Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published November, 1908 To HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER MASTER OF MERWICK PROFESSOR OF ART AND ARCHÆOLOGY WHO WAS A FRIEND TO THIS JOURNEY THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND THE AUTHOR...

For a long time, in the hopefulness and confidence of youth, I dreamed of going to Palestine. But that dream was denied, for want of money and leisure. Then, for a long time, in the hardening strain of early manhood, I was afraid to go to Palestine, lest the journey should prove a disenchantment, and some of my religious beliefs be rudely shaken, perhaps destroyed. But that fear was removed by a little voyage to the gates of death, where it was made clear to me that no belief is worth keeping un

  Who would not go to Palestine? To look upon that little stage where the drama of humanity has centred in such unforgetable scenes; to trace the rugged paths and ancient highways along which so many heroic and pathetic figures have travelled; above all, to see with the eyes as well as with the heart "Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross"— for the sake of these things who would not travel

  You understand that what we had before us in this first stage of our journey was a very simple proposition. The distance from Jaffa to Jerusalem is fifty miles by railway and forty miles by carriage-road. Thousands of pilgrims and tourists travel it every year; and most of them now go by the train in about four hours, with advertised stoppages of three minutes at Lydda, eight minutes at Ramleh, ten minutes at Sejed, and unadvertised delays at the convenience of the engine. But we did not wish

  Out of the medley of our first impressions of Jerusalem one fact emerges like an island from the sea: it is a city that is lifted up. No river; no harbour; no encircling groves and gardens; a site so lonely and so lofty that it breathes the very spirit of isolation and proud self-reliance. "Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north The city of the great King." Thus sang the Hebrew poet; and his song, like all true poetry, has the accuracy of th

  Mizpah of Benjamin stands to the northwest: the sharpest peak in the Judean range, crowned with a ragged, dusty village and a small mosque. We rode to it one morning over the steepest, stoniest bridle-paths that we had ever seen. The country was bleak and rocky, a skeleton of landscape; but between the stones and down the precipitous hillsides and along the hot gorges, the incredible multitude of spring flowers were abloom. It was a stiff scramble up the conical hill to the little hamlet at th

  A sparkling morning followed a showery night, and all the little red and white and yellow flowers were lifting glad faces to the sun as we took the highroad to Bethlehem. Leaving the Jaffa Gate on the left, we crossed the head of the deep Valley of Hinnom, below the dirty Pool of the Sultan, and rode up the hill on the opposite side of the vale. There was much rubbish and filth around us, and the sight of the Ophthalmic Hospital of the English Knights of Saint John, standing in the beauty of c

There is an upward impulse in man that draws him to a hilltop for his place of devotion and sanctuary of ascending thoughts. The purer air, the wider outlook, the sense of freedom and elevation, help to release his spirit from the weight that bends his forehead to the dust. A traveller in Palestine, if he had wings, could easily pass through the whole land by short flights from the summit of one holy hill to another, and look down from a series of mountain-altars upon the wrinkled map of sacred

In the memory of every visitor to Jerusalem the excursion to Jericho is a vivid point. For this is the one trip which everybody makes, and it is a convention of the route to regard it as a perilous and exciting adventure. Perhaps it is partly this flavour of a not-too-dangerous danger, this shivering charm of a hazard to be taken without too much risk, that attracts the average tourist, prudently romantic, to make the journey to the lowest inhabited town in the world. Jericho has always had an i

I never heard of Jerash until my friend the Archæologist told me about it, one night when we were sitting beside my study fire at Avalon. "It is the site of the old city of Gerasa," said he. "The most satisfactory ruins that I have ever seen." There was something suggestive and potent in that phrase, "satisfactory ruins." For what is it that weaves the charm of ruins? What do we ask of them to make their magic complete and satisfying? There must be an element of picturesqueness, certainly, to ta

  Look down from these tranquil heights of Jebel Osha, above the noiseful, squalid little city of Es Salt, and you see what Moses saw when he climbed Mount Pisgah and looked upon the Promised Land which he was never to enter. "Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er, Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, Should fright us from the shore." Pisgah was probably a few miles south of the place where we are now standing, but the main features of the view are the same. T

Going from Samaria into Galilee is like passing from the Old Testament into the New. There is indeed little difference in the outward landscape: the same bare lines of rolling mountains, green and gray near by, blue or purple far away; the same fertile valleys and emerald plains embosomed among the hills; the same orchards of olive-trees, not quite so large, nor so many, but always softening and shading the outlook with their touches of silvery verdure. It is the spirit of the landscape that cha

Naphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free highland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep mountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between. "Naphtali is a hind let loose," said the old song of the Sons of Jacob (Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our way northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people dwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns on sharp pinnacles, and clim

You may go to Damascus now by rail, if you like, and have a choice between two rival routes, one under government ownership, the other built and managed by a corporation. But to us encamped among the silvery olives at Bâniyâs, beside the springs of Jordan, it seemed a happy circumstance that both railways were so far away that it would have taken longer to reach them than to ride our horses straight into the city. We were delivered from the modern folly of trying to save time by travelling in a