in this book. If the reader will call at the
circulating library and mention my name, he will be furnished with books
which will afford him the fullest information concerning Jaffa.

So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did not make it for
the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascinating aspects of nature, for
we should have been disappointed--at least at this season of the year. A
writer in "Life in the Holy Land" observes:

"Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear to
persons accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers, ample
streams and varied surface of our own country, we must remember that
its aspect to the Israelites after the weary march of forty years
through the desert must have been very different."

Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is "monotonous and
uninviting," and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as being
otherwise.

Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be
the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are
unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a
feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and
despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a
vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant
tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or
mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every
feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no
enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.

Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush
of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the
far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like
much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem,
Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots
would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a
limitless desolation.

Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a
curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where
Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now
floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over
whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead
--about whose b