well. In our own time, a khan like that of Cairo, like that of Beyrout, is more of a market than an inn, and in such cities it may be raised for the sake of lucre; but the fine old structures which adorned the great roads of commerce and travel between Jerusalem and Alexandria, between Damascus and Ptolemais, between Gadara and Sidon, were monuments of piety and pity, built by their founders without thought of gain, and were almost as sacred in character, as durable in material, as either a synagogue or a mosque. Even when the wars of race or religion swept the towns and villages from these roads, the khans were allowed by common consent to remain; being considered as a sort of holy property, like the springs and the wells, in which all mankind had an equal and a common right. The Babylonians spared the house of Chimham; the Greeks spared the khan of Joseph's Well; the Crusaders spared Khan Lebonah. What a hospital is in a modern war, a khan was in an ancient war: a secular building sanctified by its noble use. It was always an edifice set apart, even when it stood in the midst of a great city, having its own walls and gates, and its own set of rules. It was never built in a slight and temporary style of art; but when raised of stone, by one who felt pride in his work, it had the enduring character of an Eastern mekhemeh or a Western town-hall. A great sheikh having the right of hospitality and protection, the strength and beauty of his khan would always prove the best advertisements of his power.

In the better class of Syrian towns and hamlets,

even in the desert wastes when they lie in the routes of commerce, the khan is a large, solid, and durable edifice; some ruins of a khan near the road from Gilgal to Jerusalem, on a hot ridge that has no longer an ancient name to tell its story, cover as large a space as the foundations of a church. When built by a great sheikh like Barzillai, or a rich sultan like Saladin, it would have a high wall, an inner court, a range of arches or lewans, an open gallery round the four sides, as in one of Chaucer's inns, and in many cases a tower from which the watcher might descry the approach of marauding bands. On one side of the square, but outside the wall, there is often a huddle of sheds, set apart from the main edifice as stables for the asses and camels, the buffaloes and goats. In the centre of the khan springs a fountain of water, the first necessity of an Arab's life, and around the jets and troughs in which the limpid element streams, lies the gay and picturesque litter of the East. Camels wait to be unloaded, dogs quarrel for a bone. Bedaween from the desert, their red zannars choked with pistols, are at prayer. In the archways squat the merchants with their bales of goods; goods dazzling to the eye and dangerous to the purse; amber from the Baltic Sea, gold-work from Cairo, shawls from the Indian looms, spices from Arabia Felix, precious ointments wrung from the gardens of Moab. Half-naked men are cleansing their hands ere sitting down to eat. Here a barber is at work upon a shaven crown, there a fellah lies asleep in the shade. Many people pass in and out; the faint coming in to drink, the weary to repose,

the thrifty to buy and sell; but there is no hostess to cry Good day, and no cook to prepare the noontide meal. Each man has to carry his dinner and his bed; to litter his horse or camel; to dress his food, to draw his water, to light his fire, and to boil his mess of herbs. The archway in which he lays up his goods and spreads out his carpet being bare, he must bring with him his cruse and his pan, his jar and his dish, together with his bag of rice, his tinder-box, his taper, his coffee-cup, his brazier, and his cooking range. When he finds the khan crowded with pilgrims and travellers as during the religious festivals, and at gatherings of the tribe for either peace or war quilt on the straw, fatigue to enjoy the

ass.

he may have to spread his happy in his simplicity and lodgings of his camel and his

It is only in recent times, since the opening of Greek and Latin convents throughout the Holy Land, that the native khans have declined in importance and in number. The monks from Italy and Spain, from Greece and Anatolia, though they may appear neither clean nor comely to an English eye, can offer you a bed for the night and a shelter from the Bedaween lance. Lodging with them, your cell may be dirty, your food will be coarse; but their roof is high, their court-yard is cool, and their gate is barred. At least, you can lie down in peace: your shoes shaken off from your feet; your zannar unwound; your arms of defence slung up to the convent wall. Your beast, too, can be housed and fed. It seems but little; though to a weary traveller, who

has worn off the strangeness and romance of life in a tent, it is a good deal to be able to lay down his revolver, and fall into sleep without a fear of being roused in the dead of night by either a jackal's howl or a Bedaween's grip.

When the caravan-serais were left to the trader and the Arab only, they fell away; some of them crumbling into dust; yet many of them have outlived the churches, synagogues, and mosques. Sometimes the wall of a khan is the only monument of man's art to be found in a morning ride. A ruin, or even a memory, of one of these old resting-places for the night, serves to keep alive among the Desert tribes some knowledge of the most ancient and famous sites; such as the inn of the Bridge of Jacob's Daughters on the Jordan, and the inn of Joseph's Well on the road to Cæsarea Philippi.

CHAPTER XV.

The Inn of Bethlehem.

A QUESTION may now be put:

Was this Inn of Bethlehem, near to which Christ was born in a cave, the same khan of Bethlehem around which the bands of Johanan ranged while Jeremiah prayed to the Lord for ten whole days?

Men who have lived in a tent, and journeyed along Syrian roads, noting the position of old khans, with the strength of their walls, and the extent of their accommodation for man and beast, will ask no proof for the assumption that there never could have been more than one public khan in a place like Bethlehem; always a small town, one of the least among the thousands of Judah; any more than they would require evidence that there had been more than one mekhemeh, more than one sheikh's house. These inns were built in stages, always at a distance one from another; about seven miles apart, like our old market-towns, an easy day's march on foot. Bethlehem, being the first stage on the great southern road, had an inn. About the same distance from Jerusalem on the eastern road, at the present fountain El Haud, lie the ruins of an inn. Midway from Jerusalem to Jericho six or seven miles beyond El Haud there was a second inn, a hospice on a wild ridge of hill, a half-way house, at which JESUS