As for their faults, no doubt they are many, but it is not for the passing stranger to attempt an estimate of their character. The most obvious lapses are sins of speech, and one always has the impression that the interpreter is toning down as he translates. One can see that property is insecure, and life by no means so sacred as in the West. One incident brought this home to us vividly. Some of our party had been detained on an exploring excursion till after dark. When we asked a group of natives what could have become of them, the answer was more significant than reassuring, for they pointed with their fingers vertically downwards! It was not so bad as that, however, for we soon heard revolver shots, and answered them. We fired into a field, aiming at a large stack of corn to prevent accidents. Conceive our horror when a silent figure in flowing robes rose from the centre of the stack! He was spending the night there to keep his property from thieves. For the rest, it is their laziness that strikes one most forcibly. Their agriculture is as leisurely as it is primitive. They sit while reaping, and thresh by standing upon boards studded with flints, which oxen draw over the threshing-floors. Their ploughs are but iron-shod sticks which scratch the surface of the field. In outlandish districts they are described as mere savages, but we saw little to justify such a criticism. They are uncompromisingly dirty everywhere, yet their food is simple, and they appear in the main to be healthy enough. At first one’s impression of them is of universal gloom, sulky and contemptuous; but the mood soon changes if you stay among them for a little time, and the knit brows relax to a smiling childishness. * * * * * Of white towns, with a population between 3000 and 3500, there are about a dozen in Palestine, of which, excluding Damascus and Beyrout, the best known are Haifa and Acre, Tyre and Sidon, Tiberias, Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza, Jaffa. They shine from far as you approach them. Some, like Jenin, gleam most picturesquely from among palm trees; others, like Nazareth seen from Jezreel, shew like stars of white in high mountain valleys; and yet others, like Bethshan, appear “like white islands in the mouth of an estuary.” The nearer view of Nazareth, when the hill has been climbed and the town suddenly reveals itself, is one of rare beauty. You are looking down into an oval hollow full of clean and bright houses. Many cypress trees and spreading figs enrich the prospect, and the whole picture is most pleasing. Bethlehem, again, has a picturesqueness that is all its own. Approaching it from the south, the track turns sharply into a valley whose end is entirely blocked by a lofty hill, covered along its whole length with shining white masonry set far up against the sky. It looks trim and newly finished; and one hardly knows whether to be delighted or vexed that Bethlehem should be so workmanlike a place.