fathers; and if they had been then sitting under the shadow of the throne of David, they could not have given me a warmer reception. It may be that, standing in the same relation to the Turks, alike the victims of persecution and contempt, they forgot the great cause which had torn us apart and made us a separate people, and felt only a sympathy for the object of mutual oppression. But, whatever was the cause, I shall never forget the kindness with which, as a stranger and Christian, I was received by the Jews in the capital of their ancient kingdom; and I look to my reception here and by the monks of Mount Sinai as among the few bright spots in my long and dreary pilgrimage through the desert.

I had seen enough of the desert, and of the wild spirit of freedom which men talk of without knowing, to make me cling more fondly than ever even to the lowest grade of civilization; and I could have sat down that night, provided it was under a roof, with the fiercest Mussulman, as in a family circle. Judge, then, of my satisfaction at being welcomed from the desert by the friendly and hospitable Israelites. Returned once more to the occupation of our busy, money-making life, floating again upon the stream of business, and carried away by the cares and anxieties which agitate every portion of our stirring community, it is refreshing to turn to the few brief moments when far other thoughts occupied my mind; and my speculating, scheming friends and fellow-citizens would have smiled to see me that night, with a Syrian dress and long beard, sitting cross-legged on a divan, with the chief rabbi of the Jews at Hebron, and half the synagogue around us, talking of lbraham, Isaac, and Jacob as of old and mutual friends.

With the few moments of daylight that remained, my Jewish friends conducted me around their miserable quarter. They had few lions to show me, but they took me to their synagogue, in which an old white-bearded Israelite was teaching some prattling children to read the laws of Moses in the language of their fathers; and when the sun was setting in the west, and the Muezzin from the top of the minaret was calling the sons of the faithful to evening prayers, the old rabbi and myself, a Jew and a Christian, were sitting on the roof of the little synagogue, looking out as by stealth upon the sacred mosque containing the hallowed ashes of their patriarch fathers. The Turk guards the door, and the Jew and the Christian are not permitted to enter; and the old rabbi was pointing to the diffierent parts of the mosque, where, as he told me, under tombs adorned with carpets of silk and gold, rested the mortal remains of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But to return to my Bedouin companions. The sheik and his whole suite had been following close at my heels, through the narrow lanes and streets, up to the very doors of the synagogue; and their swarthy figures, their clattering swords, and grim, visages prevented my seeing the face of many a Hebrew maiden. I expected a scene with them at parting, and I was not disappointed. Returning to the rabbi's, they followed me into the room, and, after a few preliminaries, I counted out the price of the camels, and laid down a bucksheesh for each separately. Not one of them touched it, but all looked at the money and at me alternately, without speaking a word (it was about ten times as much as I would have had to pay for the same services anywhere else); and the sheik seemed uncertain what to do. The janizary, however, whose presence I had almost forgotten, put himself forward as an actor in the scene; and, half drawing-his sword, and rattling it back into its scabbard, swore that it was a vile extortion; that the governor ought to know it; and that the firman of the pacha ought to protect a stranger. This brought the sheik to a decision; and taking up his own portion, and directing the rest to do the same, be expressed himself satisfied, and, without moving from his place, betook himself to smoking. It was evident, however, that he was not altogether content; and the janizary leaving us soon after, hardly had the rattling of his steel scabbard died away along the narrow passage, when they all turned upon me and gave voice to their dissatisfaction. I told them that I had paid them an enormous price, much more than the sheik had spoken of at Cairo; that I had brought with me more money than he had given me to understand would be necessary, and that it was all gone; that it was impossible to give them any more, for I had it not to give. In fact, I had paid them extravagantly, but far below their extravagant expectations. One would not have come for two hundred dollars, another for one hundred, &c.; and from the noise and clamour which they made here, I am well satisfied that, if the denouement had taken place in the desert, they would have searched for themselves whether there was not something left in the bottom of my trunk; and, from what happened afterward, I am very sure that they would have stripped me of my Turkish plumage; but now I was perfectly safe. I considered a Turkish governor good protection against the rapacity of a Bedouin Arab. I did not even fear their future vengeance, for I knew that they did not dare set their feet outside of any gate in Hebron, except that which opened to their own tents in the desert; they seemed to think that they had let me slip through their fingers; and when they pushed me to desperation, I told them that I did not care whether they were satisfied or not. As I rose the sheik fell; and when I began working myself into a passion at his exorbitant demand, he fell to begging a dollar or two in such moving terms that I could not resist. I continued yielding to his petty extortions, until, having ascertained the expense, I found that I had not a dollar more than enough to carry me to Jerusalem; and at this moment he consummated his impudence by begging my dress from off my back. The dress was of no great value; it had not cost much when new, and was travel-worn and frayed with hard usage; but it had a value in my eyes from the mere circumstance of having been worn upon this journey. I had given him nearly all my tent equipage, arms, ammunition, &c., and I had borne with all his twopenny extortions; but he urged and insisted, and begged and entreated with so much pertinacity, that my patience was exhausted, and I told him that I had borne with him long enough, and that he and his whole tribe might go to the d--l. This was not very courteous or dignified between treaty-making powers; but, considering that the immediate subject of negotiation was an old silk dress, and the parties were a single individual and a horde of Bedouins, it may perhaps be allowed to pass.

All the nice web of diplomacy was now broken; and all springing at the same moment to our feet, the whole group stood fronting me, glaring upon me like so many wild beasts. Now the long-smothered passion broke out, and, wild and clamorous as the Arabs always were, I had never seen them so perfectly furious. They raved like so many bedlamites; and the sheik, with torrents of vociferation and reproach, drew from his bosom the money he had accepted as his portion, dashed it on the floor, and swearing that no Frank should ever pass through his country again, poured out upon me a volley of bitter curses, and, grinding his teeth with rage and disappointment, rushed out of the room. I did not then know what he was saying; but I could judge, from the almost diabolical expression of his face, that he was not paying me very handsome compliments; and I felt a convulsive movement about the extreme end of my foot, and had advanced a step to help him down stairs, but his troop followed him close; and I do not know how it is, but when one, looks long at the ugly figure of a Bedouin, he is apt to forego a purpose,of vengeance. There is something particularly truculent and pacifying in their aspect.

