These traditions are not easily collected, partly because of the distrust which the peasants show towards strangers, partly from their fear of the displeasure of the saint, partly because such stories are considered rather the women’s business; in many cases the real history is, however, evidently forgotten, and the peasant answers that it is “from ancient times,” and that he worships because his father and grandfather did so before him. Such forgetfulness or ignorance as to the origin of certain Mukâms is universal among the peasantry, and I have been assured by those best acquainted with the natives that it is genuine. There is a difference in intelligence between inhabitants of different districts, and in different grades of peasant society, but even the least ignorant know scarcely anything, while the cowherds and goatherds are very little better than brute beasts. There was something almost pathetic in the childish confidence which the poor peasants seemed to repose in the wisdom and power of the English. Habîb told one man that the English would some day take the country, and that then the poor would be made rich; and his listener actually believed that, because he was the poorest, he would be made king of the district. Another Fellah said he had heard that the French had bought the sea; a third thought that we were going to take away the ground in boxes. Most of the peasantry believed we were seeking for hid treasure, which by incantation would be wafted to England; and some supposed that we were parcelling out the land, and erecting cairns on the high mountains where the chief men would build their houses. Sometimes they dug for gold under our cairns; often they pulled them down, and had in consequence to be imprisoned. A shepherd in Galilee saw us levelling, and had a vague idea we were making a railway. “Will you let the sea into Jordan?” he asked; “or will the steamships go on wheels?” Such are a few instances of common Fellah ideas. The peasantry could hardly believe that in England there were no Arabs living in tents, and no camels; and they supposed that though Christians might be more numerous there than among themselves, still the majority of the population in every European country must be Moslem. Belief in the supernatural powers of certain persons of superior sanctity is not confined, among the peasantry, to the dead. Many living saints are also recognised in Palestine. Thus we heard of a man who fell into a well, and called on a famous living Wely or “favourite of God” at Jaffa; a hand, he said, pulled him out, and on going to the house of the Wely, the latter declared he had heard him some ten miles off, and had assisted him. The peasants are naturally prone to believe the marvellous, and such stories are devoutly credited.