I travelled over a part of the Mecca road on my way from the Holy Land north to Damascus. Leaving Tiberias in the early morning, I was rowed by four lusty Syrians across the Sea of Galilee to Semakh, which is the station on the lower end of that sea and the place where a branch line runs off to Haifa. From there northward we skirted the east side of the Sea of Galilee, passing the hills upon which our Saviour preached. We rode up the valley of the Yarmuk, a stream almost as large as the Jordan, which loses itself in the Jordan farther south. We climbed the foothills of Lebanon, and at about three thousand feet above the surface of the Sea of Galilee reached the rich plain of Hauran, the great bread basket of the Bedouins. It grows wheat and other grain, and the land near the track was covered with poppies, golden daisies, and wild red hollyhocks. [Illustration: The students of the American University at Beirut number nearly a thousand, and, whether Christian, Jew, or Moslem, must study the Bible] [Illustration: The stones for the Tuberculosis Hospital at Juneh had to be carried up one at a time on the backs of camels] [Illustration: From Beirut and its vicinity come nearly all of the Syrian immigrants to the United States. Most of them are Christians and many of them have felt the influence of the American University, the centre of advanced thought in the Near East] We could see Bedouin camps everywhere. These nomads live in brown tents so low that the people have to stoop to get in. Outside each little group of tents was an inclosure for the stock, and on the lands near by cattle and camels were grazing. As we travelled we could see great flocks of black goats feeding on the sides of the Lebanon Mountains. They hung to the cliffs, looking much like flies on the wall. There were also droves of black cattle and many flocks of fat-tailed white sheep. The cars were crowded with Turks, Syrians, and Bedouins, but on the advice of a friend I gave the conductor a dollar, and in return had a compartment all to myself. _Baksheesh_ will do anything in Syria. As Shammas, my guide, puts it: “The franc is the wheel upon which the world goes round.” This road to Damascus, beginning with the branch line to Haifa, skirts the edge of Mount Carmel, where Elijah lived in a cave and where he contended with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and caused their destruction. It goes up the plain of Esdraelon, where the fair Jezebel lived and over which Jehu galloped to Jezreel on his race for the throne. It takes you in plain sight of Mount Tabor and under the hills of Nazareth where the Saviour’s boyhood and young manhood were spent. It crosses the spot where Jael was camping when Sisera came and she lulled him to sleep to drive the tent peg into his forehead. Then it goes on up to Damascus over a route which was probably travelled by Abraham, David, and Solomon, and by St. Paul when he was blinded by the great light.