These are the robbers against whom we have to be protected. They are numerous along this route, and I repeat that without the government guards it would be impossible to escape them. And yet our guards are a part and parcel of the same clan, who would have robbed us if we had not employed them. We pay the guards so much, and it is a fact that they divide spoils with the Brigands! It is a kind of division of labor. The robbers infest the road, making the way dangerous, so that travelers will be compelled to employ protectors, and then the protectors and robbers share and share alike in the profits of the business. It is strange, and yet as true as strange, that the government itself is in league with highwaymen! A certain sheik, here, pays the Turkish government so much money each year for the privilege of robbing travelers! If Peter the Hermit could come forth from his tomb, he would speak these words in Europe: “where hearing would hatch them.” I am sure that his words against the Turkish government would “murder as they fell.” This is enough to arouse another “Crusade for Freedom in Freedom’s Holy Land.” “How long, O Cataline, wilt thou thus continue to abuse our patience!” The country has been dreary and the road rough from the beginning of the journey, but it grows worse as we continue. We now see nothing but a succession of deep gorges, stony ridges, and rocky peaks. Imagine a thousand tea-cups turned bottom upwards, separated by a thousand deep wadys and narrow ravines, the cups, some of them, rising to the height of several hundred feet, and the yawning chasms sinking to an enormous depth, and you have a picture of what now greets my eyes. I suppose that this mountain side once supported a luxuriant forest, and that afterwards it rewarded the yeoman’s toil with abundant harvests. But ages ago the hillside ditches were neglected; hence gutters were formed, the soil was washed off, fertility gave way to barrenness, beauty to deformity. Of course the ravines have from age to age washed deeper and deeper, until now nothing is left but deep, winding chasms, bare and desolate hills. The road winds around here and there like a serpent. Now it hangs high on the bluff upon a narrow shelf of rock, which projects over the valley. Johnson and Hamlin dismount. They know that one false step would dash them to death. With more of daring than wisdom I shout to them: “I wish your horses swift and sure of foot. And so I do commend you to their backs.” [Illustration: VIEW ON ROAD FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO.] We now descend into the valley, only to rise again, and skirt along the bluff where the narrow road is cut into the rock.