Glorious breezy weather with flying cloud shadows. Again eight hours in the saddle, but the Sunday rest has made me quite fresh again. We passed to-day through the hill country of Manasseh. After riding a mile or two out of Nablous our "flying column" came running up on foot to the dragoman in front to ask what was to be done with a poor little stowaway who had begged him to let him ride the baggage horse to escape from his unhappy home. "His mother was dead and his stepmother beat him." He looked so piteous perched up on the bags, but, of course, we could not kidnap him, and after receiving some money he was put gently down on the roadside. As we rode on we got a last sight of him on the green bank swaying to and fro in his desolate grief, his gown making a little pink dot in the vast landscape. Our mid-day halt was at a fountain in a fig country, and there we talked to the women and girls who were filling their pitchers. One showed me by signs how the figs were a failure this year, the young figs all falling off their stalks before ripening. Her patient acceptance of the inevitable reminded me of the Italian peasants and their "_Pazienza, è la volontà di Dio!_" Then we deflected to the left on our journey to visit Sebaste, where St. John is supposed to have been beheaded, and with great probability. The Crusaders built a magnificent Church to his memory there, the ruins of which are very grand. We rode to the site of the gates of the city, along a path lined with classic pillars, and at the end of this avenue we saw the sea, and where Cæsarea, the harbour of Sebaste, once stood. Our camp that evening was at Ain Jenin, an ideal Eastern town. I was not prepared for anything so beautiful as it looked in the evening light, when we emerged in sight of it from a defile between hills. We were well in the Plain of Jezreel, and lo! Hermon at last! In the light of the after-glow we beheld his hoary head from our tents, to the north. Tender moonlight succeeded the after-glow. All the mosques and minarets were lighted up with delicate golden lamps at sunset (for it is Ramadan), as at Jerusalem and Nablous. This place is full of pomegranate trees, with their scarlet blossoms, and of flowering tamarisk. _Tuesday, 21st April._