On May 30, Lady Stanhope, after a visit to Bethlehem, village of Judea, over which hover the glad memories of the Christ, where long lines of women defile like shadows, wearing with serene gravity their horned head-dresses and their trailing blue robes, reached St. Jean d'Acre by way of Atlitt beach, on which are engulfed the last vestiges of Pelerin Castle, and Haifa in the shadow of Mount Carmel. The road soon became more frequented. It was marked out by carcases. It seemed a giant abattoir. Dead horses, of which the inhabitants of the town had got rid; camels which had fallen exhausted on returning from a distant journey sick asses despatched on the spot. From this charnel-house issued an acrid and warm odour which turned the stomach. As the caravan passed, clouds of blue flies buzzed by in clusters, and yellow dogs fled growling and watched from a distance these intruders who came to share in their festival banquet. The sun burned with a malicious pleasure these heads half gnawed away, these eviscerated bodies, this greenish flesh. And the old bones, already picked clean by the jackals and washed by the rains, sparkled here and there, like great white flowers on the fields of corruption. CHAPTER V IN THE COUNTRY OF DJEZZAR PACHA AND THE EMIR BECHIR ST. JEAN D'ACRE stretches out into the sea like a greyhound which stretches himself lazily in the sun. The tiny harbour seemed to have been scooped out to satisfy the caprice of some royal child. The mosque, Jama-el-Geydd, darted towards the sky, throwing like an imperious prayer its threatening minaret, and the multitude of the palm-trees crowded around it. And when the evening brought the sea breeze, they lamented and moaned like men, and the hushed waters in their marble fountains wept in distant echo in the sacred court. This mosque was one of the most beautiful of the Syrian coast, the antique debris of Ascalon and Cæsarea having covered with diversified mosaics, porphyry and jade the walls and floor. Amidst the verdure of the inner gardens roamed in a blaze of red and yellow flowers, the basins of painted earthenware, the santons and the tombs. Lady Hester was the guest of Mr. Catafago, a personage in Syria, whom his title of agents of Europeans, his trading and his riches, had rendered celebrated. With his intelligent and keen countenance, his air of authority, his flashing eyes, this man had acquired an extraordinary ascendency over the Arabs and the Turks. It was he who facilitated Lamartine's journey in the Holy Land, and rendered it, if not comfortable, at least possible.