As the ship approached the Holy Land the people broke out into prayers, and in some cases into tears. It is a religious pilgrimage for them and they think, I doubt not, that in making it they are coming nearer to heaven. We had our first view of the shores of Palestine at seven o’clock in the morning, after a night on the steamer. We had been awakened at six with the cry that we were nearing shore, but this was a ruse of the captain to get breakfast out of the way before landing. When I came up on deck nothing but the sea was in sight. The sun was about two hours high and the sky, a light blue with long streaks of fleecy white drawn like a half-veil over it, curved down into the ocean at the eastern horizon. As I looked I saw two lines of hazy gray rise up out of the water, which rippled in sapphire wavelets, caught by the sun. The first line was the sandy beach that edges the rich plains of Sharon and the second the wall of smoky gray which marks the hills of Judea or the highlands of Palestine. As we came nearer, these lines increased in size, until the first turned to dazzling white sand, out of which a little later the wooded green strip marking the port of Jaffa came into view. Nearer still we could see the shipping in the harbour, and above and behind it the walls of this, one of the oldest towns of the world. We get some idea of the age of Jaffa from the story of Jonah; for the Bible says that it was from here Jonah took passage upon the ship from which he was thrown into the sea into the mouth of the whale. He remained in the whale’s belly for three days, during which time he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord spake to the whale, whereupon he was vomited out upon dry land. Jonah was born about eight hundred and fifty years before Christ. He was a baby when, according to some authorities, Homer was telling the story of the Iliad, and a hundred years had yet to elapse before the founding of Rome. I am not sure as to the exact spot where Jonah was taken up by the sailors and thrown into the sea, but he is said to have been buried not far from Jerusalem, and there are dragomans who will show you his tomb. Ever since Jonah’s time sailors have been superstitious about having preachers along, thinking that such passengers bring bad luck to a ship. [Illustration: These brickmakers work under a taskmaster to-day just as the Israelites toiled under the lash in this spot nearly four thousand years ago. Here was built Bubastis, the ancient Egyptian city sacred to the worship of the Cat] [Illustration: We go ashore in small boats at the city of Jonah, which rises almost straight out of the water—but we see no whales] [Illustration: The best view of Jaffa is had from the roof of the House of Simon the tanner where St. Peter had the vision which led to the preaching of Christ to the Gentiles]