I left Jerusalem in a carriage, going out through the Damascus Gate, crossing the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and skirting the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. My carriage was an easy victoria drawn by three Arabian horses, and the coachman was a Syrian Jehu with hair as red and a face as fair as my own. I had a soldier with me to keep off the robbers. He was furnished by the government of Jerusalem at a cost of three dollars and was under the direct command of the sheik here at Jericho. This soldier carried a gun and sword, and went ahead, nominally to clear the road. Every party I met on the way, including a company of hunters from Jerusalem on their way for game in the lands beyond the Jordan, had an escort of soldiers. I stopped at Bethany to look at Lazarus’s tomb, and was reminded of how Mark Twain said that he would “rather sleep in the tomb than in any other house in the place.” The Bethany of to-day is a dirty, ragged village of forty or fifty stone huts inhabited by perhaps three hundred people. The houses stand on the side of a hill, rising one over the other. The people are small farmers who cultivate patches of stony land and little orchards of olives and figs. They have cows and make butter for Jerusalem. They are all Mohammedans, and their children call out for _baksheesh_. Entering the town, I took a look at the tomb. It is a sort of cavern cut out of limestone and entered by steep steps. It belongs to the Franciscan monks, who often say mass there. The house of Mary and Martha, where Christ stopped, is said to have been in an inclosure now full of brambles and wild cactus. There is no building left, although the guides point out a pile of stones which they say was once a part of the wall. On the way to Bethany I was shown the site of the fig tree which was cursed by the Saviour and thereafter never bore fruit. There are many fig trees about, and orchards of them are to be found in most parts of the Holy Land. It was on the road to Bethany that Christ is said to have mounted the colt which carried him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Shortly after I left Bethany I saw a curious sight by the roadside. This was a man leaning backward over a great gray boulder and rubbing himself violently upon it. There were some stones on top of the rock and I observed that the man added another stone to the pile and that he kissed the rock as he left. I asked my guide the secret of his actions. He replied: “That stone is called the Father of Rocks, and it is said to be a sure cure for backache. The people here think that any one so afflicted will be cured if he can rub his sore back against it.” [Illustration: Tradition says that by a miracle the prophet Elisha purified the waters of this fountain. Excavations on the hillside above have uncovered the foundations of the old city walls of Jericho, over which Rahab let down the two spies of Joshua]