lumber for houses, and forthwith
sailed for the Holy Land at the head of his followers, intending to sow
and reap and prepare for the coming of the nations at the millennium,
supposed by the colonists to be near at hand. Such people are apt to be
useful so long as their enthusiasm lasts, whatever the motives which
prompt them. This even the Turks could see; and a firman had been
procured without difficulty, enabling them to erect their houses and to
lease and cultivate a certain portion of land, planting American
seed-wheat and maize where before grew only _gran turco_, barley,
sesamum and anise.

Thus it came about that there was to be seen the curious contrast of
staring Yankee frame houses and a regulation "meeting-house" peeping
over the orange-groves of Jaffa. Yankee-built farm-wagons passed along
the dusty cactus-hedged lanes in company with panniered donkeys and
laden camels, while Yankee forms and voices were daily seen and heard in
the filthy narrow streets of the old town itself. I wonder how much
these simple, homely people knew of Roman assaults and massacres or of
Napoleon's butcheries enacted on the very ground where their
hearthstones were laid? Not much, I fancy. And it was hard to get them
to talk freely or connectedly on any subject. In fact, their experience
had not been happy; and by this time the Plain of Sharon was dust and
ashes to them, and "their dolls were stuffed with sawdust." Some of the
younger members of the community did confess to a passing knowledge of
Jonah and the whale, and of the ships which brought the cedar of Lebanon
to the port where their lot was cast; but they seemed as much at sea as
Jonah was when the Crusades were mentioned. At any rate, here was this
American-born community ploughing this historic soil, most of the
members of which had never been fifty miles from home before they took
this great blind leap into the dark.

I never knew just how much Adams believed in himself and his mission. On
a previous visit, while all was still _couleur de rose_ with the colony,
I had asked him how he proposed to keep order among his flock and to
settle the disputes and difficulties which must inevitably arise. "Why,
sir," he answered, "we have no disputes; but should any arise, I, with
the elders, will sit and judge them in the gate, just as in Bible
times--just as was done right here twenty-five centuries ago."

We found matters sadly changed since our visit of the year before. It