Being in the Holy Land, all the stories I had heard in boyhood came back to me. I thought of Moses's life. I had been taught to obey his commandments, but as a child I saw that he had broken in his own life those which say, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery--had told Aaron, his brother-in-law, to make a golden image, and had got up a trust by means of which he might get all the gold. "Thou shalt do no murder," says the law--but he killed an Egyptian and hid him in the sand. "Thou shalt not commit adultery "--but he committed that sin. And so on to the end. These commandments were taught by the man who had broken every one of them himself. Aaron, who wished to be included in the gold-corner into which Moses had refused him admittance, sought to make money in some other way, and said, "If we are going for forty years into the wilderness, we shall want salt provisions," and so bought up all the hogs he could find, without letting Moses into the corner. Then Moses spoiled the whole game by the law that no Jews should eat pork! In the Holy Land these things all came into my mind. You can imagine how I felt sixteen years after, when arrested and detained for six months in the Tombs for quoting three columns of the Bible (about which I shall speak later). At night I wanted my clergyman companion to gain an idea of night scenes in the East. To make sure that we should not be disturbed, I went to the chief of police for a guide to show us Jerusalem by candle-light. We went into a dark alley, back of Mount Calvary and the Via della Rosa, when the man's movements became suspicious. I could not see why a policeman should be so careful where he went. My object had been to see the demi-monde of Syria. When we got to the door, the policeman tried to shut the door, but I put my foot in the way. I asked MacFarlane if he was armed. He said he had a Madras dagger. MacFarlane was already in the room and I drew him out. "Those are Bedouins," said I; "I could see their pistols and swords." Intuition told me they were murderers. Sixteen persons had been killed in Nablus in '55-'56. The chief of police was the head of the gang. I immediately saw our consul, and there was a meeting of representatives of the foreign powers, and the whole traffic was exposed. In our case they found the men, and after we left they were executed. CHAPTER XVI IN THE CRIMEA 1856 The voyage from Joppa to Constantinople was a succession of surprises, from Latokea to Lanarca, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Smyrna. At Beyrout we were the guests of a pasha, the leading man of the place. Henry Kennard, banker, of Heywood, Kennard & Co., of London, who had joined us in Jerusalem, went with us through Syria and was going as far as the Crimea. MacFarlane was still with our party. We had a day off in Beyrout, and went up to Lebanon, inland, where the cedars seem to antedate the olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.