these hills. He was here with two boys, younger than himself; and when night came on, they were lost, as I was last night. Knowing the danger from jackals and dogs, he took his party into an old sepulchre cut in the hillside. There he built up the doorway with stones, and fought off the wild troop the whole night. The next morning the ground was trod hard and bare by the hundreds of animals that had besieged him. The people then dressed the brave fellow in man's clothes, and gave him a gun and named him the "Boy Sheikh," in compliment to his gallantry. He was only twelve years old.

5 P. M.

We stopped for a half hour to witness a Mohammedan funeral; that of a man. The body was brought out of the village, divested of nearly all clothing, and lying upon a board covered with a sheet. At the grave, women washed it and then stuffed cotton in the eyes, ears, nose and mouth of the corpse, during which time the men were digging the grave. The body was almost hurled into the shallow pit, not the least ceremony being observed, and no one seeming in the least affected by the same. After filling the grave and laying heavy stones in it as a protection against jackals, dogs and hyenas, the men yelled three times, Allah hu akbar (God is greatest); and returned to the village, while we came away. This appeared to me the most inhuman scene I ever witnessed.

All the English, French and American parties we meet, express surprise at the sparseness of our servants and following. They wonder particularly at our not employing one or more dragomans. We tell them that we came to this country to direct, not to be directed. Free men at home, we could little brook the tyranny to which parties are subjected who put themselves into the power of the professional dragomans. I saw one, to-day, the conventional type of his calling. Dressed in silk trowsers, with a bright kafiah wound, turban-like, round his head, and a dandy switch in his hand, he looked the Palestine fop, but he was, in fact, the Palestine tyrant. Taking the money of his employers in advance, he orders them about with a nonchalance that would be admirable were it not insufferable. We can call no such man master. Their affected vigilance, and frightful stories of the dangers of the way, are only parts of the system to persuade their employers of the necessity of their enormous guards. One gentleman whom we met yesterday, had nine mules, five horses, and

more than thirty servants! Poor young man. But little will he see of the Holy Land.

The only person in our party who presents any appearance of romance is our muleteer or moukar. He has a camel's-hair sash around him stuffed with knives and pistols. His Syrian jacket of scarlet cloth is elaborately embroidered behind like a priest's. Yet his face is villainous in feature, almost wolfish in repulsiveness, with a nose like a vulture's beak, a cunning sensual mouth, small, glittering black eyes, hid under shaggy brows that almost meet over his nose, and teeth white and sharp. His three assistants are great, stupidlooking natives, dressed in flaunting red jackets and greasy turbans, but barefoot.

We have had, to-day, some most interesting conversation with a group of Israelites who are keeping their Sabbath quietly by the roadside. Would that such intelligent men could but comprehend that the Messiah is come, and has already builded that other Jerusalem, that our foot-weary race so much need to reach!

How can we Americans look with complacency upon such systems of religious faith as papists practise here? Here, for instance, is a community of men and women who, if they simply read, circulate or defend any book named in the forbidden Index, are excluded from church-fellowship here, and from heavenly glory hereafter. I could no more summon up holy feelings while witnessing their stilted forms here, than when I saw the Shakers, at Lebanon, New York, or the Moslems, at Joppa.

САМР, 7 Р. М.

At the dinner we have just had, I got our cook to make a dish of real, old-fashioned hash. I told him I wanted hotel hash, and showed him how to make it. He did it up wonderfully. It even had hair in it, as we get it in New York, at restaurant. The next party that hires our cook may thank me for teaching him the new dish. He says he never heard of it before. He promises, after this, to have it every day or two. It is funny to hear him pronounce the name of it. He calls it ohtelarsh—and that is the way he will teach it to other cooks.

CHAPTER VII.

A SABBATH REST IN SIGHT OF JERUSALEM.-THE SEVENTH DAY.

CAMP, Sunday, March 21st, 4 A. M.

Our morning hour is filled with joy. A Sabbath in Palestine; oh, how delightful! I awoke early and was not long in getting out to enjoy the early morning and the bright-hued flowers. But early as I was, the divine spirit of spring had preceded me, and I felt the poet's words to be true:

"I got me flowers to strew Thy way,

I got me boughs off many a tree,
But THOU wast up by break of day,

And brought THY sweets along with Thee.'

The murmuring bees are pursuing their voluptuous toil. The dew on the rocks bring out the singular pink streaks that we shall see upon the rocks around Stephen's Gate at Jerusalem and elsewhere. I shall never think of this land without associating it with the anemones, and the hills south-west of Jerusalem, and the arrowy Jordan that gleams far in the north-east yonder.

