short ways and through these small towns, and yet should show us their pathway only over a silent waste. How easy it would be to fill these chasms, to survey these vacant spaces, and to bring this confusion into order! Every traveller who goes through Palestine hopes and expects to help in removing this obscurity; to see something that no one else has seen; to make some new, if not some important, discovery. Only the fewest, however, seem to themselves to have discovered any thing; and most regret at the end that they did not see what others have seen. Even those who have made original observations are mortified to find that their views have been anticipated, and that their conclusions are doubted. The public opinion of the religious world almost settles it, that Palestine shall be an unknown land, and that exact science shall not get hold of this domain of ancient faith, over which reverence spreads an impenetrable golden cloud. Many who go there with the scientific spirit, to find truth and get knowledge, strangely find that this vanishes in the atmosphere of the land. They are careless of the inquiries that they came to make, and surrender themselves to the necessities of their position. They find that the knowledge which seemed so easy to gain is in fact extremely difficult, and they soon cease to trouble themselves about the questions which had invited them. Not one in a hundred of the Protestants who go to Jerusalem makes any investigation upon the spot of the site of the Holy Sepulchre, or vexes himself by reading the controversy of Robinson with Williams. Not one in fifty of those who cross the plain of Gennesaret stops to find among the rubbish the ruins of the cities of which Jesus spoke the doom. They quarrel with the Arabs at Medjdal, but make no effort to find the house of Mary in Magdala.

But there are many reasons why the multiplied narratives of travellers in the sacred land give no large increase of exact knowledge. In the first place, very few travellers stay long in the land; they go almost as quickly as they come, and hardly set foot in any of the cities before they arrange the plan of their departing. Economy of time and money com

pels to this hurry. The dragoman, hired in Egypt for the whole voyage, is paid for a specified number of days, and holds his victim close to the contract. Delays and excursions derange this contract; camel-men and mule-men refuse to obey orders, and curse their employer; and the care is to get through safely, rather than to make the journey profitable. Most of the published "tours" in Palestine have been of hardly more than two, four, or six weeks of stay in all the land, from Dan to Beersheba. Jerusalem is described from the experiences of two or three days; Nazareth, from the impressions of a single night. It is preposterous to suppose that in this short time any thing new or valuable can be learned; that this mere passage of a fortnight's length, even though it be at so slow a pace, can acquaint the voyager either with scenery or people. A comfortable supper at the Carmelite convent, and a bath upon the beach, are by no means sufficient to show the "excellency" of the flowery mountain of Elijah's miracle. A swift walk through the bazaar of Gaza, and along the walls of Askelon, does not instruct very thoroughly in the lines of the Philistine land. And a halt of half an hour at the head of the Dead Sea, with a dragoman trembling in fear of Arab robbers and urging you to make haste and be off, does not make you competent authority on the height of those hills or the quality of those waters. In Italy or Germany, travellers take their own time, alter their plans, and stay as long as they please. It is not so easy to do this in Syrian travel. Then, again, it is difficult to find escort and protection, except upon the beaten routes of travel. The guides are afraid to try experiments, to go on any side-paths, or to venture on uncertain ways. There may be monsters in the caverns; there are, almost certainly, robbers and assassins. When a traveller goes into these "by and forbidden paths," he does it at his own risk and peril. The danger of these side excursions is doubtless exaggerated; but the bravest Frank cannot impart his own courage to the cautious natives or dispel their fears. There are regions in Galilee that no dragoman could be brought to traverse for love or money. He would as soon agree to show the way to

It

Ararat, as to go around the Lake of Tiberias. Few travellers are prepared to take the risk of these journeys without some escort, and they must pass these tempting breaks in the hills, because they cannot go through them alone. If twenty men, resolute and fearless, strongly armed, could go together, they might perhaps get guides for an eccentric and zigzag progress, might climb all the hills, visit all the wadies, explore all the tombs and caverns, and find the name of every village. But the travellers of this kind go by twos and not by twenties. The large parties are those who prefer to keep to the regular paths, and see the things that the handbooks show them. is vexatious to an enthusiastic traveller, who comes to Palestine determined to explore the land faithfully and traverse it in every direction, to find that no one will guide him in any new way, or will go with him on any venture. The first words that he hears are warnings of danger and advice to keep in the regular track. The site of Shiloh is hardly a mile from the path between Bethel and Shechem; yet how few travellers on that path turn aside to see the place where was the earliest sacred city of Israel! It is only a sign of rashness to attempt these side excursions, which take time and bring peril. Only on the highways of Syria is a traveller safe; and these highways are few.

