n which
guides us is a glimpse of white walls and red roofs, high on a shoulder
of the Galilean hills: the outlying houses of Nazareth, where the boy
Jesus dwelt with His parents after their return from the flight into
Egypt, and was obedient to them, and grew in wisdom and stature, and in
favour with God and men.

II

THEIR OWN CITY NAZARETH

Our camp in Nazareth is on a terrace among the olive-trees, on the
eastern side of a small valley, facing the Mohammedan quarter of the
town.

This is distinctly the most attractive little city that we have seen in
Palestine. The houses are spread out over a wider area than is usual in
the East, covering three sides of a gentle depression high on the side
of the Jebel es-Sikh, and creeping up the hill-slopes as if to seek a
larger view and a purer air. Some of them have gardens, fair white
walls, red-tiled roofs, balconies of stone or wrought iron. Even in the
more closely built portion of the town the streets seem cleaner, the
bazaars lighter and less malodorous, the interior courtyards into which
we glance in passing more neat and homelike. Many of the doorways and
living-rooms of the humbler houses are freshly whitewashed with a
light-blue tint which gives them an immaculate air of cleanliness.

The Nazarene women are generally good looking, and free and dignified in
their bearing. The children, fairer in complexion than is common in
Syria, are almost all charming with the beauty of youth, and among them
are some very lovely faces of boys and girls. I do not mean to say that
Nazareth appears to us an earthly paradise; only that it shines by
contrast with places like Hebron and Jericho and Nablus, even with
Bethlehem, and that we find here far less of human squalor and misery to
sadden us with thoughts of

"What man has made of man."

The population of the town is about eleven or twelve thousand, a quarter
of them Mussulmans, and the rest Christians of various sects, including
two or three hundred Protestants. The people used to have rather a bad
reputation for turbulence; but we see no signs of it, either in the
appearance of the city or in the demeanour of the inhabitants. The
children and the townsfolk whom we meet in the streets, and of whom we
ask our way now and then, are civil and friendly. The man who comes to
the camp to sell us antique coins and lovely vases of iridescent glass
dug from the tombs of Tyre and Sidon, may be an inveterate humbug, but
his man