n and knotted distortions, their soft
hands with scarred and hideous deformities, and the persuasive music of
their voices with the discordant din of a hated language, and then see
how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered. No, it is the
neat thing to say you were reluctant, and then append the profound
thoughts that "struggled for utterance," in your brain; but it is the
true thing to say you were not reluctant, and found it impossible to
think at all--though in good sooth it is not respectable to say it, and
not poetical, either.

We do not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when
the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we
revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom
pageants of an age that has passed away.

CHAPTER LVI.

We visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we had left
unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan and then, about three o'clock
one afternoon, we fell into procession and marched out at the stately
Damascus gate, and the walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever. We paused
on the summit of a distant hill and took a final look and made a final
farewell to the venerable city which had been such a good home to us.

For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly. We followed a
narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of the mountain gorges, and
when we could we got out of the way of the long trains of laden camels
and asses, and when we could not we suffered the misery of being mashed
up against perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by the
passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan and Moult
as often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and the
others had narrow escapes. However, this was as good a road as we had
found in Palestine, and possibly even the best, and so there was not much
grumbling.

Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards of figs,
apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener the scenery was
rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbidding. Here and there, towers
were perched high up on acclivities which seemed almost inaccessible.
This fashion is as old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient
times for security against enemies.

We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that killed Goliah,
and no doubt we looked upon the very ground whereon that noted battle was
fought. We pa