keeping watch over their flock by night," and to have given them the "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people," while above the Heavenly multitude gave "glory to God in the highest and on earth peace."

Thence breaking through the ranks of the mother-ofpearl sellers, who now made their last desperate attack, we drove to David's Well. It was from this well, when the Philistines held his city of Bethlehem, that David longed for water. "Oh! that one would give me drink of the water of Bethlehem which is by the gate." Then the three mighty men found a path through the hosts of the Philistines and drew water from the well and brought it to their prince. But David "poured it out unto the Lord," saying, "Shall I drink the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?"

I suppose that the well shown by the gate is the same, but, if so, I do not think, however thirsty he might be, that David would wish to drink of its water to-day, since all the surface drainage of the garden finds its way into it; as by kneeling and looking down the well I was able to discover. When questioned the priest in charge could give no explanation. He only said that it had always been so.

Leaving this mystery unsolved, we drove back to Jerusalem. On our way we passed the field that was bought to bury strangers in with the price of the thirty pieces of betrayal, and that grim and desolate valleyonce the scene of the abomination of heathen worshipwhich during the last 1500 years has received the bones of so many of those travellers to whom Jerusalem has proved the place of their last pilgrimage.

CHAPTER XX

JERICHO, THE DEAD SEA, BETHANY, AND SOLOMON'S

QUARRIES

THE weather was still very cold and rainy on the morning that we started from Jerusalem to visit Jordan, Jericho, and the Dead Sea. Leaving at about eight o'clock, we crossed the head of the Valley of the Kedron and drove to the cave on the Mount of Olives, now an underground chapel, which is said to contain the tomb of the Virgin, the tomb of her parents, the tomb of Joseph, and the grotto where the last scene of the Agony is reported to have fallen upon our Lord while His disciples slept around. These different sacred spots are in the possession of the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Abyssinians, each of those sects having an altar here. Also there is a place of prayer reserved to the Mahommedans. It is needless. to add that here, as elsewhere, the various Foundations indulge in their scandalous and discreditable rivalry. The church lies many feet underground, and is approached by a broad flight of marble steps, so ill-lighted that the visitor will do well if he proceeds like a blind man, tapping in front of him with a stick.

On this morning the crowd and the confusion were great, for up and down the steps poured two conflicting streams of hundreds of Russian pilgrims, perspiring and malodorous, amongst whom we struggled in the gloom. At their foot a somewhat mercenary monk provided us with tapers, by the light of which we inspected the tomb of the Virgin. It is covered with a marble slab, worn perfectly smooth by the lips of pilgrims. These good people, and

especially the Russians, think it their duty to kiss every object of acknowledged or reputed sanctity. I have seen them kneeling on the road kissing the ground, standing against walls kissing the stones, and bowing themselves to kiss the thresholds or the doors of buildings.

Owing to the multitude which surged to and fro, the sound of the singing of the mass (I think, at two altars), the smoke of the burning tapers, and the thick atmosphere arising from the presence in that airless place of so many pious but unwashen persons, our visit was disturbed and unsatisfactory. Indeed I was glad when we had struggled up the steps again and found ourselves in the cold, refreshing air.

Next we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane, a spot the identity of which seems never to have been doubted. It is the property of the Franciscans, and enclosed by a wall rendered as hideous as may be with stucco and bad pictures, although, fortunately, the existence of the olives has made it impossible for any one to cover it with a roof. Within the wall is a garden, and within that garden the true wonder of the place eight olive trunks, still living but of a vast antiquity, here and there built up with stones to support them. So ancient are these decaying trees that, taking into consideration the longevity of the olive, it seems to me possible, and even probable, that amongst them, or others which sprang from the same roots, the Saviour did indeed pray and suffer. Yet they still push their leaves in spring and bear their fruit in autumn.

Preceding and following us round the enclosure were many more Russian pilgrims. I observed them closely, and noted that none of them seemed to look at or pay attention to the sacred spot of ground, or to the gaunt and hollow olives that grow within. At intervals on the wall, however, are placed vile representations in plaster relief of various scenes connected with the Passion.

T

These are covered with iron gratings, and the pilgrims as they went stopped before each grating and kissed its bars. It is impossible to watch these people without sympathy and respect; still it does appear almost piteous that they should pay so much attention to the outward and visible side of things, since this cannot but militate against a true appreciation of the inward and spiritual. Yet their motive is pure and good, and for the rest, who has a right to judge?

Shortly after leaving the Garden of Gethsemane we found our mounted Bedouin escort waiting for us by the roadside. Nothing that I saw in the demeanour of any of the inhabitants of the Dead Sea region, leads me to suppose that the presence of guards was a necessity. But there they are, and no traveller seems to be allowed to go to Jericho without them. Possibly this is to be explained by the fact that they are well paid for their services, and, in addition, receive a baksheesh from the object of their protective attentions. Possibly also, if they were no longer employed, as they themselves vigorously assert would be the case, accidents might overtake the pilgrim. Without being uncharitable, I can conceive even that they, or some of them, might be intimately concerned in those accidents. If a respectable Bedouin guard has his means of livelihood taken away from him, who could wonder if he should again relapse into the unregenerate state of a disreputable Bedouin thief?

A little further on, situated upon a hillside to our right, in the midst of several caverns that have, I suppose, served as tombs, we saw the slaughterhouse of Jerusalem, with the butchers at their horrid work in the full sight of passers-by, and the flocks of sheep and other animals waiting their turn. It was a most unpleasant spectacle.

Next we passed through Bethany, without stopping, as we were to visit it on our return, and at length

came to the spot which is fabled to be the scene spoken of by our Lord in the parable of the Good Samaritan and the traveller who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves. Here we rested the horses awhile, as the road, which, for a wonder, had not been made for the German Emperor, was steep and slippery after the rain, although it is the best in Palestine, and, indeed, by no means bad, considering the engineering difficulties that must have been overcome in its construction.

After leaving this Khan Hadrur the landscape as we drove became even more lonesome and extraor

dinarily wild. It is impossible to describe it better than by saying that it reminded me of the mountains of the moon as seen through a telescope. White, arid, unpeopled, with towering cliffs and vast rain-cut gullies, covered with round and stunted bushes showing like green warts on the face of the hills, uncultivated and uncultivable, the home of hawks and ravens, and here and there of a few wandering goats, that make little beaten tracks upon the mountain sides, it is the very ideal of desolation, a wilderness of wildernesses. At the bottom of a precipitous, yawning gulf runs the brook Cherith. Here, built half-way up the towering cliff, to which it clings like a swallow's nest upon a wall, is a Greek monastery that, as I am informed, marks the site of the cave in which Elijah was fed by the ravens. Of this monastery David, our dragoman, told me a curious tale. He said that once when he visited the place an old monk there took him out to the mountain-side, carrying in his hand a basket of crumbs and other food. Here, leaving David at a little distance, he stood still and whistled, whereon all sorts of birds, wild doves and many others, emerged from the cliffs and brushwood, and, after fluttering round, settled on the old man's head and shoulders while he fed them from his hand. Surely upon this