Proud were its cities, sweet the shadow of the pomegranate and the palm. The pageant of an unknown life was here, but it disappeared before History. And you, today, can see the outline of that landscape, but ghostly now and grim.

We tasted the water; it is inconceivably bitter and salt. Sea water is mild in the comparison. None of us bathed. Not alone the stickiness and saltness, but a feeling of horror repelled me. Haply the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, shaped as incredible monsters, haunt those depths. I believed the quaint old Legend-"And if a man cast iron therein, it will float on the surface; but if men cast a feather therein, it will sink to the bottom."

We lay for an hour upon the shore, chatting with Artoosh, whose soft eyes sparkled with delight at our efforts to comprehend what he said,-dreaming dreams, and wondering if the women of Sodom were fair, and the men of Gomorrah brave, and if there were caustic irony upon female curiosity in that earliest romance, the story of Lot, in which it is so hard that the natural yearning of a woman's heart toward her old home and her old gossips should meet a fate so stern, and whether the saltness of the Dead Sea was not Lot's wife in solution,-and then Volney's sneer mocked my reverie, that as Lot's wife was changed into salt, she must have melted in the next winter's rains.

My musing eyes suddenly beheld a vast congregation upon the distant shore.-"The unhappy people flying from the cities," I carelessly reflected; for I think if the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah themselves had slowl

risen from the sea, and with sparkling battlements and spires, and all the hum of life, had drifted over the water into the black cloud of distance, I should not have marvelled much on that bewitched morning.

But the eyes of Artoosh kindled at the sight, and, pointing with his finger, he called to us eagerly, 'Hadji, Hadji,' (pilgrims, pilgrims.)

We mounted and galloped around the beach toward the crowd. It was a vast company of Greek pilgrims, who had been to the Jordan to dip in the sacred water the shrouds they had bought in Jerusalem, and which they would carry home with them, and preserve for their burial. They made an immense cavalcade or caravan, with which we concluded to return to Jerusalem. Most of the pilgrims were upon foot, and in every variety of costume, of which the European was the most graceless and undignified, and they were all carrying away a bottle of the precious Jordan water.

We ascended the rugged mountain-side, directly from the Dead Sea. Through the vistas of yellow precipice I saw, for a long time, the line of black stillness, but the spell was gradually dissolved.

We rode busily about among the motley crowd of our new companions, undertaking impossible conversations with every masculine face that interested, and with every gentle pilgrim who appeared propitious.

At intervals upon the table-lands the Bedoueen dashed off, fleet as the wind, and graceful as the grain it bends, in their game of throwing the Jereed or lance, and so regaled us with Arabian sham fights. Then we saw

the supple and wonderful horsemanship of the Bedoueen. Part of the animal they rode, they governed his movement by their own. The wild grace of the spectacle was poetic and exhilarating. It was the sport of Centaurs. It was a romance of Antar and of Ez-za-hir.

Thus whiling away the day over the barren mountains and long plains, upon which little lived but a few flocks, and which were dotted with the black tents of the Arabs -we fell at length into the road near Bethany.

Another cavalcade met us here, coming out from Jerusalem to welcome home the pilgrims. Among the rest, in the snuffy neighborhood which they affected, I saw Wind and Shower, not weeping profusely, with burning candles, but smiling, upon gay horses, in sympathy with the Bulgarian style of believers.

But when I saw our old friend Peach Blossom, whom I had left in a tomb at Thebes, riding gallantly forward between two of the Maccaboy Friars, and smiling with exhilaration, I felt that his hope "to catch the spirit of the East" had been, religiously speaking, fulfilled.

We all filed around the base of the Mount of Olives, a goodly company in the late twilight, and as I watched the multitude swarming by the points of the road, more easily my fancy saw the deluge of Crusaders flowing upon Jerusalem.

The weird gloom of the morning had passed away. The round, yellow moon hung over the ruined convent of the Mount of Olives, as we paused at the gate of the garden of Gethsemane. There Artoosh took leave of us. The dreary and lonely landscape, which lies among re

membered landscapes, as the Dead Sea among waters, was the constant scene of his life. I did not wonder then at the soft sadness of his eye, and at his infrequent speech. There was wild and inscrutable romance in his whole existence. Our hands grasped in farewell, and the extremes of life touched. In me the farthest West thrilled with admiration and sympathy for the deepest East. In his lambent eye flashed the light of sweet surprise at the recognition.

Artoosh waited, sitting motionless upon his beautiful white mare, until we had passed the brook Kedron, and were climbing the hill toward the gate of the city. Then he turned slowly and alone toward the Desert, and disappeared in the melancholy moonlight.

XIII.

Addio Khadra.

LEISURLIE was playing upon his concertino the exquisite trio from Don Giovanni, and in the deep enjoyment of the best music in an unmusical land, I felt the wisdom of Lady Georgiana Wolff in bringing her piano over the desert to Jerusalem.

Golden Sleeve entered with a significant smile, and announced the venerable Armenian.

The Howadji instantly assumed the gravity becoming great Moguls, and the old gentleman entered. We rose and conducted him to the sofa, and he naturally fell into the cross-leggedness of oriental sitting. But observing that our feet touched the floor, he endeavored secretly to untwine his own legs, and to pay us the delicate compliment of yielding to our Frankish prejudices, in sitting as

we sat.

The Commander bustled about, grandiloquent with importance, for he was to interpret the conversation. The Pacha, with gravity and safety, commented upon the weather.

"It was a beautiful day."