that extended around the
great hall, because it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more
cheery and inviting. It was a royal rest we had.

When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all
this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if
we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy.
The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of
Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is
Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to
discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I
feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that
is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers
in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome
for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple.
The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim
without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the
length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes
find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings.
Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and
the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent.
Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a
pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our
party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to
touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent
Fathers of Palestine.

So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the
barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges and through sterile
gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned. Even the scattering
groups of armed shepherds we met the afternoon before, tending their
flocks of long-haired goats, were wanting here. We saw but two living
creatures. They were gazelles, of "soft-eyed" notoriety. They looked
like very young kids, but they annihilated distance like an express
train. I have not seen animals that moved faster, unless I might say it
of the antelopes of our own great plains.

At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the Shepherds, and
stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were watching
their flocks by night, eighteen centurie