There were few arrangements to make; a passport I possessed; it was but necessary to provide myself with a document called a “tezkere i ubūrī,” a travelling passport in Turkish, issued by the police. So having obtained an order from the Consul, I found my way to a collection of huts, called the “Eski Zaptié,” in Stamboul, and after running from hovel to hovel in order to interview numerous effendis, whose duties apparently consisted of making marks upon the application form, I was suddenly presented with the document from an unsuspected corner of a dirty courtyard. The writer was absolutely unaware of my existence in the building, nevertheless I found myself described in Turkish as of medium height, dark-haired, and beardless, with black moustache, all fairly accurate--last and most, of the “Protestant” religion. I was to pass during most of my journey as a Muhammadan, and here I found at the outset all my plans checked by a Turkish clerk who described me in his fatuous passport as a Protestant. Naturally enough I protested, and vigorously, against the right of these omniscient police clerks to brand me as of any sect or creed; but they were mildly astonished at my objections, and could not be brought to see any point except that all Turks were Musulman, all Armenians “Kristiāan,” all French “Kātūlīk,” and all English and Americans “Purūtestān.” They but regarded these as the religious names of the nations, and could not conceive that an Englishman might be any one of the innumerable dissenting sects. That he could be a Catholic was too obviously absurd, and the increase of their contempt for my intelligence was most marked as I asserted the possibility. So the offending word had to stand, and I resolved secretly to erase or destroy it whenever necessary. [Sidenote: PASSPORT DIFFICULTIES] The day of departure was like the preceding months, rainy and cold, and I looked with pleasant anticipation upon the prospect of seeing in a few days the sunny hills of Syria. Our ship was the _Saghalien_, a comfortable and roomy old boat. The early spring season had brought with it the first of the tourists to Palestine. Arriving on board, I heard the first English that had fallen upon my ears since I had left London. The parties were incongruous enough. Four or five Roman Catholic priests escorted a company of pious “bourgeois” to the pilgrimage at Jerusalem, while another and much larger party of manufacturing folk of wealth and accent had been gathered from Leeds, Leicester, and a dozen other of the Midland towns of England. A second party had been formed by some imitator of Mr T. Cook, and included no less than six gentlemen of religious profession, each from a different sect of British dissenters. These were all provincial too. An American and his wife, a Turkish Pasha and his family and attendant effendis, and some unattached and inconsequent Germans and French, pretty well made up a full ship.