otnote 2: From Isa. 2.5.]

At first, the leaders of the organization attempted to enter into
negotiations with the Turkish Government, with a view to obtaining from
it a large tract of land for colonizing purposes, but the negotiations
fell through. The handful of pioneers were obliged to work in the
agricultural settlements near Jaffa, in _Mikweh Israel_, a foundation of
the _Alliance Israelite_ in Paris, and in the colony _Rishon le-Zion_,
which had been recently established by private initiative. The youthful
idealists had to endure many hardships in an unaccustomed environment
and in a branch of endeavor entirely alien to them. A considerable part
of the pioneers were soon forced to give up the struggle and make way
for the new settlers who were less intelligent perhaps but physically
better fitted for their task. The foundations of Palestinian
colonization had been laid, though within exceedingly narrow limits, and
the very idea of the national restoration of the Jewish people in
Palestine was then as it was later a much greater social factor in
Jewish life than the practical colonization of a country which could
only absorb an insignificant number of laborers. At those moments, when
the Russian horrors made life unbearable, the eyes of many sufferers
were turned Eastward, towards the tiny strip of land on the shores of
the Mediterranean, where the dream of a new life upon the resuscitated
ruins of gray antiquity held out the promise of fulfilment.

A contemporary writer, in surveying recent events in the Russian valley
of tears, makes the following observations:

Jewish life during the latter part of 1882 has assumed a
monotonously gloomy, oppressively dull aspect True, the streets are
no longer full of whirling feathers from torn bedding; the
window-panes no longer crash through the streets. The thunder and
lightning which were recently filling the air and gladdening the
hearts of the Greek-Orthodox people are no more. But have the Jews
actually gained by the change from the illegal persecutions [in the
form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May?
Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered,
and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of
human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been
firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness,
without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and