11 A. M.

To-day I have finished learning one hundred Arabic words. Kamar means moon; jabal, mountain; kinzeer, pig; harath, plow; arnab, rabbit; zabeeb, raisins; sakker, rock; habbul, rope; sarje, saddle ; hareer, silk; hite, string; soccar, sugar; rard, thunder; tabak, tobacco; sharb, young; ams, yesterday; kahikah, truth; zoor, lie; tar, fly; kareeb, to-morrow. The Arabic language is the grandchild of the Hebrew, for Chaldee and Syriac are children of the Hebrew language; and Arabic is the child of the Chaldee and Syriac.

Every day that I practice on this language I get it lower and lower down in my throat. At first I spoke it as we do the English language, in the upper part of my throat and used my tongue, teeth and lips. But I soon learned that you can't talk Arabic that way. A man whose tongue was cut out by Emir Besheer, could talk just

as well as ever with his stump. When one of these Arabs gets bronchitis it dont hurt him any as an orator; but if he has consumption he goes speechless. Ventriloquism is nothing in Arabic; everybody does it. They have many words for the same thing. For the word snake they have eighty-two words in Arabic; for sword they have one hundred and thirty words.

THE WAY THE WORDS OF THE LORD'S PRAYER ARE PRONOUNCED.

EL SALAT EL BABBANIET.

Abana el lazi fee el samawat, layat kudus ismack. La taty malakoutack, la takoun masheyatack. Kamma fee el samawat, kazalick ala el ard. Khubzena kafafina atina el youm, wa agfour lina zinoubena kamma nuhn, ayedan, la mouznibena elayua. Wala t'dakhelna fee tajaribin, lakin naijina min ishshurrer. La in, lack el moulk, w'al kowat, w'al majd, illa el abad. Amin.

We have spent the forenoon very quietly in and near the tents. I took Hassan with me over to a village not far off and asked the people a lot of questions. First, I was introduced to the sheikh, who had on a clean shirt. He kissed my hand. I asked him how he was. He answered (in Arabic), Thanks be to God. I asked him the same question again. He answered, God is great. I asked him the third time the same question. He answered, God is bountiful. And that's as near as he came to answering it. Then he asked me for Backsheesh. The valley outside of the village was enameled with flowers; but oh, the horrid appearance of the interior. It is too bad for human creatures to live this way. It really would seem as if this profusion of flowers might teach the people some grace; but it does not.

While I was sauntering through the village, I saw a dog engaged in licking the sores of a poor child that lay in the sun, with nobody to keep it off. The sight disgusted me, but it called to memory the affecting story of Lazarus, as told by our Saviour in Luke xvi., where "dogs came and licked his sores." This is one of the first stories my mother ever told me. I also saw some children munching bread at the corner of a house, one of them, a little girl, brokennosed and ugly enough. As they stopped to look at me, and ask for Backsheesh, some dogs rushed in and snatched the bread from their hands. Then I thought of the passage in Mark vii. 27: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it unto the dogs."

From our tent door we see, a mile below us, the road that runs across the plain of Rephaim from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and the aqueduct that used to supply the temple with water from Solomon's Pools. I imagine the wise men coming from the east across yonder plain, with their gifts, "gold, frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew ii. 11.) They passed along this very road. The Catholics pretend to know the names of those three men: Jasper, Melchoir and Balthazar, and probably they have their photographs of them, or pretend to have. But the Greek Christians also know their names, and give them quite differently, Galgalatha, Malgalathe and Saraphie. I like this better. The Jews also know their names just as well, and they give them: Appelius, Amerrius and Damasus. Be they what they may, yonder is the road they traveled over on their way to Bethlehem.

Josephus tells of the young men who used to accompany King Solomon, as he used to ride along this way. The young men had their hair powdered with gold dust.

NOON.

It is curious to think as the sun comes on the meridian here, and so makes it noon, that in New York it is not yet five o'clock in the morning. At Rome, people are just going to church, to morning service, while at Pekin, they may be going to evening service. As the sun moves westward, he sets the church bells ringing for Jesus, somewhere every minute in the twenty-four hours. That is grand. It is about midnight now at San Francisco, in California, yet I hear the church bells sounding for noon at Bethlehem, on my right hand, and Jerusalem on my left.

A boy brought me a locust and a scorpion preserved in arrack in a vial, and I have been reading all Bible passages where those two insects are mentioned. The locust has some curious black marks on the back of its wings, which Hassan says are Hebrew words that mean, "There is only one God. He overcomes the mighty, and the locusts are part of His armies, which he sends against sinners." That's what he says, but I can't see anything there but some square figures. The locusts were here about three years ago. They are an awful calamity. A full-grown locust looks like a boy soldier mounted on a pony. And in fact the book of Revelations ix. 7, has it: "The shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared for battle.” The color of the locust is green, all but part of his head, which is yellow. It has two upper wings, green and leathery, with a white spot on each. These wings are extended, while flying, like the great

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