Picking our way through a tortuous labyrinth of dismal alleys, we found our tents pitched outside the town. The camping ground is a spot of rare beauty. The Mediterranean, of a clear crystalline blue, studded with white sails, rolls up upon the beach. The long coast-line of Philistia runs north and south. Groves of orange, lemon, citron, fig, and pomegranate, vineyards and gardens, the produce of which is famous throughout Syria, form a broad belt round the city. The plain of Sharon, bright with verdure and enamelled with flowers, stretches inland. The mountains of Ephraim, blue against the eastern sky, form a beautiful frame for a lovely picture. It was easy to understand how a name meaning “the beautiful” should have been borne by the town for three thousand years. The traditional house of Simon the Tanner furnishes, from its flat roof, a fine point of view for this charming scene. And there is reason to believe that the tradition is not far wrong. The house is “by the sea-side;”[4] the waves beat against the wall of its courtyard. An ancient well, fed by a perennial spring, furnishes the water needful for the tanner’s trade; and tanneries of immemorial antiquity probably go back to the time of Peter’s visit or even earlier. The vision here vouchsafed to the Apostle gains a new appropriateness on this spot. Joppa has always been the port of Jerusalem. It is, indeed, the only port of Southern Palestine. Thence “the ships of Tarshish” were seen coming and going. The “isles of Chittim” (Cyprus) lie just below the horizon. It was the point at which the Jewish and Gentile world came into contact. Peter looking out over the waters of “the Great Sea” towards Greece and Rome, where the gospel was to win its greatest victories, would be at no loss to apply the lesson taught by the vision. The history of Tabitha is fondly remembered by the people of Joppa. Tabitha or Dorcas (_i.e._ the gazelle) is partly a personal name—partly a term of endearment. An annual festival is still celebrated on the 25th of May, when the young people go out into the orange-groves around the town and spend the day in a sort of pic-nic, singing hymns and ballads in her honour. In modern times Jaffa has acquired a sad notoriety from the infamous massacre of his prisoners, and the alleged poisoning of his plague-stricken troops by Napoleon Bonaparte. The spot is yet pointed out where, amongst the sand-hills on the beach, four thousand Turkish and Albanian troops, who had surrendered as prisoners of war, were shot down in cold blood. [Illustration: JAFFA FROM THE SEA.]