With respect to the name of the place, there are many such in the country, and it is a mistake to ridicule the Moslems for believing in all of them as true sites of the large fish vomiting out Jonah, which they do not. These are, I believe, merely commemorative stations, and we are not in the habit of ridiculing Christians for having several churches under the same appellation; also it is not quite certain that all the Welies named after Yunas (Jonas) or Moosa (Moses) do refer to the Old Testament prophets. There have been Mohammedan reputed saints bearing those names. Near this place is a village called _Beni Seheela_. On the return we left behind us the old Hadji Ghaneem, with his brown bayonet, and took a nearer road to Gaza, not so close to the sea as that by which we had left it. It was an easy pleasant ride, and there were barley crops almost all the way. We reached the tents in three hours from Khan Yunas. At sunset, which is the universal dinner time in the east, I went to dine with the Governor Mohammed 'Abdu'l Hadi; it was a miserable degrading scene of gorging the pilaff with the hands and squeezing the butter of it through the fingers, without even water for drink supplied by the servants. The guests were about a dozen in number, and they were crowded so closely round the tinned tray as only to admit of their right arms being thrust between their neighbours, in order to do which the sleeves had to be tucked back; there was but little conversation beyond that of the host encouraging the guests to eat more. Previous to eating, the governor and his younger brother performed their prayers in brief, after experiencing some difficulty in finding the true Kebleh direction for prayer, the rest of the company gossiping around them all the time. Above our heads was suspended a rude copper lamp, and the terrace just outside the door was occupied by slaves and other attendants; boughs of adjoining palms and other trees were softly stirred by an evening breeze, and the imperial moon shone over all. After washing of hands and a short repose, (the other guests smoking of course their chibooks and narghilehs, and chatting upon topics of local interest,) I asked leave, according to Oriental etiquette, to take my departure. _Sunday_, 6_th_.--Read the eighth chapter of Acts in Arabic, and some of our English liturgy in that noble language, with one of my companions. I feel certain, concerning the dispute whether the word [Greek word] (desert) in the twenty-sixth verse of the above chapter, refers to the city or to the road, that the true sense of the passage is this, "Go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza"--_i.e._, the way which is desert or free from towns and villages--as in Matt. iii. 1, and other places where the word in question does not imply the common European idea of any desolate wilderness.