Of such a character are nearly all of his cures. The supernatural element of the later period, where everything is fantastic, is still absent from the Rabbi legends. There is always an attempt made to combine the wonderful with the real, or rather to transfer the real into the realm of the miraculous. The later stories of miracle-working pursue the opposite course: they engraft the most extraordinary impossibilities on the experiences of everyday life. Rambam's travels have also given rise to a large number of semi-mythical journeys. One of the legends tells of his sojourn in Algiers, where he incurred the hatred of the Mussulmans for having decided that an oil-vat had become impure because a Mohammedan had touched it, whereas another vat into which a weed had fallen was pronounced by him to be ritually pure. Knowing that his life was in danger, he escaped to Egypt, making the voyage in less than half an hour by means of a miraculous document that he took with him and that had the power of destroying space. In Cairo he became the chief adviser of the king, and he later managed to save the country from the visitation of the Algerian minister, who had come there ostensibly to pursue the fugitive Rambam, but in reality to lay Egypt waste by his magical arts. The most interesting stories that still belong to that cycle are those that have developed in Slavic countries. Out of the large material that was furnished them by the German cities, in conjunction with the new matter with which they became familiar in their new homes, they have moulded many new stories in endless variety. The number of local legends is unlimited. There is hardly an inn on the highways and byways of Western Russia and Galicia that has not its own circle of wonderful tales. Every town possesses its remarkable Rabbi whose memory lives in the deeds that he is supposed to have performed. But none, except the town of Mesiboz, the birthplace of Bal-schem-tow, the founder of the sect of the Khassidim, can boast of such a complete set of legendary tales as the cities of Wilna and Cracow. In Wilna they will still tell the curious stranger many reminiscences of those glorious days when their Rabbis could arrest the workings of natural laws, and when their sentence was binding on ghosts as well as men. They will take him to the synagogue and show him a large dark spot in the cupola, and they will tell him that during an insurrection a cannon-ball struck the building, and that it would have proceeded on its murderous journey but for the command of the Rabbi to be lodged in the wall. They will take him to a street where the spooks used to contend with humankind for the possession of the houses in which they lived:--the contention was finally referred to the Gaon of Wilna. After careful inquiry into the justice of the contending parties he gave his decision, which is worthy of the wisdom of Solomon: he adjudicated the upper parts of the houses,