that Titus
knew--this taste remained to him, if only by tradition.

Indeed, having no other outlet for their energies and none with whom to
trade, the interests of the Abati were centred in the land. For and
by the land they lived and died, and, since the amount available was
limited by the mountain wall, he who had most land was great amongst
them, he who had little land was small, he who had no land was
practically a slave. Their law was in its essentials a law of the
land; their ambitions, their crimes, everything to do with them, were
concerned with the land, upon the produce of which they existed and grew
rich, some of them, by means of a system of barter. They had no coinage,
their money being measures of corn or other produce, horses, camels,
acres of their equivalent of soil, and so forth.

And yet, oddly enough, their country is the richest in gold and other
metals that I have ever heard of even in Africa--so rich that, according
to Higgs, the old Egyptians drew bullion from it to the value of
millions of pounds every year. This, indeed, I can well believe, for I
have seen the ancient mines which were worked, for the most part as
open quarries, still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the
slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine
it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make
a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the
world must be coming to an end.

To return, the prince Joshua, who appeared to be generalissimo of the
army, in what was evidently a set phrase, exhorted the guards at the
last gates to be brave and, if need were, deal with the heathen as some
one or other dealt with Og, King of Bashan, and other unlucky persons
of a different faith. In reply he received their earnest congratulations
upon his escape from the frightful dangers of our journey.

These formalities concluded, casting off the iron discipline of war,
we descended a joyous mob, or rather the Abati did, to partake of the
delights of peace. Really, conquerors returning from some desperate
adventure could not have been more warmly greeted. As we entered the
suburbs of the town, women, some of them very handsome, ran out and
embraced their lords or lovers, holding up babies for them to kiss, and
a little farther on children appeared, throwing roses and pomegranate
flowers before their triumphant feet. And all this because these gallant
men had