A moment after he had gone I was exceedingly sorry for what had happened, particularly on account of his oath, that no European should ever pass through his country. I felt unhappy in the idea that, when I expected to be the pioneer in opening a new and interesting route, I had become the means of more effectually closing it. With a heavy heart I told Paul that I must have another interview; that the old dress must go, and anything else I had; and, in short, that I must have peace upon any terms. To dispose of this business without mixing it with other things; in about an hour the sheik returned with his brother, and, walking up to me and kissing my hand, told me that he had just heard of a robbery on the road to Jerusalem, and came to tell me of it; and, looking me in the face, added that, when he had got back to his tent, he felt unhappy at having left me in anger that he had been so used to sitting with me, that he could not remain away, &c., &c. I was not to be outdone; and, looking him back again in the face, I introduced him to my Jewish companions as my dearest friend, the chief of the tribe of El Alouins, who had protected me with his life through the dangers of the desert, and to whose bold arm they were indebted for the privilege they then enjoyed of seeing my face. The sheik looked at me as if he thought me in earnest, and himself entitled to all that I had said; and, satisfied so far, he sat down and smoked his pipe, and at parting disclosed the object of his visit, by asking me for a letter of recommendation to the consul at Cairo, and to the friends of whom I had before spoken as intending to follow me to Petra. Glad to patch up a peace, I told him to come to me early the next morning, and I would settle everything to his satisfaction. Before I was awake he was shaking me by the shoulder. I jumped up, and roused Paul; and now wishing to redeem my ungraciousness of the day before, I may say literally that " I parted my raiment among them," and gave away pretty much everything I had except my European clothes, completing my present with a double-barrelled gun, rather given to bursting, which I gave the sheik's brother. The sheik had changed his tone altogether, and now told me that he loved me as a brother; and, pointing to the brother at his side, that he loved me as well as him; and with great warmth assured me. that if I would turn Mussulman, and come and live with him' in his tents in the wilderness, he would give me for wives four of the most beautiful girls of his tribe. He did not confine his offers to me, but told me that he would receive, guard, and protect any of my friends as if they were of his own blood; and warming with his own generosity, or perhaps really feeling a certain degree of kindness, he asked me for some symbol or sign which should be perpetual between us. I had just sealed a letter for Mr. Gliddon, and a stick of sealing-wax and a lighted lamp were on the low table before me. I made a huge plaster with the sealing-wax on a sheet of coarse brown paper, and, stamping it with the stock of my pistol, chased and carved in the Turkish fashion, I gave him a seal with such a device as would have puzzled the professors of heraldry, telling him that, when any one came to him with this seal, he might know he was a friend of mine; and I added, that I would never send any one without plenty of money; so that any one who visits the Sheik El Alouin with my recommendation must expect to make up for my deficiencies. This over, we bade each other farewell, the sheik and the whole of his swarthy companions kissing me on both sides of my face. I looked after them as long as they continued in sight, listened till I heard the last clattering of their armour, and I never saw nor do I ever wish to see them again. I am sorry to entertain such a feeling towards any who have been the companions of my wanderings, and I hardly know another instance, from the English nobleman down to a muleteer or boatman, at parting with whom I have not felt a certain degree of regret. But when I parted with the Bedouin chief, though he kissed me on both cheeks, though he gave me his signet and has mine in return, and though four Arabian girls are. ready for me whenever I choose to put my trust in Mohammed and Sheik El Alouin, it was delightful to think that I should never see his face again.

One by one I had seen the many illusions of my waking dreams fade away; the gorgeous pictures of Oriental scenes melt into nothing; but I had still clung to the primitive simplicity and purity of the children of the desert, their temperance and abstinence, their contented poverty and contempt for luxuries, as approaching the true nobility of man's nature, and sustaining the poetry of the "land of the East." But my last dream was broken; and I never saw among the wanderers of the desert any traits of character or any habits of life which did not make me prize and value more the privileges of civilization. I had been more than a month alone with the Bedouins; and, to say nothing of their manners, excluding women from all companionship; dipping their fingers up to the knuckles in the same dish; eating sheep's insides, and sleeping under tents crawling with vermin engendered by their filthy habits, their temperance and frugality are from necessity, not from choice; for in their nature they are gluttonous, and will eat at any time till they are gorged of whatever they can get, and then lie down and sleep like brutes. I have sometimes amused myself with trying the variety of their appetites, and I never knew them refuse anything that could be eaten. Their stomach was literally their god, and the only chance of doing anything with them was by first making to it a grateful offering; instead of scorning luxuries, they would eat sugar as boys do sugarcandy; and I am very sure, if they could have got poundcake, they would never have eaten their own coarse bread.

One might expect to find these children of Nature free from the reproach of civilized life, the love of gold. But, fellow-citizens and fellow-worshippers of mammon, hold up your heads; this reproach must not be confined to you. It would have been a pleasing thing to me to find among the Arabs of the desert a slight similarity of taste and pursuits with the denizens of my native city; and in the early developments of a thirst for acquisition, I would have hailed the embryo spirit which might one day lead to stock and exchange boards, and laying out city lots around the base of Mount Sinai or the excavated city of Petra. But the savage was already far beyond the civilized man in his appetite for gold; and though brought up in a school of hungry and thirsty disciples, and knowing many in my native city who regard it as the one thing needful, I blush for myself, for my city, and for them, when I say that I never saw one among them who could be compared with the Bedouin. I never saw anything like the expression of face with which a Bedouin looks upon silver or gold. When he asks for bucksheesh and receives the glittering metal, his eyes sparkle with wild delight, his fingers clutch it with eager rapacity, and he skulks away like the miser, to count it over alone and hide it from all other eyes.

