CHAPTER XV

NAZARETH AND TIBERIAS

ON the following morning, after breakfast, which in hotels in the Holy Land consists of tea or coffee, two eggs, not much larger than those of bantams, and native jam, or honey from Lebanon, David arrived beautifully attired in a gold-laced garment, with a large revolver strapped on to him. He told us that the horses were come so we went out to look at them, and returned rather crestfallen. They were sorry brutes on which to ride for many days over rough and roadless country, although, like all entire horses, they held their heads well. In fact, the poor little animals, that under different treatment would have been serviceable, if second-class Arabs, had been starved and overworked. However, there were none others to be found. Haifa at any time is a bad place at which to obtain transport animals, but as it happened, the whole country had been swept of horses by a gigantic cheap American trip numbering over five hundred souls, with some of whom we were destined to become acquainted. Therefore our choice was that which tradition has ascribed to Mr. Hobson. It was these horses or none at all.

I was asked to choose mine, and, guided by my African experience of many years ago when I had a good deal to do with horses, I passed over the larger and stronger-looking brown animal and selected a little grey scaffolding of a nag. In this it seems that my judgment did not fail me, since the brown proved to be a veritable death-trap, and I was heartily glad when my

nephew rode it into Nazareth without a bad fall or broken limb. My steed proved quite safe and stumbled not at all. Indeed the front half of him was excellenta pretty little head that champed the bit and even tried to run away, an arched neck, a good shoulder, and a pair of sound and sure-footed fore-legs. But once past the line of the girths, oh! what a falling off was there; indeed he had no quarters to speak of, so wasted were they, and this hind pair of legs were very, very weak. Indeed it was by no means uncommon for him to drop so sharply on one or the other of them for five or six successive steps that at the end of a day's journey my spine felt as though it had been twisted. Especially did this happen going up or down steep hills. David's pony was smaller, and even more thin, but had the merit of being sure-footed and an excellent walker, a wonderful advantage in such a country where five-sixths of the road must be covered at a foot pace. Then there were two baggage animals, a horse and a mule, the former ridden by the muleteer who owned all the beasts, and the latter by his black assistant, both of them perched atop of the great piles of luggage and equipment.

It was ten o'clock or so before the baggage was packed and loaded up and we had departed under a raking and deadly fire from the kodaks of the American ladies. Strange customers shall we appear in the photographic albums of Pa. and Ma. and Kansas, U.S.A., or whatever other states our kindly acquaintances may adorn.

Our road took us through the town of Haifa, once called Sycaminum. This place is beautifully situated upon the south shore of the Bay of Acre, but to-day more notable perhaps for the pleasant-looking houses of the German colony who dwell there their very boxlike primness delights the eye full fed with Syrian squalor than for anything else. Having stopped to pay a short call upon the consul, where I saw my friend

the cavass looking quite civilian and domestic in his morning clothes, we cantered through the narrow streets on to the road to Nazareth.

This road is one of the few that exist in the Holy Land. Like the new pier at Haifa, which cost several thousand pounds, and is quite unserviceable, it was constructed for the especial use of the German Emperor on the occasion of his recent visit to Palestine. In fact his Majesty never used it as he abandoned the idea of a pilgrimage to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, preferring to toil along the coast to Jaffa and thence take the train to Jerusalem. When first completed, perhaps, it was a good road of a sort, but after two winters' rains it is— what may be imagined. Still carriages are dragged

through its ruts and quagmires.

On our right as we rode out of Haifa rose Mount Carmel, where the prophets were hid by fifty in a cave, and on our left ran a piece of the railway to Damascus which somebody began and never finished. Travelling on we crossed the wide plain and the brook Kishon, where the prophets of Baal were brought down to be slaughtered, I suppose that its waters might take their accursed blood and bodies out to sea. This plain is very marshy and we found considerable difficulty in making our way through one of the mud-holes on the road; indeed the baggage animals had to go round up the side of a mountain. It was here that we met a number of mounted soldiers, sullen-looking, ill-clad fellows armed with rifles of a somewhat antiquated pattern. They were hastening into Haifa to attend the funeral of the Turkish governor, who had died suddenly during the night.

The slopes of the Carmel range above us were clothed with wild carobs which nobody takes the trouble to graft and turn to profit. In the deep kloofs of these mountains also many wild bears are to be found. Crossing Kishon we struggled against the wind that tore seawards along its