E left Port Said as the afternoon shadows were lengthening, and went out into the open seas with some misgivings. The weather had been stormy, and heavy dark clouds were banking up against the Syrian skies. A visit to Palestine depends altogether upon the weather, for there are no harbors on the coast, and Jaffa, where we were to land, is an open roadstead difficult to enter even in the best of weather. There was some anxiety during the night as to whether we could land at all, and unless Jaffa proved to be in a hospitable mood, we should have to abandon the Syrian coast and steam toward Smyrna. The idea of a visit to the East without setting our feet on the Holy Land was not to be endured, and when Strong, who was the officer of the ship especially in charge of the weather, reported in his quiet sen

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tentious way, late in the evening, that the clouds were vanishing, that we should see the Palestine shores shortly after dawn, and see them in a clear sea, there was a general feeling of satisfaction. We had been doing a good deal of Bible reading and revision of our Testaments, to be sure of our sacred ground, and when after breakfast we came on deck and saw the low brown shore of Palestine, we looked upon it with reverence, and our gratitude was abundant when we also saw that the ocean beneath was as calm as a millpond, and knew that it was easy to land.

We steamed slowly toward the shore, watching every line and feature of the coast as it came into view. Jaffa welcomed us from her hilly seat. She seemed an overpacked town, thrown upon the sea-shore. But even Jaffa has now a noble place in the world's history, for her fame was green long before Europe felt the touch of civilization. At her wharves Solomon gathered his cedars from Lebanon. From her shores Simon Peter embarked when he went out to preach Christ and his crucifixion to the world. When we were told that the morning we arrived was the only morning for weeks that had known a calm sea, there was no disposition to murmur at the rain, which

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came in soft-flowing showers. Mr. Hardegg, our consul, came on board. Mr. Hardegg is an American citizen of German descent, who came to Palestine under the inspiration of a religious conviction that it was necessary for Christian people to occupy the Holy Land. This enterprise did not flourish, and Mr. Hardegg devoted himself to hotel keeping, and gave us welcome to one of the most pleasant hotels in the East. About eleven o'clock in the morning we landed. The Turkish Government for the cost of one of the Constantinople palaces could make a comfortable and safe harbor, but this is not Turkish policy, and among the theories which animate this strange people is that the surest way to protect a coast like that of Syria is to make access dangerous. The shore is marked by a series of jagged irregular rocks, against which the breakers dash, and it requires all the expertness of practiced boatmen to shoot between them. We were taken on the "Vandalia's" boat, the crew pulling their measured stately stroke. I would much rather, in a sea, trust myself to the Arab boatmen, who wabble about their huge clumsy boats with a skill which does not belong to man-of-war discipline. But we shot through the rocks, and came to the greasy stone steps, which were filled with howling Arabs. There was some difficulty in making our way through the greasy mob, and Mr. Hardegg was compelled to address them in tones of authority and menace; but in time we made our entrance, and walked into Jaffa through one of the dirtiest streets in the world.

Our home with Mr. Hardegg was in the suburbs of the town. The rain had increased the discomforts of the street. But the sensation of being on the holy soil of Palestine, of walking under the walls of a town sacred to all who believe in Christian teachings, made us think lightly of the mud through which we trudged. The consul lives in a little settlement that looks like one of our Western railway towns. Here was the Kansas order of architecture, which was homelike in its homeliness. These houses are all that remain of a movement that took its rise in New England some years ago, a movement based upon the belief that the way to follow Christ was to come and occupy

Palestine. The Bible is sprinkled with texts that justified this enterprise, and our New England friends came and camped in Jaffa. They built houses, planted orange trees, and one would suppose that upon soil so fertile and in a climate so mild there would have been a practical success-the achievement of material benefits something like what the Mormons achieved in Utah. But the colony did not thrive. There is something in Turkish rule that would stifle even New England thrift, and those in charge of the colony seem to have been dreamy and light-headed

-lacking in the strong, mighty governing sense which enabled Brigham Young to turn his wilderness into a garden. Having come all the way to Palestine to see the second coming of our Lord, our feather-brained fellow countrymen thought that it would do no harm to sit down and wait, feeling that there would be money enough for all expenses. when the Lord did come. So the movement went into bankruptcy, poverty, want, almost starvation; and our Government had to reach out its arms and bring the wandering saints home again. One or two of the original members of the colony still live here. Mr. Floyd, whom we were afterward to know as our guide in Jerusalem, an active and intelligent man, keeps his house and manages tourist parties through the Holy Land. But the movement has vanished, and all that remain are a few wooden houses with a familiar New England look, and some groves of orange trees, which were in full leaf and fruit, and brightened up with an imperial coloring the landscape under our chamber windows.

We made a pilgrimage through the mud and the narrow,