Hebron, one of the oldest cities of Canaan, is now a small Arab town, containing seven or eight hundred Arab families. The present inhabitants are the wildest, most lawless, and desperate people in the Holy Land; and it is a singular fact, that they sustain now the same mutinous character with the rebels of ancient days, who armed with David aaainst Saul, and with Absalom against David; in the late desperate revolution against Mohammed Aly, they were foremost in the strife, the first to draw the sword, and the last to return it to its scabbard. A petty Turk now wields the sceptre of the son of Jesse, and a small remnant of a despised and persecuted people still hover round the graves of their fathers; and though degraded and trampled under foot, from the. very dust in which they lie are still looking to the restoration of their temporal kingdom.

Accompanied by my Jewish friends, I visited the few spots which tradition marks as connected with scenes of Bible History. Passing through the bazars at the extreme end, and descending a few steps, we entered a vault containing a large monument, intended in memory of Abner, the greatest captain of his age, the favoured.and for a long time trusted officer of David, who, as the Jews told me, was killed in battle near Hebron, and his body brought here and buried. The great mosque, the walls of which, the Jews say, are built with the ruins of the temple of Solomon, according to the belief of the Mussulmans and the better authority of the Jews, covers the site of the Cave of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite; and within its sacred precincts are the supposed tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The doors were guarded with jealous care by the bigoted Mussulmans; and when, with my Jewish companion, I stopped for a moment to look up at the long marble staircase leading to the tomb of Abraham, a Turk came out from the bazars, and, with furious gesticulations, gathered a crowd around us; and a Jew and a Christian were driven with contempt from the sepulchre of the patriarch whom they both revered. A special firman from the pacha, or perhaps a large bribe to the governor, might have procured me a private admission; but death or the Koran would have been the penalty required by the bigoted people of Hebron.

On a rising ground a little beyond the mosque is a large fountain or reservoir, supported by marble pillars, where my companions told me that Sarah had washed the clothes of Abraham and Isaac. Leaving this, I went once more to the two pools outside the walls, and after examining them as the so called works of Solomon, I had seen all a stranger could see in Hebron.

I cannot leave this place, however, without a word or two more. I had spent a long evening with my Jewish friends. The old rabbi talked to me of their prospects and condition, and told me how he had left his country in Europe many years before, and come with his wife and children to lay their bones in the Holy Land. He was now eighty years old; and for thirty years, he said, he had lived with the sword suspended over his head; had been reviled, buffeted, and spit upon; and, though sometimes enjoying a respite from persecution, he never knew at what moment the bloodhounds might not be let loose upon him; that, since the country had been wrested from the sultan by the Pacha of Egypt, they had been comparatively safe and tranquil; though some idea may be formed of this comparative security from the fact that, during the revolution two years before, when Ibrahim Pacha, after having been pent up several months in Jerusalem, burst out like a roaring lion, the first place upon which his wrath descended was the unhappy Hebron; and while their guilty brethren were sometimes spared, the unhappy Jews, never offending but always suffering, received the full weight of Arab vengeance. Their houses were ransacked and plundered ; their gold and silver, and all things valuable, carried away; and their wives and daughters violated before their eyes by a brutal soldiery.

During the evening a fine portly man, in the flowing Syrian dress, came to pay me a visit. His complexion proclaimed him of Coptic origin, a descendant of the ancient lords of Egypt; his inkhorn in his sash told me that he was a writer, and his cordial salutation that he was a Christian. Living among Turks, Arabs, and Jews, he greeted me as if it were a rare thing to meet a professor of the same faith, and a believer in the same God and Saviour. He rearetted that he had been away when I arrived, and said that he ought by right to have had me at his house, as he was the only Christian in Hebron; and he, even where proselytes were wanted, would perhaps not have passed muster according to the strict canons of a Catholic church. My Christian friend, however, was more of a Jew than any of the descendants of Israel around me; for, amid professions of friendship and offers of service, he was not forgetting his own interests. The European and American governments had been appointing consular agents in many of the cities of Syria, and this office, under the government of the present pacha, exempted the bolder from certain taxes and impositions, to which the fellahs and rayahs were subject. America is known in the Holy Land by her missionaries, by the great ship (the Delaware) which, a year before, touched at the seaport towns, and by the respect and character which she confers on her consular agents. My Coptic Christian knew her on the last account, and told me, in confidence, that be thought America had need of a consular agent in Hebron, to protect her citizens travelling in that region. I was the first American traveller who had ever been there, and years may roll by before another follows me; but I fully concurred with him in the necessity of such an officer; and when he suggested that there was no better man than himself to hold it, I concurred with him again. Little did I think when, years before, I was seeking to climb the slippery rungs of the political ladder, that my political influence would ever be sought for the office of consul in the ancient capital of David; but so it was; and, without questioning him too closely about his faith in the principles and usages of the democratic party, the virtue of regular nominations, &c., taking his name written in Arabic, and giving him my card that he might know the name of his political benefactor, I promised to speak to the consul at Beyroot in his favour; and he left me with as much confidence as if he had his commission already in his pocket.

