As we rise the air becomes purer and fresher. We pass the spot on which David is said to have killed Goliath, and see in the distance the town of Mizpah, where the Prophet anointed Saul king when the latter was out hunting his father’s asses. When we see an old bearded and turbaned Syrian riding along on his donkey, we wonder if he may not be a second Balaam, and we almost expect his donkey to open its mouth and speak to its master. But let me tell you something about the railroad up to Jerusalem. The track is narrow gauge, and the coaches are much like street cars, with little racks for baggage along each side under the roof. Each carriage is divided into compartments the sides of which are walled with windows. The road has no tunnels, and it winds its way in and out as it climbs the hills. There are five stations between Jaffa and Jerusalem. The total cost of the railroad was two million dollars, or a little less than forty thousand dollars per mile. The idea of the road was originated by an American, a civil engineer named Zimpel, who came to Palestine as a pedlar of a patent medicine which he called “Sunlight Pills.” He brought the scheme before the Sultan at Constantinople, but failed to get the concession to build it. After his death the matter was taken up by the French, who put the line through. This was the first railroad built in Syria, and it is the father of a system which is now opening up a great part of the country. One section is the road building from Damascus toward Mecca, and connected with it are others which will eventually join the Holy Land to the valley of the Euphrates, as well as to Asia Minor and Turkey. The rates for both passengers and freight are much higher than in the United States. As it goes up the mountains, the railway twists this way and that. It crawls along the sides of the hills with horseshoe curves here and there. The whole journey is over historic ground. We cross the plains where Samson fought with the Philistines, slaying a thousand of them with the jawbone of an ass. We see the place where he tied the firebrands to the tails of three hundred foxes and let them loose to burn up the harvest. A little farther on we enter the valley of Sorek, where the wicked Delilah cut off the hair of the strong man as he lay asleep in her lap, and away up on the side of the hill we can see the town of Zorah, where Samson was born. At the station of Deir Aban, where Samuel raised his Ebenezer, a crowd of children comes to the trains with bouquets of wild flowers. The boys whine for _baksheesh_. We wonder whether there may not be an infant Samson among them.