we are
actually in the water, and then the boat swings up on a wave and runs
through into calmer water beyond.

We thread our way in and out of narrow channels, still between rocks,
and see ahead of us a desolate land with a queer flat-roofed town.

When at last we are on firm ground our guide leads us quickly through
some narrow dirty streets, and before we have time to notice anything we
are in a noisy, fussy little train, bound for Jerusalem.

We are actually in the land of Israel, the land where all the Bible
stories happened, not only those of the New Testament but also of the
Old! Here Noah lived when the Flood came, here Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob pitched their tents and pastured their flocks. From here the sons
of Jacob, who was also called Israel, went down to the land of Egypt to
buy corn when there was a terrible famine lasting many years. We know
that they settled there, having found their brother Joseph in great
power; and long, long after they had all been dead their descendants
multiplied into a great people and were treated as slaves by the
Egyptians, so God brought them back again to the land of their
ancestors.

When they arrived here, after wandering many years in the wilderness,
they found the country occupied by stranger races whom they fought and
conquered; among them were the Hivites and Jebusites and Amorites and
Hittites. Then the Israelites became a great nation and had kings of
their own. The second king, David, was of the tribe of Judah, one of the
best of old Israel's sons, and he drove out the people who occupied
Jerusalem and made it his capital. His son, Solomon, built here the most
wonderful temple ever known. But later on trouble came upon the
Israelites, and mightier nations from the east swept down upon them, and
carried them away as slaves. After long years of captivity some came
back to Jerusalem, and they were the descendants of Judah and Benjamin,
but the other tribes returned no more, and no one knows what became of
them; they are spoken of to this day as the Lost Ten Tribes, but the
descendants of Judah were called Jews. These Jews, who returned and
lived again in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, were again
conquered by the Romans, and when the Saviour Jesus Christ was born the
Romans held the supreme power in the Holy Land.

As the train goes on we see a bare and bleak country, which looks as if
giants had had a desperate fight and hurled stones at each other, af