Under the guidance of Dr. Patterson, the medical missionary, we visited the famous Mosque, but were only allowed to ascend the five outer steps. This even excited the anger of the wild boys and girls, who spat at us and cursed us as Pagan Franks. From one of the prayer holes in the marvellous outer wall which surrounds the cave of Machpelah we took out a paper, which had been placed there that morning by a Jewish mother. On it was written in a curious Judeo-Arabic dialect a prayer “to our Father Abraham that he would look upon her affliction and intercede with the Lord of Hosts that He would give her sons instead of daughters.” This desire for male children is common throughout Syria. As soon as the first son is born, the father drops his own name and is henceforward known as Abou Yusef—the father of Joseph—as the case may be, while the mother gains the respect and love of her husband in proportion to the number of sons she bears him. Daughters, as a rule, are of no account. We looked with reverence and awe upon the ancestral burial-place of the Patriarchs. True, we could only gaze at the polished outer wall, but we knew that therein “was the one spot of earth which Abraham could call his own.” The pledge which he left of the perpetuity of his interest in “the land wherein he was a stranger” was the sepulchre which he bought with four hundred shekels of silver from Ephron the Hittite. Round this venerable cave the reverence of successive ages and religions has now raised a series of edifices which, whilst they preserve its identity, conceal it entirely from view. But there it still remains. Within the Mussulman mosque, within the Christian church, within the massive stone enclosure built by the kings of Judah, is, beyond any reasonable question, the last resting-place of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebecca, “and there Jacob buried Leah,” and thither, with all the pomp of funeral state, his own embalmed body was brought from the palaces of Egypt.[3] Hebron is a Moslem city containing about 18,000 inhabitants. About 600 Jews dwell in the lower end of the town. Fierce and wild, it is their boast that no Pagan Frank has built his house within their walls nor desecrated their holy shrine with his presence. Whether this bigotry will give place to tolerance under the softening influences exercised by the medical missionaries has yet to be proved. We were told that the people were becoming gradually gentler. To us they seemed fanatical and dangerous. There is no hotel in Hebron for travellers. Thanks to our good friends the missionaries we were able to visit most of the places of interest round about. The neighbourhood abounds in traditions. To the north, a cave is pointed out as having been the abode of Adam and Eve for more than a hundred years. Farther south is the spot where Cain killed Abel, and there in the “Vale of Tears” Adam mourned for his murdered son, and close by the Father of all living was buried.