my whole weight, broke, and I fell toward the sea, that laughed at me softly with inextinguishable laughter.

Kooltooluk!" cried the Pacha, reining up.

My good Arabian stopped instantly, turned to look at me, and the next moment we were all wideflying again, in the exhilarating air, Crusaders and Saracens, and the sun left us climbing Mount Carmel.

CHAPTER XIX.

SEA OF GALILEE.

A SHEET of dark-blue water among naked hills, is the Sea of Galilee. Only the dismal little town of Tiberias breaks the mournful monotony of the shore, from which the bold hills gradually recede higher and farther, to the snowy sublimity of Hermon.

We came over the mountains from Nazareth, and as we descended to the lake and saw the shattered walls of Tiberias with a few palms, sad and unhandsome in the wind, it seemed to me the most desolate and forlorn of towns. In 1835 an earthquake shook down the village, and the whole landscape has the sullen aspect of a volcanic region. We looked in vain upon the dead calmness of the lake's surface for any trace of the beautiful Jordan, which flows through it. Not a ripple disturbed its dream. Indeed the profound solitude and mountainous sternness of the region, reminded me

of the bewitched desolation of the Dead Sea. Here again the woe denounced against the cities of the shore has blasted the sea.

With what melancholy curiosity the eye followed Golden Sleeve's finger toward the site of Capernaum.

The tent was pitched on the high bank over the lake, with the door toward Mount Hermon, upon which the dying day played wondrous symphonies to the eye. There was no sail or boat upon the lake, and we strolled into the

town.

The

It was at Tiberias that Eothen attended the congress of Fleas, and the filth and squalor of this Chapel of Ease to the holy city of Saffet, in the mountains, do not belie their fame. The town is thronged with Flemish Jews who await here the coming of the Messiah, who will reign at neighbouring Saffet, before going to Jerusalem. men, clad in every variety of sordid rags, with long elfish earlocks, a wan and puny aspect, and a kind of drivelling leer and cunning in the eye, were a singular combination of Boz's Fagin and Carlyle's Apes of the Dead Sea. Never, surely, was so bewitched and strange a population. They had the sallow chalkiness of complexion peculiar to German tailors, and wore the huge bell-crowned black hat which they wear everywhere else in the world. But the women, as if to complete the confusion,

were even comely, and their fair round faces, with caps, and the coarse substantiality of the German female costume, perplexed the fancy upon the Sea of Galilee.

Artistic Leisurlie drew a Christian girl with her water-jar, and tried to draw a Muslim boy. But he was afraid, and ran shouting away, laughingly pointing out one of his companions as a proper victim. But we started upon seeing him. Retzsch had been before us, and in his Mephistophiles has drawn only a horribly perfect likeness of that boy of Tiberias.

The morning was more merciful to the Sea of Galilee. The sun clomb out of the east over toppling clouds, while we skirted the lake, often walking our horses in the water.

The shore blazed with flowers. Had ours been the bridal train of Helen, skirting classic seas, the way could not have been more festally adorned. One rhododendron upon the shore of Galilee, flames in my memory yet, a symbol of the tropics. The tangled luxuriance of flowers brushed against us, as if to secure in our hearts sweeter remembrances of Galilee, than that of the Apes of the Dead Sea, with long earlocks, who haunt the miserable Tiberias. These flowers are the relics of

Capernaum, for so utterly has the city vanished from the earth. A few cattle grazed on the lake

side, or stood contemplative in the water. Two or three Bedoueen shepherds gazed listlessly over the lake. It was a bewildering morning.

Every day, as you journey in Palestine, the natural imagery of Jesus' speech solicits your eye and touches your heart.

As you went down through flowery Zabulon to the sea, you heard him say,-" Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." As your eye wanders musingly over the landscape and marks the solitary towns upon the hills, especially Saffet, above you on the mountains, when you turn away from the Sea of Galilee, you recall "A city set upon an hill cannot be hid." Watching the simple and cumbrous processes of grinding grain between stones, usually done by women, you understand that "one shall be taken, and the other left." As the camels and asses pass laden with goat-skins of wine, you understand why "no man putteth new wine into old bottles."

These things impress you with the reality of that life. If a teacher were now walking up and down the land, and were illustrating his words by the objects that met his eyes, you would constantly hear the familiar figures of the gospels. And these unchanged aspects of landscape and life surviving through all vicissitudes of race and fortune, annihilate time, and make you the contemporary of