jetty into firewood, and like a pious Moslem gave the splinters to the poor.

Mohammedan Jaffa runs no risk of being invaded by cabs and horses, not having a single street along which they could roll and race. In Stamboul you may hire an araba; in Cairo you can call a fly; but if you should wish to ride in Jaffa, you must either mount the hump of a camel or bestride the bones of an ass. A mule, a horse even, may be hired at the Jerusalem Gate; but the hacks there found among the booths and sheds belong, not to the town and its people, but to Arab merchants who send out servants and slaves from place to place, just as they may chance to find pilgrims whom they can serve and cheat: being one week in El Arish, another in Beyrout, a third at Damascus or Es Salt. No machine on wheels no drag, coach, stage, gig, van, or barrow has ever been known within these Jaffa walls. Everyone goes on foot; the lady in her veil, the priest in his robes, the peasant in his rags. Everything is carried on the back; the camels being drays, the donkeys carts, the fellaheen trucks, in this primitive system of life and trade. Haroun might walk through yon gate into the fair and find nothing changed in the habits of his countrymen since the times when he and his trusty vizier wandered about the streets of his capital by night.

Watch this damsel in the pink robe and the long veil as she trips daintily along to market or bazaar. Is she Aminé? Are Safie and Zobeide in the house yon house with the high wall, over which the palm tree throws its fronds? Passing

through the arch, and raising a little corner of her veil, she beckons with a tiny dark hand to one of the porters dozing by the wall, the motion of her fingers saying to his eyes, "Pick up thy basket, O young man, and follow me." Gliding from stall to stall, she piles up his basket with bread and veal, with grapes and lemons, with violets and orange flowers, with sprigs of myrtle and eglantine; and then, with the young man at her heels, trips home to the house. Flitting past the fountain, and past the mosque, into a silent lane, the lady taps at a large door and enters into a courtyard. Here she is lost to sight, if not to conjecture. Will Safie open the door to that porter? Will Zobeide dazzle him with her beauty? Will the royal mendicants arrive at night, and Haroun himself drop in to enjoy the cheer and increase the mirth?

More likely is it that this sedate Aminé will prepare the evening meal for one nearer and more precious to her heart; so that when Abdallah, servant of the Lord, comes in from his toil in the city, in the field, in the port, she may set these dainties before him, and then kissing him on the mouth, and shedding on his spirit the light of her round. black eyes, laugh when she sees that he eats of them and that his soul is glad? Perhaps so; perhaps, too, she will sing for him that beautiful evening strain from the Koran:

Have we not given you the earth for a bed,

And made you husband and wife,

And given you sleep for rest,

And made you a mantle of the night?

The Holy Land. I.

2

CHAPTER III.

My Arab Master.

"Good morning, Master!" says Yakoub, gliding softly into my cell, and using up in his first salutation all that he knows of English, with the sole reserve of some six or eight words of uncommon strength and flavour, much used by our sailors in the Levant, and perhaps elsewhere. Yakoub is my new master, whom I bought for myself in Stamboul; paying him two hundred piastres a day for making me do what he pleases, go whither he likes, order the food he prefers, and ride behind him on the second-best mare. When he comes into the room, taking my hand reverently, he bows his head, as much as to say that his health is in my keeping; but the rogue knows his place and power and is laughing in his sleeve at this customary comedy of Arab life. Then, in a jargon which is meant to be English to a Saxon, French to a Gaul, Romaic to a Greek a jargon that gave me some trouble when he first began to reign over me he inquires whether we shall really set out to-day, seeing that more bad news is pouring in from Gaza, Nazareth, and Nabulus? Yes, Yakoub; let us mount and move. Have we not spent days in Jaffa, sucking oranges and munching grapes by the sea shore, when we ought to have been climbing the hill of Modin,

peering into the grotto of Bethlehem, and braving the heats of the Dead Sea?

Sullen, incredulous, Yakoub hangs about the room; takes down my strong leathern belt; peeps into the barrel and tries the spring of my revolver; casts a covetous glance at my railway wrap (an innocent square of cotton wool, worked into the pattern of a tiger skin); feels the weight of my hunting whip, which he playfully assures me has just bronze enough to crack a hyena's skull; ascertains by touch the sharpness of my English spurs; measures with his eye the quantity of my quinine, tea, cognac, powder and ball. Being satisfied that his slave possesses nearly everything that an Arab gentleman is likely to require on a journey, he drops into that lingua Franca, which, on a good deal of acquaintance, proves to consist mainly of the Italian of Genoa, dashed with the patois of Marseilles, a spice of seafaring Saxon, and some dirty bits of Greek:

“The mule shall be packed, Master. Ishmael has gone to find Saïd in the market place. All ready by ten."

"What sort of nag shall I have to ride?" "Very good mare, Master; Sabeah, child of the desert; very swift mare."

Saïd is my mukari; a man who either owns the horses on which you ride, or travels with them for another owner, and who feeds and curries them, and takes a general charge of your baggage on the road. Saïd is a Nubian, a negro, and a slave; and like the mule and horses is the property of an Arab

gentleman, not too proud to let his people and his beasts earn money by trade.

Ishmael is an Arab lad whom I have picked up in the fair. One day, when I was sitting under a screen, smoking a cigarette, an imp some twelve years old, with lustrous eyes, a swarthy skin, a soft Syrian face, ran up to me; a lad of pure Arab blood, sinewy and lithe, such a one, methought, as that youth whom the vizier's daughter loved. What a model he seemed for a painter of Ishmael!

"Want donkey?"

"What, you speak English?" says I, slipping, as I spoke, a piastre into his fist; at which he grinned and nodded, till his opening eyes seemed all in a blaze.

"Ya, ya; me speak English. Me show consul, one more piastre."

"You sordid little Jew!"

"Me Jew!" fired the child. "Me Arab. My fader donkey boy. Me donkey boy. Very good donkey. Go hotel, go consul, go Ramleh, go Jerusalem?"

"Would you go all that way?"

"Me go Cairo, me go Damascus - plenty piastre, plenty piastre."

I felt a weakness for the wretch, endowed him with the name of Hagar's son, and hired him on the spot to be one of my fellow-subjects to Yakoub, whose rule his spirits and his antics may enable me to bear.

On his own showing, Yakoub is by birth an Arab, by profession a Christian; but to which of the