Asylum for fifty-five Syrian orphan boys, who, after their studies are completed, are to be taught trades.

Passing the Roman Catholic Convent, we stepped in a moment to hear the music. It was the Stabat Mater. Never before was I so impressed with the inimitable words of the old Latin hymn.

BLATTNERS' HOTEL, 8 P. M.

We have had dinner, and the Governor of Joppa dined with us. Also, Mr. Rolla Floyd, an American gentleman, who has lived here for several years. The Governor is a good looking man, about fifty years old, very pleasant. He kissed me; as men kiss one another in this country. He talked in French. Mr. Floyd has been collecting bones for the English brig in the harbor. All around Joppa, he says, the ground is white with bones of cattle, camels, horses and dead men, and sometimes he can hardly tell them apart. Mr. Floyd has a wagon and team, and is the first man who has taken a wagon to Jerusalem for many hundred years.

Our dinner, with Noureddin Effendi, Governor of Joppa, was very agreeable to us all. Of all the things we had brought from home for him, I think he prized the photographs of the Presidents most. The Governor told me many things in answer to my questions, which surprised me. Amongst others, he said he had never known a regular Bedouin, or desert Arab, who could read or write. Indeed, they are taught to believe it is a disgrace to have any book learning. He tells me that every tribe in the desert has a peculiar mark with which they designate their camels. When he asked me our plans of travel, in this country, I answered we had resolved to shape our own course as independent Americans, little heeding advice; to go where we will, and to undertake whatever we think expedient. He laughed heartily at this, but says it is the right way to travel in the East. He thinks we shall make a successful tour, and offers us any advice or assistance we may need. This is the right time of year for our journey, and there is not the least danger in visiting any place west of the Jordan. I knew it was improper to ask any Turkish gentleman any questions about his family, but I did venture to inquire of the Effendi how many children he had. He sighed, smiled, made a queer grimace, in French style, and said, none, for he had never been married!

The Governor told me that the yearly taxes in this part of the Holy Land are one piastre (four cents) for every she-goat; ten for a donkey; twenty for a horse or mule, and thirty for a camel.

I showed him a piece of fossil salt I had bought of an Arab, and he says, when I go to the Dead Sea, I shall find a mountain of it, seven miles long, and that Lot's wife is still standing there.

In my intercourse with the natives, he advises me never to joke with them, and never to seem afraid of them. I must always pay them a just price for what I purchase, and no more, and should never appear very rich or very poor, while dealing with them. He is full of frankness and good will to us. Governor Noureddin is a good man. When the "Adams' Colony" came here in 1865, the Governor so ordered matters at the Custom House as to save them five hundred dollars in duties. He says that an American who travels much with Arabs, must sleep on the ground, drink only water, sit cross-legged and use the short stirrup to the saddle, which at first is very hard to learn. He seemed pleased when I told him I had seen his name, Noureddin, in the Arabian Nights Entertainment. It is an established custom in the Holy Land, from the days of Abraham, never to appear before a superior without a gift, and I had read the story of Noureddin, who was Turkish Sultan in 1163. The name is pronounced Nou-red-deen drawing out the last syllable.

BLATTNERS' HOTEL, 11 P. M.

A few minutes upon the flat house-top before I retire to bed. The stars are scintillating in the calm brilliancy of an Eastern night. The deep silence of this Oriental town is broken only by the sea, which comes booming in low, hollow sounds, from the shore "Along the many-sounding ocean tide." And now with heartfelt thanksgiving to God and a prayer for dear friends many thousand miles away, I go to rest. Should I live upon this anniversary day, how affecting it will be to remember that at such an hour, I (like Peter, in Acts xi. 5) was "in Joppa praying."

WHEN I woke up this morning, I heard a baby crying, a rooster crowing, a dog barking, and a lamb bleating; all in plain American. So, if ever I get tired of hearing Arabic talked, I shall always have these old-fashioned noises to fall back upon.

I have learned these ten words of Arabic already: bate means a house; bint means a girl; kitarb, a book; libbarn, milk; tyeeb, good; narm, yes; lar, no; hassarn, a horse; yad, a hand; barood, powder; sin, a tooth. This is a beginning.

As soon as I got up I went out to the bazaars or markets, and bought me a tarboush. They called it a fez in Smyrna. The Orientals generally are laying aside the old-fashioned turbans, and wearing the tarboush in place of it. I gave five francs ($1) for the tarboush, and two francs more for the silk tassels, which they weighed and sold me by weight. The tarboush is made of felt. It is thick and heavy, and lasts a great while. It is the same red cap the New York Zouaves wear. I asked the merchant if he knew the name of the Turkish Sultan, that is the President of this country. He said he didn't. I told him the name was Abd-el Asiz. He looked surprised, but said it made no difference to him. He seemed not to care enough to talk about it.

