In 1891 Hall Caine began to work on "The Scapegoat," and in the spring of that year went to Morocco to fit the scenes to his idea. He suffered there from very bad health, from severe neurosthenia. "I was a 'degenerate,' he says, "à la Nordau." No sooner had "The Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only in case of need; and as an introduction to the possibly hostile Jewish Communities, a letter in Hebrew to be presented to the rabbis in the various towns. Lord's Salisbury's letter was never used, but the chief rabbi's introduction secured him everywhere a most hospitable reception. [Illustration: "BLACK TOM" BEFORE "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH."] "I went through the pale of settlement," he relates, "and saw as much of frontier life amongst the Jews as possible and found them like hunted dogs. I, however, got no further than the frontier towns, for cholera had broken out, numerous deaths took place every day, my own health was getting queer, and, to speak plainly, I was frightened. So we turned our faces back and returned home. On my return to London I delivered a lecture before the Jewish Workmen's Club in the East End, in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget the enthusiasm of the audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was subjected." This was the only use that Hall Caine ever made of all his experiences of his tour in Russia in 1892, which had lasted many months, for when he returned to Cumberland to write the story which was to be called "The Jew," he found the task impossible. "I worked very hard at it, I turned it over in every direction in my mind, but I felt I could not do it. I wanted the experience of a life; I could not enter into competition in their own field with the great Russian novelists. I found it could not be done." THE WRITING OF "THE MANXMAN." In the meanwhile, circumstances had obliged him to give up Castlerigg Cottage in disgust, and he accordingly removed to the Isle of Man, with the determination of fixing his residence there definitely. For the first six months he lived at Greeba Castle, a very pretty but very lonely house, about half-way between Peel and Douglas, on the Douglas road--and it was there that most of "The Manxman" was written.