Yet it was not the Dead Sea that seemed to us most unearthly, but that more famous lake of which one thinks so differently. It would be a curious and instructive task to collect the various impressions which the Sea of Galilee has made upon travellers. Romance and piety conspire to furnish many of its visitors with a predisposition to find it surpassingly beautiful; and not a little could be quoted which owes most of its touches to the imagination of the writer. A natural rebellion against this has led to no less exaggerated expressions of disappointment, and to accusations of ugliness which are simply untrue. The fact is that ordinary canons of description are of no avail here. The Sea of Galilee, even so far as natural appearance goes, must be judged by itself. Journeying to it from Tabor, you ride across a rather characterless tract of country. A jackal, a stray Circassian horseman, a low black tent of the Bedawin, are the only signs of life. Suddenly the track, sweeping up over the farther side of a shallow and rudely cultivated valley, lands you on an unexpected edge, from which the ground falls sheer away before you into the basin of the lake. This is not scenery; it is tinted sculpture, it is jewel-work on a gigantic scale. The rosy flush of sunset was on it when we caught the first glimpse. At our feet lay a great flesh-coloured cup full of blue liquor; or rather the whole seemed some lapidary’s quaint fancy in pink marble and blue-stone. There was no translucency, but an aggressive opaqueness, in sea and shore alike. The dry atmosphere showed everything in sharpest outline, clear-cut and broken-edged. There was no shading or variety of colour, but a strong and unsoftened contrast. To be [Illustration: THE TOMB OF RACHEL. On the road from Jerusalem to Hebron. It is stated in the 35th chapter of Genesis that Rachel died and was buried in the way to Hebron (Ephrath).] quite accurate, there was one break--a splash of white, with the green suggestion of trees and grass, lying on the water’s edge directly beneath us--Tiberias.