Off to our right is the Wâdi el-Werd, “The Valley of Roses,” which recalls the quaint tale of Sir John Mandeville. At the left of the road is a well by which Mary is said to have rested on her way to Bethlehem, and in which a few days later the Wise Men found again the reflection of the guiding Star. Some distance further on, near the venerable monastery of St. Elijah, the “Field of Peas” is still strewn with its little, rounded stones. A sudden rise in the road broadens our horizon so that we can see, off to the left and very far below us, the dark blue waters of the Dead Sea. Six or seven miles to the southeast there rises the striking profile of the Frank Mountain, shaped like a truncated pyramid, upon whose platform lie the ruins of Herod’s famous castle. Glimpses of Bethlehem itself are caught now and then between the surrounding heights. We pass the tomb of beautiful, warm-hearted, impulsive Rachel, the sadness of whose lonely burial by the roadside has touched the hearts of passers-by for nearly forty centuries. Here we leave the main road, which goes on southward to Hebron, and turn in to the left to Bethlehem. “David’s Well” has long been identified with a series of cisterns hewn in the rock some distance before we reach the modern city. Somewhere in the fields below us Ruth gleaned among the harvesters of Boaz. Somewhere among those same fields the youthful David tended his father’s sheep. Somewhere above them rang the glad music of the angelic Gloria. Somewhere on the long hilltop, now covered by the white, closely-built houses of the town, the Saviour of the world was born. The heart must be dead to romance as well as to religion, which does not beat with a strange, solemn excitement upon entering the Christmas City. [Illustration: _THE HOUSE OF BREAD_] XIV THE HOUSE OF BREAD Bethlehem Ephrathah, which was once “little to be among the thousands of Judah,” is now one of the largest and wealthiest Christian towns in all Palestine. The Hebrews called it _Beth Lehem_, “the House of Bread”; and its modern Arabic name is no less significant—_Beit Lahm_, “the House of Meat,” that is, of course, the Prosperous City. The soil takes on a greater fertility as Jerusalem is left behind; but we are hardly prepared for the beautiful greenness that is seen when a sudden turn in the road brings into view the two large Christian towns of Beit Jala and Beit Lahm. One is on an eminence to the right of the Hebron road; the other is on an elevation to the left; and they both look very clean and white and well-to-do, in the midst of their vineyards and orchards. [Illustration: BETHLEHEM The massive buildings at the left are all connected with the Church of the Nativity]