Here is our new friend, the dragoman George Cavalcanty, known as "Telhami," the Bethlehemite, standing beside us in the shelter of the orange-trees: a trim, alert figure, in his belted suit of khaki and his riding-boots of brown leather. "Is everything ready for the journey, George?" "Everything is prepared, according to the instructions you sent from Avalon. The tents are pitched a little beyond Latrun, twenty miles away. The horses are waiting at Ramleh. After you have had your mid-day breakfast, we will drive there in carriages, and get into the saddle, and ride to our own camp before the night falls." _A PSALM OF THE DISTANT ROAD_ _Happy is the man that seeth the face of a friend in a far country: The darkness of his heart is melted in the rising of an inward joy._ _It is like the sound of music heard long ago and half forgotten: It is like the coming back of birds to a wood that winter hath made bare._ _I knew not the sweetness of the fountain till I found it flowing in the desert: Nor the value of a friend till the meeting in a lonely land._ _The multitude of mankind had bewildered me and oppressed me: And I said to God, Why hast thou made the world so wide?_ _But when my friend came the wideness of the world had no more terror: Because we were glad together among men who knew us not._ _I was slowly reading a book that was written in a strange language: And suddenly I came upon a page in mine own familiar tongue._ _This was the heart of my friend that quietly understood me: The open heart whose meaning was clear without a word._ _O my God whose love followeth all thy pilgrims and strangers: I praise thee for the comfort of comrades on a distant road._ II GOING UP TO JERUSALEM I "THE EXCELLENCY OF SHARON" You understand that what we had before us in this first stage of our journey was a very simple proposition. The distance from Jaffa to Jerusalem is fifty miles by railway and forty miles by carriage-road. Thousands of pilgrims and tourists travel it every year; and most of them now go by the train in about four hours, with advertised stoppages of three minutes at Lydda, eight minutes at Ramleh, ten minutes at Sejed, and unadvertised delays at the convenience of the engine. But we did not wish to get our earliest glimpse of Palestine from a car-window, nor to begin our travels in a mechanical way. The first taste of a journey often flavours it to the very end.