A more interesting business followed with the old rabbi, probably induced by what had just passed between the Christian and myself. He told me that he had lately had occasion to regret exceedingly the loss of a paper, which would now be of great use to him; that he was a Jew of Venice (I can vouch for it that he was no Shylock), and thirty years before had left his native city and come to Hebron with a regular passport; that for many years a European passport was no protection, and, indeed, it had been rather an object with him to lay aside the European character, and identify himself with the Asiatics; that, in consequence, he had been careless of his passport, and had lost it; but that now, since the conquest of Mohammed Aly and the government of Ibrahim Pacha, a European passport was respected, and saved its holder and his family from Turkish impositions. He mourned bitterly over his loss, not, as he said, for himself, for his days. were almost ended, and the storms of life could not break over his head more heavily than they had already done; but he mourned for his children and grandchildren, whom his carelessness had deprived of the evidence of their birthright and the protection of their country. I was interested in the old man's story, and particularly in his unobtrusive manner of .telling it; and drawing upon the reminiscences of my legal knowledge, I told him, that the loss of his passport had not deprived him of his right to the protection of his country, and that, if he could establish the fact of his being a native of Venice, he might still sit down under the wings of the double-headed eagle of Austria. I afterward went more into detail. Learning that there were in Hebron some of his very old acquaintances, who could testify to the fact of his nativity, I told him to bring them to me, and I would take their affidavits, and, on my arrival at Beyroot, would represent the matter to the Austrian consul there; and I thought that with such evidence the consul would not refuse him another passport. He thanked me very warmly, and the next morning early, while I was waiting, all ready for my departure, he brought in his witnesses. It, would have been difficult for the old man to produce deponents who could swear positively to his nativity; but of those whom he brought any one could look back farther than it is usually allowed to man. They were all over sixty, and their long white beards gave them a venerable appearance, which made me attach more importance to the proceedings than I intended. These hoary-headed men, I thought, could not speak with lying lips; and, taking my place in the middle of the floor, the witnesses seated themselves before me, and I prepared, with business-like formality, to examine them and reduce their examination to writing. Since I left home I had rarely thought of anything connected with my professional pursuits, and I could but smile as I found myself seated in the middle of a floor, surrounded by a crowd of Israelites in the old city of Hebron, for the first time in more than eighteen months resuming the path of my daily walks at home. I placed the scribe before me, and with a little of the keenness of the hunter returning to a track for some time lost, I examined the witnesses severally, and dictated in good set form the several requisite affidavits; and then reading them over distinctly, like a commissioner authorized to take acknowledgments under the act, &c., I swore the white-bearded old men upon the table of their law, a Hebrew copy of the Old Testament. I then dictated an affidavit for the rabbi himself, and was about administering the oath as before, when the old man rose, and taking the paper in his hand, and telling me to follow him, led the way through a range of narrow lanes and streets, and a crowd of people, to the little synagogue, where, opening the holy of holies, and laying his hand upon the sacred scroll, he read over the affidavit and solemnly swore to its truth. It did not need this additional act of solemnity to convince me of his truth; and when he gave me back the paper, and I saw the earnestness and deep interest depicted in the faces of the crowd that had followed us, I again resolved that I would use my best exertions to gladden once more the old man's heart before he died. I added to the several affidavits a brief statement of the circumstances under which they had been taken, and, putting the paper in my pocket, returned to the house of the rabbi; and I may as well mention here, that at Beyroot I called upon the Austrian consul, and before I left had the satisfaction of receiving from him the assurance that the passport should be made out forthwith, and delivered to the agent whom the old rabbi had named to me.

I had nothing now to detain me in Hebron; my mules and a kervash provided by the governor were waiting for me, and I bade farewell to my Jewish friends. I could not offer to pay the old rabbi with money for his hospitality, and would have satisfied my conscience by a compliment to the servants; but the son of the good old man, himself more than sixty, told Paul that they would all feel hurt if I urged it. I did not urge it; and the thought passed rapidly through my mind, that while yesterday the children of the desert would have stripped me of my last farthing, to-day a Jew would not take from me a para. I passed through the dark and narrow lanes of the Jewish Quarter, the inhabitants being all arranged before their houses ; and all along, even from the lips of maidens, a farewell salutation fell upon my ears. They did not know what I had done or what I proposed to do; but they knew that I intended a kindness to a father of their tribe, and they thanked me as if that kindness were already done. With the last of their kind greetings still lingering on my ears, I emerged from the Jewish Quarter, and it was with a warm feeling of thankfulness I felt, that if yesterday I had an Arab's curse, to-day I had a Jewish blessing.

An Arnaout.-The Pools of Solomon.-Bethlehem.--The Empress Helena.-A Clerical Exquisite.-Miraculous Localities.-A Boon Companion.-The Soldier's Sleep.-The Birthplace of Christ.-Worship in the Grotto.-Moslem Fidelity.

I HAD given away all my superfluous baggage, and commenced my journey in the Holy Land with three mules, one for myself, another for Paul, and the third for rny baggage. The muleteer, who was an uncommonly thriving-looking, well-dressed man, rode upon a donkey, and had an assistant, who accompanied on foot; but by far the most important person of our party was our kervash. He was a wild Arnaout, of a race that had for centuries furnished the bravest, fiercest, and most terrible soldiers in the army of the sultan; and he himself was one of the wildest of that wild tribe. He was now about forty, and had been a warrior from his youth upward, and battles and bloodshed were familiar to him as his food; he had fought under Ibrahim Pacha in his bloody campaign in Greece, and his rebellious war against the sultan; and having been wounded in the great battle in which the Egyptian soldiers defeated the grand vizier with the flower of the sultan's army, he had been removed from the regular service, and placed in an honourable position near the governor of Hebron. He was above the middle height, armed like the bristling porcupine, with pistols, a Damascus sabre, and a Turkish gun slung over his back, all which he carried as lightly and easily as a sportsman does his fowling-piece. His face was red, a burnt or baked red; his mustaches seemed to curl spontaneously, as if in contempt of dangers; and he rode his high-mettled horse as if he were himself a part of the noble animal. Altogether, he was the boldest, most dashing, and martial. looking figure I ever saw; and had a frankness and openness in his countenance which, after the dark and sinister looks of my Bedouins, made me take to him the moment I saw him. I do not think I made as favourable an impression upon him at first; for almost the first words he spoke to Paul after starting were to express his astonishment at my not drinking wine. The janizary must have told him this as he sat by me at supper, though I did not think he was watching me so closely. I soon succeeded, however, in establishing myself on a good footing with my kervash, and learned that his reading of the Koran did not forbid the winecup to the followers of the Prophet. He admitted that the sultan, as being of the blood of the Prophet, and the vicegerent of God upon earth, ought not to taste it; but as to the Pacha of Egypt, he drank good wine whenever he could get it, and this gave his subjects a right to drink as often as they pleased.

