cocks and hens, and cooks and marmitons, stowed upon the
baggage-horses. Great store of good things had we--vino doro di Monte
Libano, and hams, to show that we were not Mahometans; and tea, to prove
that we were not Frenchmen; and guns to shoot partridges withal, and
many other European necessaries.

We tramped along upon the hard rocky ground one after the other, through
the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and looked up at the corner of the temple,
whence is to spring on the last day, as every sound follower of the
Prophet believes, the fearful bridge of Al Sirat, which is narrower than
the edge of the sharpest cimeter of Khorassaun, and from which those who
without due preparation attempt to pass on their way to the paradise of
Mahomet will fall into the unfathomable gulf below. Gradually as we
advanced into the valley, through which the brook Kedron, when there is
any water in it, flows into the Dead Sea, the scenery became more and
more savage, the rocks more precipitous, and the valley narrowed into a
deep gorge, the path being sometimes among the broken stones in the bed
of the stream, and sometimes rising high above it on narrow ledges of
rock.

We rode on for some hours, admiring the wild grandeur of the scenery,
for this is the hill country of Judea, and seems almost a chaos of rocks
and craggy mountains, broken into narrow defiles, or opening into dreary
valleys bare of vegetation, except a few shrubs whose tough roots pierce
through the crevices of the stony soil, and find a scanty subsistence in
the small portions of earth which the rains have washed from the surface
of the rocks above. In one place the pathway, which was not more than
two or three feet wide, wound round the corner of a precipitous crag in
such a manner that a horseman riding along the giddy way showed so
clearly against the sky, that it seemed as if a puff of wind would blow
horse and man into the ravine beneath. We were proceeding along this
ledge--Fathallah, one of our interpreters, first, I second, and the
others following--when we saw three or four Arabs with long
bright-barrelled guns slip out of a crevice just before us, and take up
their position on the path, pointing those unpleasant-looking implements
in our faces. From some inconceivable motive, not of the most heroic
nature I fear, my first move was to turn my head round to look behind
me; but when I did so, I perceived that some more Arabs had crept out of
another cleft behind us, whi