Moreover, the tastes and habits of the residents in Palestine do not assist scientific study of the land. Neither Jew nor Greek, Moslem nor Christian, cares any thing to settle questions of archæology or to construct anew the map of Canaan. You find no science of the land in the houses, or in the shops, or in the cloisters. The Greek monks in Jerusalem only care to know the way to the convent in St. Saba: the Latin monks are satisfied to direct pilgrims to the fords of the Jordan. It is impossible to make the dull Hebrews, who mumble rabbinical lore in the schools of Tiberias, comprehend your curiosity about the Sea of Galilee. Indeed, it is amazing to these people that sane men should go travelling in this solitary region for mere purposes of knowledge. They suspect some end of trade in this wandering. The Arabs have no word to describe the scientific traveller. If

he is not a hadji (a pilgrim), whose religion brings him to the shrines, he must be a howadji (a merchant), who is seeking to buy or sell. A few of the monks and a few of the dragomen have borrowed some of the facts of the guide-books; but the most of them are utterly unconcerned to know more of the land and its history than belongs to their ecclesiastical legends or their daily routine. Moslem archæology in Palestine is summed up in the sacredness of Omar's mosque, and in the confession that Mohammed is the prophet of God. Christian archæology only keeps the local tradition. All that the monks of Nazareth can tell you about their city is the site of Mary's house, of Joseph's workshop, of the meeting-place of the disciples, and the Rock of Precipitation. The sacredness of the land, to the Samaritans, is all centred in their ancient synagogue, their yellow parchment-roll, and their altar on Gerizim. It is hopeless to ask for direct information from any class. Where they really know what you want to know, there will be a lie on their lips as they answer you.

Ignorance of the language spoken in Palestine is another effectual hindrance to travellers in attempting to study the antiquities of the land. Except in the few cities which are already quite well known, the Arabic is the universal dialect; and, to strangers, the Arabic is as unintelligible as Chinese or Choctaw. Very few of those who can read the literary language, and have mastered the flowing characters, can understand the jargon of Arab gutturals as they break harshly from the throat of a peasant or a Bedouin. Not one in fifty of the writers who would tell us something new about the land, could hold a conversation of five minutes with the natives of the land, on any important topic of history or fact. The Arabic is a very difficult language to learn thoroughly. Dr. Smith, who had made a study of it for thirty years, told us, even when his Arabic translation of the New Testament was nearly completed, that he was not at all satisfied with his knowledge of the language, and that he was every day learning some new words and phrases. Yet, without this power of talking directly with the people, it is impossible to learn much of their antiquities and their traditions, or to connect the

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natural features and productions of the land with the Biblical story, with the fauna and flora of the ancient Hebrews. How else can any one find the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the unicorn, the conies (that feeble folk), and the dragons in their clefts? How else shall the sites of towns be identified? The main connection between the ancient and modern ages, between the former and present races, is in the words of similar sound. The Arabic names are all that tell of the famous villages of Canaan, and the cities renowned in the story of Israel. With this key, Robinson was able to unlock some of the closed doors, and to find some of the lost places. And this is the only key worth much in exploring the land. The language is the only fossil relic of much value in reading the former ages there.

Add to these the other hindrances in the way of travel: the climate, for half the year so hot and debilitating; the wretched roads, if indeed the bridle-paths through ravines and over rocks and precipices may be called roads; the absence of all wheel carriages, making it difficult to transport the instruments and conveniences of scientific study; the hostility of the people, sheikhs and rabble alike, sometimes breaking out in acts of violence; the lying directions, which turn a traveller upon the wrong track; the extortions, which wear out his patience; the combined annoyance of the laziness, dulness, brutality, and falsehood which he finds all around him, and the wonder is rather, not that so little is learned, but that any thing is learned. Then, in digesting the fragments of information, there is infinite perplexity in harmonizing these contradictory stories, and finding the truth. No task can be more perplexing than the task of sifting out the local traditions of Palestine, and deciding what and how much to believe. It will not do to take extreme ground on either side, to believe every thing that you hear, or to believe nothing that you hear, to resolve, with the Rev. George Williams, that all legends of the Church are trustworthy, and must be maintained at any rate; or with the good Dr. Robinson, that the convents are the centres of lies, and that the Church repeats a story is a good reason for doubting