is sermon, and overtopping all, Hermon, where he was transfigured. From
two springs flowed little rills to represent the sources of the River
Jordan which wound its way down the valley, through the two lakes, Merom
and the Sea of Galilee, ending its course in the Dead Sea. There were
Jericho and the Brook Jabbok, the clustered towns around the Galilean
Sea, and at the foot of Mount Hermon, Caesarea-Philippi. Across the
Jordan rose the Eastern Tableland, with its mountains and valleys and
brooks and cities even as far as Damascus.

As the Assembly was an experiment, and might be transferred later to
other parts of the country, the materials for this Palestine Park were
somewhat temporary. The mountains were made of stumps, fragments of
timber, filled in with sawdust from a Mayville mill, and covered with
grassy sods. But the park constructed from makeshift materials proved
one of the most attractive features of the encampment. Groups of Bible
students might be seen walking over it, notebooks in their hands,
studying the sacred places. A few would even pluck and preserve a spear
of grass, carefully enshrining it in an envelope duly marked. A report
went abroad, indeed, that soil from the Holy Land itself had been spread
upon the park, constituting it a sort of Campo Santo, but this claim was
never endorsed by either its architect or its originator. The park of
Palestine still stands, having been rebuilt several times, enlarged to a
length of 350 feet, and now, as I write, with another restoration
promised.

One fact in this sacred geography must needs be stated, in the interests
of exact truth. In order to make use of the lake shore, north had to be
in the south, and east in the west. Chautauqua has always been under a
despotic though paternal government, and its visitors easily accommodate
themselves to its decrees. But the sun persists in its independence,
rises over Chautauqua's Mediterranean Sea where it should set, and
continues its sunset over the mountains of Gilead, where it should rise.
Dr. Vincent and Lewis Miller could bring to pass some remarkable, even
seemingly impossible, achievements, but they were not able to outdo
Joshua, and not only make the sun stand still, but set it moving in a
direction opposite to its natural course.

In one of his inimitable speeches, Frank Beard said that Palestine Park
had been made the model for all the beds on Fair Point. He slept, as he
asserted, on Palestine, with his hea