ilding their fortress-towns
on sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of
tillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty,
and they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed.

Our good little horses are shod with round plates of iron, and they
clatter noisily among the loose stones and slip on the rocky ledges, as
we strike over the hills from Capernaum, without a path, to join the
main trail at Khan Yubb Yusuf.

We are skirting fields of waving wheat and barley, but there are no
houses to be seen. Far and wide the sea of verdure rolls around us,
broken only by ridges of grayish rock and scarped cliffs of reddish
basalt. We wade saddle-deep in herbage; broad-leaved fennel and
trembling reeds; wild asparagus and artichokes; a hundred kinds of
flowering weeds; acres of last year's thistles, standing blanched and
ghostlike in the summer sunshine.

The phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,--the
latest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning.
It is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim
fails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal
himself, and after establishing His kingdom, will set out to conquer the
world.

But it is not to the city, shining like a flake of mica from the
greenness of the distant mountain, that our looks and thoughts are
turning. It is backward to the lucent sapphire of the Lake of Galilee,
upon whose shores our hearts have seen the secret vision, heard the
inward message of the Man of Nazareth.

Ridge after ridge reveals new outlooks toward its tranquil loveliness.
Turn after turn, our winding way leads us to what we think must be the
parting view. Sleeping in still, forsaken beauty among the sheltering
hills, and open to the cloudless sky which makes its water like a little
heaven, it seems to silently return our farewell looks with pleading for
remembrance. Now, after one more round among the inclosing ridges,
another vista opens, the widest and the most serene of all.

Farewell, dear Lake of Jesus! Our eyes may never rest on thee again; but
surely they will not forget thee. For now, as often we come to some fair
water in the Western mountains, or unfold the tent by some lone lakeside
in the forests of the North, the lapping of thy waves will murmur
through our thoughts; thy peaceful brightness will arise before us; we
shall see the rose-flush of thy olean