the families who had been long resident there, the other for strangers: because although the repulsion felt for the Jews was greater at this time than at present, the interest in them was likewise greater, and any information concerning their customs was regarded by the tourist as matter for his readers—a surprising number of these tourists give eye-witness accounts of circumcisions of Jewish babies. To return to Aleppo; it was equally remarkable for its trade. Dealings to the extent of 40,000 to 100,000 crowns were ordinary, and this implied frequency of caravans to take the pilgrim on to Damascus. On the way he would pass the district in which Job was supposed to have lived, which may well have been so, says Moryson, for no spot possessed such conveniences for getting robbed, even of 100,000 head of cattle, nor any better suited to develop patience. It was here the pilgrim became acquainted with the Arabs. How far the latter were independent of the Turks was left an unsettled question, but it is fairly certain that on many, perhaps most, of the occasions when a European traveller of the time relates an encounter with the Arabs, the latter were not the robbers he thought them but keepers of the roads demanding not more than treble what they were entitled to. But it is equally clear that hostilities were perpetual. In 1601 a caravan guide told an Englishman at one defile that he had never passed by there without seeing bodies of murdered men; and from Damascus to Jacob's bridge—so called because just by was the spot where Jacob wrestled with the Angel—the caravan travelled by night for fear of the Arabs and no talking was allowed without the captain's special permission. But there was much to divert the attention of the faithful from their trials. At Damascus was Ananias' house, and soon after starting an ill-informed tourist would be surprised to see all his fellow travellers fall on their knees for prayers: it would be the spot where the conversion of St. Paul took place. Before reaching the Sea of Galilee they came upon a field with a little well in it, at which all dismounted for worship as well as for a drink; there had Joseph been hidden by his brethren. Between Cana and Mt. Tabor was a little chapel to call at, built on the spot where Christ had multiplied the loaves and fishes, and after this the road turned westwards to Nazareth and the church on the site where the Virgin Mary's house had stood before it had been spirited away to Loreto; two porphyry columns were standing on the places occupied respectively by the Archangel and by the Virgin at the moment of the Annunciation. For those who were not Roman Catholics there was the actual house there to be identified on its original site, so far as it had been left intact by previous pilgrims; Lithgow, the only Western Christian in the caravan he travelled with, asserts that his companies carried away above five thousand pounds' weight of the house in remembrance. Then