After buying the tarboush, I went to see Mr. Rolla Floyd. The atmosphere was delicious, the sky cloudless. As I passed the Jerusalem gate, as it is called, I noticed its huge old valves and mighty hinges.

Mr. Floyd lives at the American settlement, half a mile north of Joppa. Here is where G. J. Adams built his town a few years ago. But it all fell through. The village has eight frame houses and a church, all built of timber brought from the State of Maine. One hundred and eighty-five people came with Adams, but nobody has stayed except Mr. Floyd. He owns a reaper and two horses. In * It is only the pronunciation that is given here. The appearance of the words would often suggest very different sounds.

harvest time he cuts wheat and barley for the people at a megidia (90 cts.) an hour. He can cut more grain in a day with his reaper than fifty native men. The people here, when they harvest wheat, sit down in the field and smoke all the time. They reap with a sickle not bigger than a case-knife. The fences here are all hedges of prickly pear from three to ten inches thick and fifteen feet high. It is called by the botanists opuntia. When Mr. Floyd first brought his wagon to Joppa, he was afraid he couldn't get it through these narrow lanes. Then the Governor told him that the soldiers should cut down the hedges for him on one side of the lanes and let the wagon pass. That is the way Turkish officers deal with these Arabs. The prickly pear has great soft, fibrous stems, fringed with leaves that look like thick, green cakes. Neither man nor beast can break through it. The ground all around Mr. Floyd's house is white with sea-shells like those we saw yesterday.

As I went back to town, I saw a man going out to plow. His team was two little cows not bigger than yearling calves in our country. I have read that in the fourteenth century they plowed here with cows, just as they do now. The yoke is six feet long and so heavy that the cows' necks bend under it. It is so rough, too, that it chafes deep creases in their hide. If Titus plowed up the foundations of Jerusalem he must have had a stronger implement than this. The man had a goad on his shoulders as heavy as the plow itself. It was a pole eight feet long and two inches in diameter at the butt-end where I measured it. It was pointed with iron, to poke the legs of the cows with. At the large end this goad has a sort of a chisel to clean the plow with. The fellow jabbed one of his cows while I was looking on, and she kicked back at him. Then I understood the words that Christ spoke to St. Paul, "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts ix. 5). I could see, too, how Shamgar could slay of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad (Judges iii. 31).

Next I met a lazy fellow jogging along, smoking a pipe with a cocoa-nut bowl, while behind him walked his wife carrying a heavy load of thorn bushes on her back. This reminded me of our Saviour's charge against the Scribes and Pharisees, who loaded men with burdens grievous to be borne, while they themselves touched not the burdens with one of their fingers (Matt. xxiii. 4). I shall never forget the richness and orchard-beauty of my morning's walk.

At one point north of town I could see clear around the water

side of Joppa. "Although Joppa has always been a sea gate of Jerusalem it has no docks, no quays, no jetties, no landing stairs, and no lights," so says a man that was here some time ago, and he says truly. Josephus wrote long ago that Joppa was not fit to be a harbor. As I got near the city, I wrote down the different noises that I could hear in the crowd around me. The snarl and yelps of a mob of cur dogs; the wild, sweet notes of birds; the cries of men (muezzins) high up the church steeples; the chatter of the Arabs, who gabble like parrots; the shrieks of the camels and the tinkle of their bells; the snort and tramp of horses; the swearing of a party of sailors, quarrelling over a bottle; the awful bray of donkeys; the laughter of some sportive boys-all these, and I don't know how many more sounds, were heard at once. Hundreds of dogs were lying asleep in the deep military ditch that is dug round the town. A judge (called the kadi) was sitting in the gateway of the city holding court. I stopped to see a man flogged who had been caught stealing a knife. From the time the soldier brought him to the kadi, to the time he was kicked out the gate, was less than five minutes, including a bastinado of thirteen strokes well laid on. The kadi only listened for a minute or two to the evidence, and then gave sentence. How the miserable wretch howled! but everybody else laughed. They enjoyed it. The kadi didn't laugh, but he didn't look sorry either.

My room is one of those high chambers so agreeable in the East, especially in sea-ports like this. It is such an "upper chamber" as "the certain disciple named Tabitha" was laid in, in this very city, after the preparations for her burial had been completed (Acts ix. 36). Would that I could believe this the same chamber. But that is impossible. The numberless destructions and re-edifications of Joppa, since her day, forbid it. But if it were so, here, too, might St. Peter have stood, "kneeled down and prayed." And in yonder corner the precious form of Dorcas (Tabitha) might have lain, to which he said, in imitation of Jesus at Bethany, "Tabitha, arise!"

I am surprised and delighted to find that one of these girls has a photograph likeness of Mrs. Emma Willard, of Troy, New York. She doesn't remember where she got it, or when. On the back of it is written, "Born February 23d, 1787." I told the girl what a good woman Mrs. Willard is. Oh, if she could educate a generation here, how she would revolutionise this miserable woman-degrading race. Then I showed the girl my own album of the noble American ladies