"The general arrangement of the altars, lamps, and decorations was a constant reminder of Bethlehem, and when the monks began their service we found it was very nearly the same. As soon as the ceremony was over in the grotto it was announced that the hour for service in the church had arrived, and we all went to attend it. The congregation numbered two or three hundred persons, including the twenty-five or thirty Italian and Spanish monks in charge of the convent, and perhaps fifty pilgrims, while the balance was made up of our party and the Latin Christians living at Nazareth. The notes of the organ sounded finely through the old church, and when we remembered that we were on the spot where the Christian world believes the coming of our Saviour was announced to his mother, we were deeply impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. "Let me tell you here the story of the _Santa Casa_, or Holy House, as we heard it from the monks, and as it is told in the history of the Catholic Church since the fifteenth century: "'The house in which Mary lived was carried away by angels, who lifted it from its foundations and bore it away when the infidels conquered the country and began the expulsion of the Christians. They carried it, in A.D. 1291, to the heights overlooking Finme, in Hungary. It rested there about three years, and was then transported to the coast of Italy, where it remained five or six months. A third and last removal occurred in the year 1294 or 1295 to the place where it now stands in the town of Loretto, twelve miles south of Ancona, and three miles from the sea-shore.' Great numbers of pilgrims are said to go there every year to see it, and the building is carefully preserved from injury. The Latin monks believe the story implicitly, and they point out the exact position which the house formerly occupied. "We went from the church to see the house and workshop of Joseph, now fitted up as a chapel, and in possession of the Latins; and then we visited the 'Chapel of the Table of Christ,' where there is a table of solid rock, on which Jesus and his disciples are said to have eaten frequently. From this place we went to the synagogue where he was teaching when the Jews drove him out, and to the rock where they were about to cast him down. From there we went to the Fountain of the Virgin, where the Greeks have their Church of the Annunciation. When we had seen this we were told that the round of the holy places of Nazareth was complete, unless we wished to see the 'Mount of the Precipitation,' about two miles away. "We declined the journey, as there is a great deal of doubt concerning the accuracy of the tradition. Doctor Bronson said we should not miss the view from the hill back of Nazareth, and so we climbed there a little before sunset and had a magnificent prospect. [Illustration: THE COUNTRY NEAR NAZARETH, WITH THE TOWN IN THE DISTANCE.]