It sounded to us partly like an echo of
ancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of
revenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people
who travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet
camp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were
"humbugs," and an escort of soldiers a nuisance. So we placidly made our
preparations to ride on the morrow, with no other safeguards than our
friendly dispositions and a couple of excellent American revolvers.

But it was no brief _Ausflug_ to Jericho and return that we had before
us: it was the beginning of a long and steady ride, weeks in the saddle,
from six to nine hours a day.

Imagine us then, morning after morning, mounting somewhere between six
and eight o'clock, according to the weather and the length of the
journey, and jingling out of camp, followed at a discreet distance by
Youssouf on his white pony with the luncheon, and Paris on his tiny
donkey, Tiddly-winks. About noon, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes
a little later, the white pony catches up with us, and the tent and the
rugs are spread for the midday meal and the _siesta_. It may be in our
dreams, or while the Lady is reading from some pleasant book, or while
the smoke of the afternoon pipe of peace is ascending, that we hear the
musical bells of our long baggage-train go by us on the way to our
night-quarters.

The evening ride is always shorter than the morning, sometimes only an
hour or two in the saddle; and at the end of it there is the surprise of
a new camp ground, the comfortable tents, the refreshing bath tub, the
quiet dinner by sunset-glow or candle-light. Then a bit of friendly talk
over the walnuts and the "Treasure of Zion"; a cup of fragrant Turkish
coffee; and George enters the door of the tent to report on the
condition of things in general, and to discuss the plan of the next
day's journey.

II

THE GOOD SAMARITAN'S ROAD

It is strange how every day, no matter in what mood of merry jesting or
practical modernity we set out, an hour of riding in the open air brings
us back to the mystical charm of the Holy Land and beneath the spell of
its memories and dreams. The wild hillsides, the flowers of the field,
the shimmering olive-groves, the brown villages, the crumbling ruins,
the deep-blue sky, subdue us to themselves and speak to us "rememberable
things."

We pass down the Valley of the Brook Kidron, where no w