y the labour and fatigue encountered in visiting
them. It was a remarkably hot and sultry day: we were scrambling up the
mountain through a thick jungle of bushes and low trees, when I saw
before me a fine plum-tree, loaded with fresh blooming plums. I cried
out to my fellow-traveller, "Now, then, who will arrive first at the
plum-tree?" and as he caught a glimpse of so refreshing an object, we
both pressed our horses into a gallop to see which would get the first
plum from the branches. We both arrived at the same moment; and, each
snatching at a fine ripe plum, put it at once into our mouths; when, on
biting it, instead of the cool delicious juicy fruit which we expected,
our months were filled with a dry bitter dust, and we sat under the tree
upon our horses sputtering, and hemming, and doing all we could to be
relieved of the nauseous taste of this strange fruit. We then
perceived, and to my great delight, that we had discovered the famous
apple of the Dead Sea, the existence of which has been doubted and
canvassed since the days of Strabo and Pliny, who first described it.
Many travellers have given descriptions of other vegetable productions
which bear some analogy to the one described by Pliny; but up to this
time no one had met with the thing itself, either upon the spot
mentioned by the ancient authors, or elsewhere. I brought several of
them to England. They are a kind of gall-nut. I found others afterwards
upon the plains of Troy, but there can be no doubt whatever that this is
the apple of Sodom to which Strabo and Pliny referred. Some of those
which I brought to England were given to the Linnaean Society, who
published an engraving of them, and a description of their vegetable
peculiarities, in their 'Transactions;' but as they omitted to explain
the peculiar interest attached to them in consequence of their having
been sought for unsuccessfully for above 1500 years, they excited little
attention; though, as the evidence of the truth of what has so long been
considered as a vulgar fable, they are fairly to be classed among the
most curious productions which have been brought from the Holy Land.

CHAPTER XVI.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre--Processions of the Copts--The Syrian
Maronites and the Greeks--Riotous Behaviour of the Pilgrims--Their
immense numbers--The Chant of the Latin Monks--Ibrahim Pasha--The
Exhibition of the Sacred Fire--Excitement of the Pilgrims--The
Patria