coolly tell his prisoner to pray, while he himself prays; but when his own prayer is ended, without stopping till the victim is ready to die, he pulls up the face by the hair which he has held all the while, and cuts the throat of the praying pilgrim at a single slash. Thank God I learned this much only from hearsay.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HOLY LAND-JAFFA, AND THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

THE wind was light, and we were sailing slowly in our huge Damietta hulk along the bounding waves of the Levant. It was a balmy night in the month of May, and the breeze rippled gently on the blue surface of the calm sea. The jabbering of the Arabs had awakened me from my first sleep I had been soundly enjoying along the ribs of the boat on a hard bag of rice; and many such deep and sweet sleeps have I enjoyed under the canopy of the sky with my portmanteau as my pillow. On looking out from under the ragged sail, I found that we were coasting at a very little distance off the shores of Palestine. Sometime before we had passed the river boundary of Egypt; and now Gaza and Askelon, scenes of Old Testament fame, were off our weather-bow. Soothed by the influence of the time and place, I resolved to enjoy myself in the cool atmosphere of the morning. I took my seat on the front edge of the ship, with my legs over and seaward, thus to indulge myself in meditation. The starry heavens naturally attracted my attention to kindle my devotion and to ascertain how our course lay. The crescent moon in her last quarter, and sinking towards the horizon, was shining with a sickly hue over as if above

152 CONTEMPLATIONS

CRESCENT

MORNING STAR.

Jerusalem, and casting a dim shade among the hills and valleys of the Holy Land, and reflecting an indistinct trail of silvery light upon the sea. The Great Bear was moving slowly round the pole with his usual might and majesty; its stars glaring as if in confident triumph, that this northern power need only bide his time to accomplish his grand circuit. In the quarter of the sky towards the shores of the Bosphorus, I noticed a dark fringe of deep mist tossing in restless convulsions;-striking emblem, I thought, of the present political position of nations in these two portions of the world.

It was certainly a happy conception in the Grand Turk to select the crescent moon as his crest. But it was paltry in Mehemet Ali to try to improve it by inserting a star on the dark face of that orb, that is, within the horns of the moon, where of all places in the canopy of heaven a star never was and never can be seen, unless its light were to penetrate through the body of that orb. Stranger still, the crescent selected by the Turk is the waning crescent, and certainly a waxing new crescent would have been a more ambitious emblem than the last quarter of an old moon which wanes fast away. Be that as it may, the moon this morning was shining in her last quarter, and I sat with pleasure, till I saw the bright morning star rise over the land of the Messiah; and soon after the beaming rays of Aurora darted up and altogether dimmed the silver light of the crescent. So I sincerely desired that the most beautiful of all the constellations, the Southern Cross, might arise from the edge of the horizon where it now was, and become the crest of the whole Turkish dominions both in Asia and Africa; even at the risk of the Russian Bear obtaining the

COAST OF PALESTINE.

153

lion's share of these territories. And fervently did I pray that God, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years, would fulfil the times so that the hallowed soil trode once by the meek and lowly Jesus might be no longer polluted by the religion of the false Prophet; and that thus a way might be opened up for the return of the Jews to the promised land.

The day disclosed to me a dreary coast, consisting of an endless range of the low naked sand-hills which are often alluded to in Holy Writ. Three miles inward were the heights of Gaza occupying the summit of a mound in the plain; a city celebrated from the time of Samson the judge of Israel, down to that of our own Richard the champion of the cross. Of old it was so strongly fortified that for a period of two months it withstood all the efforts of Alexander the Great. To revenge the wounds and repulses he had received, Alexander, when he took the place, bored the ancles of its gallant defender while the man was yet living, tied his body to his chariot wheels, and dragged him round the walls of the town in infamous imitation of Achilles in his savage treatment of the body of Hector. For two or three days we were told that in two hours we were to reach Jaffa. At last one morning I saw a few ships riding at anchor half-a-mile outside of a ledge of rocks on which the heavy swell of the Levant dashed itself into foam. Along the beach were thickly strewed the wrecks of vessels, which are so often lost here that ships for this port were wont to be insured at Lloyd's with reluctance. Till lately Jaffa was avoided by the British ships as a hotbed of the plague.

On entering the harbour, instead of attending to their critical work, the crew stood up clapping their hands and

crying out triumphantly, "Iaffa! Iaffa!" and then they demanded buckshish, as if a prosperous voyage had been made owing to their skill in navigation. Meanwhile Solomon was looking sharply after his cooking utensils and our books, some of which had been pilfered. As the harbour can only admit of small craft, the anchor was cast on the outside of the ledge. The arrival of our paltry bark of one hundred tons certainly created a sensation. The authorities were instantly on the alert, the natives were viewing us from the roofs of their houses, and women and children were eyeing us from their wooden balconies. A lighter from the quarantine came alongside and took the passengers and their luggage on shore. Here we were inspected by a little French medical officer, and forthwith we were put into confinement for five days. But still I was glad that once more I had left the sea, and even when I trod for a few yards only along these sacred shores I felt as if I had already accomplished what had been the desire of my heart from my boyhood. I was not only in the land of the East, the clime of the sun, but in the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, the land of prophets and apostles, nay the land where God himself walked in human form. I trode its shores with awe and reverential delight, hopeful that I might be impressed and improved with the Spirit of divine wisdom, which was anciently so often exhibited in these districts. I was also gratified by Dr. Kiat, the English Consul at Jaffa, to whom I had sent the letters which I had brought from Egypt, waiting on me in my place of confinement, and kindly inviting me and my travelling friend to make his house our home whenever we were relieved. Dr. Kiat is indeed a very worthy man with an amiable wife and family.