menting to each other. We now cross the desert with nearly
as much ease as we hail an omnibus, or book ourselves for Paris. But
such was not the spirit in which Marco Polo, in the thirteenth, century,
traversed the wilderness of Lop.

"In the city of Lop," says the hardy and veracious merchant of
Venice, "they who desire to pass over the desert cause all
necessaries to be provided for them; and when victuals begin to fail
in the desert, they kill their camels and asses and eat them. They
mostly make it their choice to use camels, because they are sustained
with little meat, and bear great burdens. They must purvey victuals
for a month to cross it only, for to go through it lengthways would
require a year's time. They go through the sands and barren
mountains, and daily find water; yet at times it is so little that it
will hardly suffice fifty or a hundred men with their beasts; and in
three or four places the water is salt and bitter. The rest of the
road, for eight-and-twenty days, is very good. In it there are not
either beasts or birds; they say that there dwell many spirits in
this wilderness, which cause great and marvellous illusions to
travellers, and make them perish; for if any stay behind, and cannot
see his company, he shall be called by his name, and so going out of
the way be lost. {94a} In night they hear as it were the noise of a
company, which, taking to be theirs, they perish likewise. Concerts
of musical instruments are sometimes heard in the air, like noise of
drums and armies. {94b} They go therefore close together, hang bells
on their beasts' neck, and set marks, if any stray."

The Hebrews, dispersed over every region of the world, civilized or
uncivilized, were necessarily great travellers. There was, in the first
place, their central connection with Palestine, which they generally
visited once in their lives, and whither thousands of them, as age
advanced, flocked to lay their bones. There were the claims of kindred,
prompting them to seek out and visit the children of dispersion, whether
seated on the banks of the Vistula, the Euphrates, or the Nile; and there
were the incentives of commerce, which drew them through the perils of
land and sea. From the instructions given to their travelling agents in
the medieval period, we derive much curious information respecting the
internal state of Europe. It