The tower in which the travellers were lodged was within the circuit of the remains of a noble building, constructed by the templars, or the knights of St John, who long defended this bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem against the infidel soldans of Egypt. The first morning of quarantine was spent walking and smoking on the terraced roof of a large arched hall, once a dormitory, or a hospital of the Christian soldiery, now tenanted by a small body of irregular cavalry. As Mohammed Ali was, according to the established system of his Arabic empire, cheating them out of their pay, they were eager to hire their horses to our travellers for the journey to Jerusalem. There captain, aspiring to the profits of a muleteer, contrasted with the fierce templar of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe as the trading monarch, Mohammed Ali, forms an antithesis to the generous Saladin. The terrace overlooked a delightful country, and Sidney felt positively pleased that the restraint of quarantine compelled him to be idle. Before him was spread a rich cultivated plain, closely covered with olive trees, and bounded by a range of hills, crowned by the peak of Sampson's mount, rising prominent over the rest of the chain. The long waving branches of palm trees scattered about in every direction, the trains of loaded camels arriving and departing, and the active population in constant movement round the town, gave Gaza the air of a flourishing place. But though Sidney found great pleasure in contemplating this scene, seated on his carpet, pipe in hand, and Achmet expressed in a variety of languages his delight at smoking the pipe of repose, after quitting the saddle of fatigue, neither the scene nor the repose appeared to produce a tranquillising effect on the mind of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. That gentleman displayed the extreme of impatience at his confinement, and spent hour after hour in vain exhortations to Sidney, to make some endeavours to be released from imprisonment. Failing with Sidney, he had even attempted to move Achmet. It was all useless: Sidney had not gazed on green trees, gardens, and human beings for some days, nor had Achmet smoked a pipe of repose since he had quitted the valley of the Nile; so the one could do nothing but contemplate, and the other nothing but smoke.