We shall take carriages for our trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. We start at the Jaffa Gate, next David’s Tower, on the top of Mount Zion, near where, it is claimed, the Crucifixion took place. The gate was widened by the breach in the wall made in honour of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, so all sorts of vehicles can now go through it. As we leave the gate we pass coffee houses where people of a dozen different nationalities are drinking, go by the railroad station, where a puffing locomotive is just in from the Mediterranean, skirt the valley of Hinnom, in which is the Pool of Gihon, where David was anointed, and a little later on stop near the village where King Saul was crowned. The road is excellent. It is of hard limestone walled on each side by limestone fences and backed by green fields now covered with the dust of the highway. The traffic is constant, so that the air is white with dust. It fills our eyes, mouths, and nostrils, and makes us look like millers. We cover our eyes with smoked glasses to keep out the glare. The road is dazzling white, the fences are white, a white dust covers the green of the fields. As we are going toward the south, the sun is full in our faces. It is hot, although a cold wind is blowing over these hills of Judea which whirls the dust around and sends columns of it into the air. Soon after leaving Jerusalem we cross a depression carpeted with green, which is known as the Valley of Roses. Farther on are olive groves, and as we near Bethlehem there are great fields of green. At the left we can see the plain where the young widow Ruth garnered wheat for old Boaz and thus got food and a husband. All the way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem crops are growing. There are signs of increased cultivation, and every bit of available land is being set out in orchards and gardens. I went over the same road twenty-odd years ago. Then the country was bare rocks with bits of grass here and there. To-day the land is divided into fields. The surface rocks have been gathered together and laid up in fences as high as my head. The cleared land is now planted in wheat, corn, and barley. New olive orchards are rising, while many of the old ones still stand. The trunks of the old trees are knotted and gnarled, but the leaves are of green dusted with silver, and I am told they still bear fruit. I photographed one tree not more than thirty feet high which had a trunk as thick as a hogshead and branches which shaded a large tract of ground. The soil of Palestine is as fertile to-day as it was when Joshua led the Israelites across it, and barring the fences, I doubt not the landscape is about the same now as it was when Christ was born. [Illustration: Christmas is long drawn out at Bethlehem. First come the Latin ceremonies on December 25; fourteen days later the Greek Church celebrates; and thirteen days later comes the Armenian feast]