We were interrupted by an Arab, who told us that a party of soldiers had just caught two robbers. The kervash pricked up his ears at this, and, telling us that he would meet us at a place some distance farther on, he drove his heavy stirrups into his horse's sides, and, dashing up the hill at full gallop, was out of sight in an instant. I did not think it exactly the thing to leave us the first moment we heard of robbers; but I saw that his fiery impatience to be present at a scene could not be controlled; and I felt well assured that, if danger should arrive, we would soon find him at our side. Soon after we found him waiting with the party he had sought; the two robbers chained together, and, probably, long before this, they have expiated their crime with their lives. He told us that from Hebron to Jerusalem was the most unsafe road in the Holy Land; and that Ibrahim Pacha, who hated the Arabs in that vicinity, was determined to clear it of rebels and robbers if he cut off every man in the country.

About half an hour from Hebron we came to a valley, supposed to be the Vale of Eshcol, where the spies sent out by Moses found the grapes so heavy, that to carry one bunch it was necessary to suspend it on a pole. On the right we passed a ruined wall, by some called the Cave of Machpelalk or sepulchre of the patriarchs, but which the Jews at Hebron had called the House of Abraham.

We were on our way to Bethlehem. I had hired my mules for Jerusalem, expecting, merely to stop at Bethlehem and push on to Jerusalem that night. The road between these oldest of cities was simply a mule-path over rocky mountains, descending occasionally into rich valleys. We had already, on this our first journey in the Holy Land, found that the character given of it in the Bible is true at this day; and that the Land of Promise is not like the land of Egypt, watered by the dews of heaven, but by copious and abundant rains. Indeed, the rain was falling in torrents; our clothes were already dripping wet, but we did not mind it, for we were too full of thankfulness that continued sunshine and clear and unclouded skies had been our portion, when we most needed them, in the desert. The heavy fall of rain made the track slippery and precarious ; and it was four hours before we reached the celebrated reservoirs, known to modern travellers under the name of the Pools of Solomon. These large, strong, noble structures, in a land where every work of art has been hurried to destruction, remain now almost as perfect as when they were built. There are three of them, about four hundred and eighty, six hundred, and six hundred and sixty feet in length, and two hundred and eighty in breadth, and of different altitudes, the water from the first running into the second, and from the second into the third. At about a hundred yards' distance is the spring which supplies the reaervoirs, as the monks say, the sealed fountain referred to in Canticles IV., 12. The water from these reservoirs, is conveyed to Jerusalem by a small aqueduct, a round earthen pipe about ten inches in diameter, which follows all the sinuosities of the ground, being sometimes above the surface and sometimes under. It is easily broken; and while I was in Jerusalem an accident happened which entirely cut off the water from their pools.

There is every reason to believe that these pools have existed from the date assigned to them; and that this was the site of one of King Solomon's houses of pleasure, where he made himself "gardens, and orchards, and pools of water." The rain here ceased for a few moments, and enabled me to view them at my leisure; and as I walked along the bank, or stood on the margin, or descended the steps to the water's edge, it seemed almost the wild suggestion of a dream, to imagine that the wisest of men had looked into the same pool, had strolled along the same bank, and stood on the very same steps. It was like annihilating all the intervals of time and space. Solomon and all his glory are departed, and little could even his wisdom have foreseen that, long after he should be laid in the dust, and his kingdom had passed into the hands of strangers, a traveller from a land he never dreamed of would be looking upon his works, and murmuring to himself the words of the preacher, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

A little to the right of the pools, towards the region of the Dead Sea, is a very large grotto, supported by great pillars of the natural rock, perfectly dry, without petrifaction or stalactites; it is a perfect labyrinth within; and, as in many of the ancient catacombs, a man might easily lose himself for ever in its windings. It lies in the mountainous wilderness of Engaddi, and is supposed to be the Cave of Adullam, where David received the mutinous and discontented spirits of his days, and where, when Saul was in pursuit of him, he cut off the skirts of his garment, and suffered him to go away unharmed.

In an hour more we came in sight of Bethlehem, seated on an elevation, a confused and irregular pile of white buildings. The star of the east no longer hovers over it to mark the spot where the Saviour was born; and the mosque and the minaret proclaim the birthplace of Christ under the dominion of a people who reject and despise him. Heaps of ruins and houses blackened with smoke show that the hand of war has been there. Ibrahim Pacha, on his sortie from Jerusalem, and on his way to Hebron, had lingered on his path of destruction long enough to lay in ruins half the little city of Bethlehein. It is a singular fact, and exhibits a liberality elsewhere unknown in the history of the Turks or of the Mussulman religion, that the height of his indignation fell upon the Arabs. He spared the Christians for a reason that never before operated with a Turk-because they had not offended. He did, too, another liberal thing; saying that Christians and Mussulmans could not live together in unity, he drove out from Bethlehem the Arabs whom the sword had spared, and left the place consecrated by the birth of Christ in the exclusive possession of his followers. True, he stained this act of clemency or policy by arbitrarily taking away thirty Christian boys, whom he sent to work at the factories in Cairo ; and the simple-hearted parents, hearing that I had come from that city, asked me if I had seen their children.

