Our next day's work was the longest and hardest we had yet had. We were to crowd two days into one. We were well on our way before it was fairly light. We crossed the Jordan on a little stone bridge, and rode straight over the plain to Banias, the Caesarea Philippi of apostolic times. We left our horses in the little village near which the Jordan comes pouring out of a rocky opening in the hills, and, with an Arab boy, hurried at our best pace up the mountain to the magnificent ruins of a mediaeval castle, the finest of its class in the Holy Land. Our Kurd and muleteer were waiting for us as we came down the hill like veritable mountain-goats, and the latter pointed triumphantly to something wrapped in an Arab newspaper under his arm. As soon as we were out of sight of the village he stopped and displayed his prize: it was a chicken, cooked in some unknown but most savory way. It was long since we had eaten anything of the sort, and, leaping to the ground, with the help of a clasp-knife bought in Nablous, the only eating-utensil our party could boast, we bisected our dinner, and, sitting under a gray old gnarled olive, ate it with such expressions of satisfaction as would not be honest, even if allowable, at the grandest civilized banquets. We sprang again into our saddles, crossed again the plain and the bridge over the Jordan, and pushed over the hills toward Deir Mimas. Our horses were used up even more completely than ourselves; and when the Kurd lost the way, and took us a long and unnecessary _détour_, we felt it so keenly that we said nothing. It was long after nightfall when we dismounted at the door of a native Christian preacher's house at Deir Mimas. But the struggles of the day were not ended. The Kurd stalked in, and, saying that here his duties ended, demanded a sum at least a third greater than that agreed upon. We fought him with everything but weapons, and, when we separated, the Kurd's pockets were heavier and his heart lighter than was consistent with the eternal fitness of things. We had only to follow a well-made road the next day to Sidon; and there, as we sat at a table spread with a clean, white cloth, on which were plates, and knives and forks, and cups and saucers, and spoons, we concluded that our roughing it in Palestine had at least convinced us that civilized man makes himself want many convenient if not wholly necessary things. CHARLES WOOD. * * * * * THE EYE OF A NEEDLE.