been foiled by Annas, and when he believed himself strong enough to force his way, he put down Eleazar and set up Simon, son of Kamith, in his post. But the Kamithians proved as weak as the Fabusians, and his second act of opposition was made in vain. Annas had become too powerful in Jerusalem for any man to govern that city against his will. In less than a year, Simon fell as Ishmael had fallen; and Gratus made peace with the Nobles, by raising Joseph Caiaphas, the Sagan's son-in-law, to the vacant throne.

When Pilate came into Syria, bringing with him his wife Claudia and a Roman household, he changed in some degree the method of Roman rule; living less in Cæsarea, more in Zion; but he was too wise a man to meddle with the Jewish priests in affairs of faith and worship. He kept on good terms with the noble families, striving to win over to his government every one who could help him to preserve the

public peace. Annas remained Sagan, Caiaphas

High Priest, during the whole ten years of Pilate's reign.

But if the Noble Party were content with an arrangement that gave them all the ceremonial, and nearly all the civil, authority in the State, the Popular party, excluded from office, and heavily taxed, were much less satisfied with their Roman masters and their partisans the priests. Great numbers of poor herdsmen and artizans became infected with the Galilean views of Simon and James. The Galilean party being warmer in zeal than the Separatists was becoming more and more identified with the

Popular party, even in Zion. Their spirit was abroad, and the signs of their progress could be read by strangers. When Pilate rode up from Cæsarea to attend the feasts, the people hooted his banners, derided his eagles, and abused his guards. The Gentile glitter and pomp offended their sight; the effigies of Cæsar struck them as impious. They knew that Pilate was not a bad man, not a severe man: they saw that he was courteous, affable, just to every one; but they also felt that he was a stranger in their land, and master of their properties and their lives. This last was what they could not bear. On inquiry, the Procurator learned that a sect of fanatics had grown up in Galilee, which called no man lord, and that the opinions of this sect were becoming common among the Jews.

As year by year, the Roman yoke cut deeper into their flesh, the people, finding no comfort in their aristocratic rulers, prayed more and more loudly for that Christ who was to come. One after another, Messiahs were announced, though the end of most of these dreamers was a swift and cruel death. They appealed to the sword, and they perished by the sword. In time the legions got accustomed to these military Messiahs who flung brands into Greek buildings, made war on Doric sculptures, and rushed with a shout on the Roman lines.

But Pilate was still young in office when he heard the name of a Prophet of another type; of a man who carried no sword, yet drew after him a mighty crowd; who never called himself Messiah;

1

who never cursed the Gentiles; who never mentioned the subject of a holy war. The name of this Prophet was John. The scene of his preaching was the Wilderness and the Plain of the Dead Sea.

The Holy Land. 1.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

The Wilderness.

THE Wilderness in which John the Baptist dwelt until his thirtieth year, and into which JESUS when his time arrived passed for his forty days of prayer and watching, begins at the gates of Hebron and Jerusalem, spreads beyond and below these cities to the south and west, and covers the mountain-slopes of Judah from the crest of the high table-land of Ramah and Olivet down to the fountain of Elisha and the shores of the Dead Sea. It is a tract of country about the size and shape of Sussex; not being a mere waste of scorching sands, herbless and waterless all the year, like the deserts of El Arish and Gizeh, but only a dry, unpeopled region, in which the wells are few, the trees low and stunted, the wadies full of stones instead of water, and the caves tenanted by leopards and wolves. It contains no town, not even a village. It has no road, no khan. The fox, the vulture, the hyena prowl about its solitudes. But even in the wilderness nature is not so stern as man. Here and there, in clefts and basins, and on the hill-sides, grade on grade, you observe a patch of corn, a clump of olives, a single palm; but the men who sow the grain, who shake down the fruit, are nowhere to be seen. They dare not stay upon the grounds which they rip with their

rude ploughs, or in which with careless husbandry they watch the olive trees grow; they hie away for protection to the hamlets and watch-towers on the hill-tops; to Maon, Tekoa, Bethlehem, and Bethany; for the Taámra Bedaween claim to be lords of the soil, and the spring grass and wild herbage tempt the Adouan from El Belka, the ancient Ammon, into these stony parts. No Syrian peasant dares to build his hut on land over which a Bedaween spreads his tent. In the Wilderness of Judah, the children of Esau are still what they were of old, the only abiding sheikhs and kings.

Suraya's raid into the Arab camp at Hebron, and the murder of those young men near Solomon's Pools, have roused the Bedaween tribes into fury, not only against the Turks, their eternal enemies, but against every stranger who may appear to be travelling through the country under Turkish escort. Hearing of this revengeful passion on their side, and having no desire to be shot under a mistake of flag, we ride over from our tents on Olivet to Abu Dis, an Arab village standing on the hill over against Bethany to the south; where we find the old chief, Mohammed Arikât, a man half-peasant, half-Bedaween, a thief, a rebel, some say an assassin, who in his old age, giving up open robbery, has settled down into a safer and more profitable business as agent between those Frank consuls who wish to protect their countrymen from peril, and the Bedaween sheikhs who regard all strangers as their natural prey. Arikât deals in escorts and passes. Paying head-money to the Adouan, and dividing his