It is a happy thing for the traveller in the Holy Land, that in almost all the principal places there is a Christian convent, whose doors are always open to him; and one of the largest and finest of these is in Bethlehem. Riding through the whole extent of the little town, greeted by Christians, who, however, with their white turbans and fierce mustaches and beards, had in my eyes a most unchristian appearance, and stopping for a moment on the high plain in front, overlooking the valley, and the sides of the hill all cultivated in terraces, we dismounted at the door of the convent.

Beginning my tour in the Holy Land at the birthplace of our Saviour, and about to follow him in his wanderings through Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, over the ground consecrated by his preaching, his sufferings, and miracles, to his crucifixion on Calvary, I must prepare my readers for a disappointment which I experienced myself. The immediate followers of our Saviour, who personally knew the localities which are now guarded and reverenced as holy places, engrossed by the more important business of their Master's mission, never marked these places for the knowledge of their descendants. Neglected for several centuries, many of them were probably entirely unknown, when a new spirit arose in the East, and the minds of the Christians were inflamed with a passion for collecting holy relics, and for making pilgrimages to the places consecrated by the acts and sufferings of our Redeemer and his disciples; and the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian empress, came as a crusader into the Holy Land, to search for and determine the then unknown localities. And the traveller is often astonished that, with so little to guide her, she was so successful; for she not only found all the holy places mentioned in the Bible, but many more; and the piety of Christians will never forget that it was through her indefatigable exertions the true cross was drawn from the bottom of a dark pit, and is now scattered in pieces all over the world, to gladden the hearts of believers. It may be that the earnest piety of the empress sometimes deceived her; but then she always covered a doubtful place with a handsomer monument, upon much the same principle that a jockey praises a bad horse and says nothing of a good one, because the bad one wants praising and the good one can speak for himself. Besides, the worthy em. press seemed to think that a little marble could not hurt a holy place, and a good deal might help to make holy what was not so without it; and so think most of the Christian pilgrims, for I have observed that they always kiss with more devotion the polished marble than the rude stone. But the Christian who goes animated by the fresh, I may almost say virgin feeling, awakened by the perusal of his Bible, expecting to see in Bethlehem the stable in which our Saviour was born and the manger in which he was cradled, or in Jerusalem the tomb hewn out of the rock wherein his crucified body was buried, will feel another added to the many grievous disappointments of a traveller, when he finds these hallowed objects, or at least what are pointed out as these, covered and enclosed with party-coloured marble, and bedecked with gaudy and inappropriate ornaments, as if intentionally and impiously to destroy all resemblance to the descriptions given in the sacred book. I had intended going on to Jerusalem that afternoon but the rain had retarded me so much, that, as soon as I saw the interior of the convent, I determined to remain all night. My muleteer insisted upon proceeding, as I had arranged with him when I engaged him; but my kervash silenced him by a rap over the back with the flat of his sword, and he went off on his donkey alone, leaving behind him his companion and his mules.

Entering by the small door of the convent, I heard in the distance the loud pealing of an organ and the solemn chant of the monks; the sound transported me at once to scenes that were familiar and almost homelike, the churches and cathedrals in Italy; and the appearance of one of the brothers, in the long brown habit of the Capuchins, with his shaved head and sandals on his feet, made me feel for the moment as if I were in Europe. The monks were then at prayers; and follwing him through the great church, down a marble staircase, and along a subterranean carridor, in five minutes after my arrival in Bethlehem I was standing on the spot where the Saviour of mankind was born.

The superior was a young man, not more than thirty, with a face and figure of uncommon beauty; tbough not unhealthy, his face was thin and pale, and his high, projecting forehead indicated more than talent. Genius flashed frorn his eyes, though, so far as I could judge from his conversation, he did not sustain the character his features and expression promised. He was not insensible to the advantages of his personal appearance. The rope around his waist, with the cross dangling at the end, was laid as neatly as a soldier's sword-belt; the top of his head was shaved, his beard combed, and the folds of his long coarse dress, his cowl, and the sandals on his feet, all were arranged with a precision that, under other circumstances, would have made him a Brummel. There was something, too, in the display of a small hand and long taper fingers that savoured more of the exquisite than of the recluse; but I ought not to have noted him too critically, for he was young, handsome, and gentlemanly, and fit for better things than the dronish life of a convent. I am inclined to believe, too, that he sometimes thought of other things than his breviary and his missal; at all events, be was not particularly familiar with Bible history; for, in answer to his question as to the route by which I had come, I told him that I had passed through the land of Idumea; and when I expected to see him open his eyes with wonder, I found that he did not know where the land of Idumea was. I remember that he got down a huge volume in Latin, written by saint somebody, and we pored over it together until our attention was drawn off by, something else, and we forgot what we were looking for. The walls of the convent contain all that is most interesting in Bethlehem; but outside the walls also are places consecrated in Bible history, and which the pilgrim to Bethlehem, in spite of doubts and confusion, will look upon with exceeding interest. Standing on the high table of ground in front of the convent, one of the monks pointed out the fountain where, when David was thirsting, his young men procured him water; and in the rear of the convent is a beautiful valley, having in the midst of it a ruined village, marking the place where the shepherds were watching their flocks at night when the angel came down and announced to them the birth of the Saviour. The scene was as pastoral as it had been eighteen hundred years before; the sun was going down, the shepherds were gathering their flocks together, and one could almost imagine that, with the approach of evening, they were preparing to receive another visiter from on high. In the distance beyond the valley is a long range of mountains enclosing the Dead Sea, and among them was the wilderness of Engaddi; and the monk pointed out a small opening as leading to the shores of the sea, at the precise spot where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

Mixed with these references to Bible history were idle legends of later days, connected with places to which the monk conducted me with as much solemnity as he had displayed when indicating the holy places of Scripture. In a grotto cut out of the rock is a chapel dedicated to the Virgin; and he told me that the mother of Christ had here concealed herself from Herod, and nursed the infant Jesus forty days, before she escaped into Egypt. Near this is another grotto, in which the Virgin, going to visit a neighbour with the child in her arms, took refuge from a shower, and her milk overflowed; and now, said the monk, there is a faith among all people, Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, that if a woman to whom Nature has denied the power of nursing her child comes to this grotto and prays before the altar, the fountain of life will be opened to her. Nor was the virtue of the place confined to those who should resort to it in person; for the monks had prayed for and had obtained a delegation of the Virgin's power, and a small portion of powder from the porous rock, swallowed in a little water, would be equally efficacious to women having faith. A huge chamber had been cut away in the back of the grotto by pilgrims, who had taken with them to their distant homes some of this beautiful provision for a want of nature, and Paul and myself each took a pilgrim's share.

