_would_ be better! All was gloom, and when at last a messenger was sent off to procure a horse worth £20, the grandees went to their houses with the air of men doomed. Next morning the horse was brought, and was to be seen at the end of the line kicking and biting viciously. Its worth was only £15, but the balance was condoned. We expected that this would draw forth gratitude and even some gladness; but instead it brought them all to tears, and drew from them many assurances of the miserable poverty of their condition, and the inevitable ruin that awaited them if we actually accepted this horse which they had brought. To these pleadings the dragoman was deaf, insisting that we must now at least let things take their course. When they saw that this was the final position of affairs, they ceased from wailing. Within five minutes our own original horse was led into the camp, and their new one removed! Their game had been played to its very last turn, and having failed was laid aside. During the rest of our sojourn there these same men lingered in the camp, manifesting neither regret nor shame, but smoking, chatting, and laughing with our company in the highest possible good-humour. CHAPTER III THE LIE OF THE LAND Every writer about Palestine speaks of the smallness and concentration of the land, yet these take the best informed by surprise. It is “the least of all lands” indeed, when one thinks how much has happened in it. Leaving Jaffa at 10 A.M., the steamer reaches Beyrout at 6 P.M. The passengers in that short sail have seen the whole of Palestine. National life there is a miniature rather than a picture. In a stretch of country equal to that between Aberdeen and Dundee you cover the whole central ground of the Bible, from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem. In a ride equal to the distance from London to Windsor there may be seen enough to interpret many centuries of the world’s supreme history. The Dead Sea is but 50 miles from the Mediterranean, the Sea of Galilee about 25 miles; while the distance in miles between the two seas is only 55. Yet in that little land there is every kind of soil, from mere sand and broken limestone to rich red and chocolate loam. It is a mountainous country throughout, and its inhabitants are a race of Highlanders. So numerous are its mountain spurs that you may pass up and down the centre of the country for scores of miles, and yet never catch sight of the sea, though you constantly feel it in the breeze. Everything is there--the gorge, the wide sweeping valley, the great plain, the rolling tableland. It is, indeed, a land in miniature, the _multum in parvo_ of lands. Its history and religion, like its natural features, are crushed together and compact. The epigram is the only form of speech that can express it.