Now wul y telle the ryght way to Jerusalem."

SIR JOHN Mandeville.

"I hope I shall do nobody wrong to speak what I think, and deserve not blame in imparting my mind. If it be not for thy ease, it may be for my own. So Tully, Cardan, and Bothius wrote de consol. as much to help themselves as others."-BURTON's Anatomy.

Keine prophanirende Scherze

"Fürchtet nichts, fromme Seelen. sollen euer Ohr verletzen."-HENRY HEINE.

CHAPTER I.

PALM-SUNDAY.

PALM SUNDAY dawned over Palestine. It was a soft bright morning, the last of our miserable imprisonment. The day before, Wind and Shower had passed out of the great gate toward Jerusalem. Leisurlie was already gone, and soon after sunrise our camels entered the court to be loaded.

The

and

Howadji were incensed with assafetida, adjudged clean. We should not imperil the health of Syria, and might go to Jerusalem.

In the silence and ennui of those quarantine days, I had full time to remember the country in which we were, and the city to which we were going. Even here in Syria, here in Gaza, city which I had vaguely figured to myself when, a child, I listened wondering to the story of Samson, even here the day came with the old Sabbath feeling, with that spirit of devotional

stillness in the air which broods over our home Sundays, irksome by their sombre gravity to the boy, but remembered by the man with sweet sadness.

The shadow of the Cross suddenly fell athwart the gleam of the Crescent. That Palm Sunday morning, the image which is the genius of Palestine, passed into my heart over reverential thoughts, and hushed hopes, as over strewn olivebranches and under palms Christ entered Jerusalem. Behind and before-the Desert and Damascuslay the peculiar Orient. But we entered now upon a land consecrated by one life to universal and eternal interest.

The day was warm, the air was still, and we paced stately out of the court into the lonely landscape of Palestine, and turning toward Jerusalem, a myriad emotions whispered in that morning" Hosanna, hosanna!

At the gate, too, as if so fit a figure of our strictly oriental and poetic dreams must not mingle with our changing thoughts, the grave old Armenian and the beautiful Khadra went another way, and we should not meet again until we reached Jerusalem. As, upon his docile white mare, the venerable father piloted his little caravan away, I could still catch glimpses of the daughter looking

curiously at us with her dreamy eyes, could still see the tall camel driver walking slowly before her palanquin.

For

It disappeared behind a hedge of cactus. many days I did not see her again. But a solitary palm upon a hillock still watched her going, and waved its boughs slowly toward me in melancholy farewell.

I was consoled, however, by my release from prison, and no landscape was ever more beautiful than that which greeted my eyes this morningdoubly beautiful for the long desert journey, and the dreary quarantine. The little hill on which stands Gaza, waved in gentle and graceful undulations, bearing pomegranate, and orange, and date trees, mimosas, and acacias in its swell, and among them wound quiet lanes hedged by prickly pear and aloe. Grain waved softly from the distance, and out of the luxurious green, rose the minaret of Gaza, with groups of low houses clustering around it.

Gaza was called the capital of Palestine, and in the ruins of white marble sometimes found there, it is hard to see anything else than the remains of the temple which Samson destroyed.

Our road led by a cemetery of domed tombs. It was bare and desolate, like a ruined town.

Then, passing along a spacious avenue, shaded with trees, we emerged upon a sea of grain. It was darkened at intervals by venerable, scraggy olives, and rocking through it upon MacWhirter, I saw, beyond, a vast reach of bare, green land, partly grain, partly waste. Far away upon the eastern horizon-a misty blue rampart-stretched a range of hills, the mountains of Judea. Toward the west the green shrank away into low, melancholy sandmounds, and so crept to the sea.

The landscape was so fresh and fair, that I could have sung with the meadow-larks that darted, singing, in the sun. But it was so lonely, and mournful, that the song would have been too sad for a bird's singing. Far as I could see, before and around me, there was no town, no sign of vigorous life. It was akin to the sublime solitude of the Roman Campagna, if to its present desolation you add the nodding grain of its earlier cultivation. In outline, and extent, and hue, the hills were not unlike the Sabine or Volscian mountains, seen from Rome.

But not the glittering fame of Roman story consecrates the Campagna hills to the imagination, as the bleak Judean mountains are consecrated by a single life. The tranquil sweetness of the summer sky breathes over this landscape, as does