It was dark when I returned to the convent, followed by my wild Amaout, whom, by-the-way, I have neglected for some time. I had told him on my arrival that I should not need his escort any farther; but he swore that he had his orders, and would not leave me until he saw me safe within the walls of Jerusalem; and so far be had been as good as his word; for, wherever I went, he was close at my heels, Allowing with invincible gravity, but never intruding, and the continual rattling of his steel scabbard being the only intimation I had of his presence. He was now following me through the stone court of the convent, into the room fitted up for the reception of pilgrims and travellers. I liked him, and I liked to hear the clanking of his sword at my heels; I would have staked my life upon his faith; and such confidence did he inspire by his bold, frank bearing, his manly, muscular figure, and his excellent weapons, that with a dozen such I would not have feared a whole tribe of Bedouins. In another country and a former age he would have been the beau ideal of a dashing cavalier, and an unflinching companion at the winecup or in the battle-field. I bore in mind our conversation in the morning about wine, and was determined that my liberal expounder of the Koran should not suffer from my abstinence. The superior, apologizing for the want of animal food, had told me to call for anything in the convent, and I used the privilege for the benefit of my thirsty Mussulman. The first thing I called for was wine; and, while supper was preparing, we were tasting its quality. He was no stickler for trifles, and accepted, without any difficulty, my apology for not being able to pledge him in full bumpers; and although most of this time Paul was away, and we could not exchange a word, the more he drank the better I liked him. It was so long since I had had with me a companion I liked, that I "cottoned" to him more and more, and resolved to make the most of him. I had a plate for him at table by the side of me; and when Paul, who did not altogether enter into my feelings, asked him if he would not rather eat alone, on the floor, he half drew his sword, and, driving it back into its scabbard, swore that he would eat with me if it was on the top of a minaret. We sat down to table, and I did the honours with an unsparing hand. He attempted for a moment the use of the knife and fork, but threw them down in disgust, and trusted to the means with which nature had provided him. The wine he knew how to manage, and for the rest he trusted to me; and I gave him bread, olives, fish, milk, honey, sugar, figs, grapes, dates, &c., &c., about as fast as I could hand them over, one after the other, all together, pellmell, and with such an utter contempt of all rules of science as would have made a Frenchman go mad. Paul by this time entered into the spirit of the thing; and when my bold guest held up for a moment, he stood by with a raw egg, the shell broken, and turning back his head, poured it down his throat. I followed with a plate of brown sugar, into which he thrust his hand to the knuckles, sent down a huge mouthful to sweeten the egg, and, nearly kicking over the table with an ejaculation about equivalent to our emphatic "enough," threw himself upon the divan. I wound him up with coffee and pipes; and when the superior came to me in the evening, to the scandal of the holy brotherhood, my wild companion was lying asleep, as drunk as a lord, upon the divan.

Several of the monks came in to see me; and all loved to talk of the world they had left. They were all Italians; and in the dreariness and desolation of Judea, in spite of monastic vows, their hearts turned to the sunny skies of their beautiful native land. They left me at an early hour; ana I trust the reader will forgive me, if, in the holy city of Bethlehem, I forgot for a moment the high and holy associations connected with the place, in the sense of enjoyment awakened by the extraordinary luxury of a pair of sheets, a luxury I had not known since my last night in Cairo. Tempted as I was to yield myself at once to the enjoyment, I paused a while to look at the sleeping figure of my kervash. He lay extended at full length on his back, with his arms folded across his breast, his right hand clutching the hilt of his sword, and his left the handle of a pistol; his broad chest rose and fell with his long and heavy respirations; and he slept like a man who expected to be roused by a cry to battle. His youth and manhood iad been spent in scenes of violence; his hands were red with blood; murder and rapine bad been familiar to him; and when his blood was up in battle, the shrieks and groans of the dying were music in his ears; yet he slept, and his sleep was calm and sound as that of childhood. I stood over him with the candle in my hand, and flashed the light across his face; his rugged features contracted, and his sword rattled in his convulsive grasp. I blew out the light and jumped into bed. Once during the night I was awakened by his noise; by the dim light of a small lamp that hung from the ceiling I saw him stumble to the table, seize a huge jar of water, and apply it to his lips; I saw him throw back his head, and heard his long, regular, and continued swallows; and when he had finished the jar he drew a long breath, went to the window, came to my bedside, looked at me for a moment, probably thinking what a deal of useless trouble I took in pulling off my clothes; and, throwing himself upon the divan, in a few moments he was again asleep.

In the morning immediately after breakfast one of the monks came to conduct me through the convent. The building covered a great extent of ground; and for strength and solidity, as well as size, resembled a fortress. It was built by the Empress Helena, over the spot consecrated as the birthplace of our Saviour, and was intended, so far as human handiwork could do so, to honour and reverence the holy spot. The insufficient means of the pious empress, however, or some other cause, prevented its being finished according to the plan she had designed; and the charity of subsequent Christians has barely sufficed to keep it from falling to ruin. The great church would have been a rnagnificent building if finished according to her plan; but now, in its incomplete state, it is a melancholy monument of defeated ambition. On each side is a range of noble columns, supporting a frieze of wood, which the monk told me was cedar from Lebanon, and still remaining almost as sound as the solid stone. The whole building is divided among the Catholics, Greeks, and Armenian's, the three great bodies who represent, or rather misrepresent, Christianity in the East. Each has its limits, beyond which the others must not pass; and again there are certain parts which are common to all. The Turkish government exercises a control over it; and, taking advantage of the dissensions between these different professors, sells the privileges to the highest bidder. In the great church the Greeks, happening to have been the richest, are the largest proprietors, to the great scandal of the Catholics, who hate the Greeks with a most orthodox virulence.

