The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islâm. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration. The native Christian is a shrewd business man. He is courteous even to self-effacement. He can work hard, bargain shrewdly, save much, take disappointment and persist. He loves his family dearly. He is humorous, philosophic, a voluble fellow, non-secretive. He respects the Western style of education, largely perhaps because it seems to lift people into an easy life. Ease and grace are Eastern ideals of superiority. If the Moslem and the Christian could be put on the same political footing and justice done to each impartially in court practise and taxation, I firmly believe that they would draw together, that Palestine would in time be a country with a people and that it would be well equipped from among its own with men of ability, competent to do its political and social work. In general it may be said that where the Palestine peasant has not come into relationship with the tourist business in any form, and where he is some little distance from any city, he is naturally simple in his tastes and requirements, interested in novelty, sociable, hospitable, fun-loving, hard-working, though not steady in effort. A lone walker on the road will often sing. Whistling is almost unknown. Peasants make a twenty-mile journey on foot with considerable ease, and half that distance is done very commonly. Distances are always reckoned by them in hours or days, never in miles. They often walk behind their laden animals. Sometimes it is a donkey, bearing the plow and seed-bag or loaded with fagots, grain, sheaves, dried figs or grapes, according to the season. Or it may be a camel similarly laded or carrying stone; or a mule. Seldom are horses used, except by a village shaykh or a city official on the highway. When groups of peasants are on the road there is much talk, often laughter, horse-play, joking, chaffing; sometimes bickering and quarreling.