he morning of the 2nd of Jamadiyu'l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August 21, 1868)
they all embarked in an Austrian-Lloyd steamer for Alexandria, touching at
Madelli, and stopping for two days at Smyrna, where Jinab-i-Munir,
surnamed Ismu'llahu'l-Munib, became gravely ill, and had, to his great
distress, to be left behind in a hospital where he soon after died. In
Alexandria they transhipped into a steamer of the same company, bound for
Haifa, where, after brief stops at Port Said and Jaffa, they landed,
setting out, a few hours later, in a sailing vessel, for Akka, where they
disembarked, in the course of the afternoon of the 12th of
Jamadiyu'l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August 31, 1868). It was at the moment when
Baha'u'llah had stepped into the boat which was to carry Him to the
landing-stage in Haifa that 'Abdu'l-_Gh_affar, one of the four companions
condemned to share the exile of Mirza Yahya, and whose "detachment, love
and trust in God" Baha'u'llah had greatly praised, cast himself, in his
despair, into the sea, shouting "Ya Baha'u'l-Abha," and was subsequently
rescued and resuscitated with the greatest difficulty, only to be forced
by adamant officials to continue his voyage, with Mirza Yahya's party, to
the destination originally appointed for him.

Chapter XI: Baha'u'llah's Incarceration in Akka

The arrival of Baha'u'llah in Akka marks the opening of the last phase of
His forty-year long ministry, the final stage, and indeed the climax, of
the banishment in which the whole of that ministry was spent. A banishment
that had, at first, brought Him to the immediate vicinity of the
strongholds of _Sh_i'ah orthodoxy and into contact with its outstanding
exponents, and which, at a later period, had carried Him to the capital of
the Ottoman empire, and led Him to address His epoch-making pronouncements
to the Sultan, to his ministers and to the ecclesiastical leaders of Sunni
Islam, had now been instrumental in landing Him upon the shores of the
Holy Land--the Land promised by God to Abraham, sanctified by the
Revelation of Moses, honored by the lives and labors of the Hebrew
patriarchs, judges, kings and prophets, revered as the cradle of
Christianity, and as the place where Zoroaster, according to
'Abdu'l-Baha's testimony, had "held converse with some of the Prophets of
Israel," and associated by Islam with the Apostle's night-journey, through
the seven heavens, to the throne of the Almighty. Within the confines of
this holy and