The Grotto of the Nativity is under the floor of the church; the Greeks having an entrance directly by its side, and the Catholics by a longer and more distant passage. I descended by the latter. My Arnaout was close to my heels, grave and sober as if he had never known the taste of wine, and following with a respect that might have satisfied the most bigoted Christian. Indeed, it was a thing to be noted, with what respect and reverence this wild and lawless Mussulman regarded the holy places, consecrated by a religion he believed false and the worship of a people he despised. Nevertheless, Paul was scandalized at the eyes of an unbeliever being permitted to see the holy places; and stopped at the top of the staircase, to urge upon me the propriety of making him stay behind. The kervash seemed to understand what he was saying, and to intimate by his looks that it would not be an easy matter to tum him back. I did not think, however, that the feet of a Mussulman would be in themselves a profanation, and the monk making no objection, I silenced Paul's.

Passing through the chapel of the Catholic convent, where the monks were teaching the children of the Arab Cbristians the principles of the Catholic faith, I was conclucted to the room of the superior, where, among other relics which I now forget, be showed me the withered hand of an infant, preserved among the treasures of the convent, as having belonged to one of the innocents massacred by the order of Herod. Near the door of the chapel we descended a flight of stone steps, and then a second, until we came to an excavation in the solid rock, and, following a passage to the right, came to a little chapel, with an altar, dedicated to Joseph, the husband of Mary. At the end of this passage was a large chamber, called the school of St. Jerome, where that great Catholic saint wrote his version of the Bible, the celebrated Vulgate. Passing out through the door of this chamber, on the right is the tomb of the saint; and directly opposite are the tombs of Santa Paula and another whose name I have forgotten; very good ladies, no doubt; but who they were, or why they were buried in that holy place, I did not understand; although they must have died in the odour of sanctity, as their bodies have since been removed to the papal city. Returning into the first passage, and advancing a few steps, on the left is an altar over the pit into which the bodies of the murdered innocents were thrown. Under the altar is a recess with an iron grating, opening into the pit, or rather vault below. By the light of a torch I gazed long and earnestly within, but could see nothing that gave confirmation to the story. Over the altar was a rude painting, representing the massacred infants held up by their heels, with their throats cut, and their bowels gushing out; the anguish of the mothers, and all the necessary and fearful accompaniments of such a scene. A few paces farther is an altar, over the spot where Joseph sat during the birth of the divine infant, meditating upon the great event; and farther on, to the left, is the entrance to the Grotto of the Nativity.

It was the hour assigned for the use of the Armenians, and the monks were all there chanting the praises of the Redeemer. The chamber of the grotto is thirty-seven feet long and eleven wide, with a marble floor and walls, the latter adorned with tapestry and paintings. Directly in front of the door by which we entered, at the other end of the grotto, is a semicircular recess, lined and floored with small blocks of marble; and in the centre a single star, with.the inscription, " Hie natus est Jesus Christus de Virga," here Christ was born of the Virgin. The star in the east which went before the wise men, says the tradition, rested over this spot; and fourteen lamps, the gifts of Christian princes, burning night and day, constantly illumine the birthplace of salvation to a ruined world. On the right, descending two steps, is a chamber paved and lined with marble, having at one end a block polished and hollowed out; and this is the manger in which our Saviour was laid. Over the altar is a picture representing a stable with horses and cattle, and behind a little iron wickerwork are five lumps constantly burning. Directly opposite is the altar of the magi, where the three kings sat when they came to offer presents to the Son of God. Over it is a picture representing them in the act of making their offerings; and one of the kings is represented as an Ethiopian.

All this has but little conformity with the rude scene of the stable and the manger as described in the Bible; and, in all probability, most of the holy places pointed out in Bethlehem, and adorned and transformed by the false but well-meaning piety of Christians, have no better claim, to authenticity than the credulity of a weak and pious old woman. But amid all the doubts that present themselves when we stop to ponder and reflect, it is sufficient for our enjoyment of these scenes to know that we are in "Beth- lehem. of Judea," consecrated by the greatest event in the history of the world, the birth of the Son of God. We know that, within the atmosphere we breathe, Christ first appeared on earth; that one of the stars of heaven left its place among the constellations, and hovered over the spot on which we stand; that the kings of the earth came here to offer gifts to the holy child; and, beholding multitudes of pilgrims from far-distant lands constantly prostrating themselves before the altar, in the earnestness and sincerity of undoubting faith, we give ourselves,up to the illusion, if illusion it be, and are ready to believe that we are indeed standing where Christ was born.

My Arnaout behaved remarkably well, though once he broke the stillness of the grotto by an involuntary exclamation; his loud harsh voice, and the rattling of his armour, startled for a moment the monks and praying pilgrims. On coming out, I told him that the Christians were much more liberal than the Mussulmans; for we had permitted him to see all the holy places in the church, while I had been violently driven from the door of the mosque in Hebron. He railed at the ignorance and prejudices of his countrymen, and swore, if I would go back to Hebron, he would carry me through the mosque on the point of his sword. I did not much relish this method of entering a mosque, but took it, as it was meant, for a warm expression of his willingness to serve me; and we returned to the apartment of the superior to bid him farewell. The superior accompanied us to the door of the convent; and, without meaning to be scandalous, or insinuate that there was anything wrong in it, although he was a young and handsome man, I left him talking with a woman.