h any other book on Palestine.

I may state that, not being a professed investigator, I carried with me
no scientific instruments, except sometimes a common thermometer: I had
no leisure for making excavations, for taking angles with a theodolite,
or attending to the delicate care of any kind of barometer, being
employed on my proper business.

Riding by night or by day, in the heat of Syrian summer, or through snows
and piercing winds of winter on the mountains, I enjoyed the pure climate
for its own sake. Moreover, I lived among the people, holding
intercourse with peasants in villages, with Bedaween in deserts, and with
Turkish governors in towns, or dignified Druses in the Lebanon, and slept
in native dwellings of all qualities, as well as in convents of different
sects: in the open air at the foot of a tree, or in a village mosque--in
a cavern by the highway side, or beneath cliffs near the Dead Sea:
although more commonly within my own tent, accompanied by native servants
with a small canteen.

Sad cogitations would arise while traversing, hour after hour, the
neglected soil, or passing by desolated villages which bear names of
immense antiquity, and which stand as memorials of miraculous events
which took place for our instruction and for that of all succeeding ages;
and then, even while looking forward to a better time to come, the heart
would sigh as the expression was uttered, "How long?"

These notices will show that the land is one of remarkable fertility
wherever cultivated, even in a slight degree--witness the vast
wheat-plains of the south; and is one of extreme beauty--witness the
green hill-country of the north; although such qualities are by no means
confined to those districts. Thus it is not necessary, it is not just,
that believers in the Bible, in order to hold fast their confidence in
its predictions for the future, should rush into the extreme of
pronouncing the Holy Land to be cursed in its present capabilities. It
is verily and indeed cursed in its government and in its want of
population; but still the soil is that of "a land which the Lord thy God
careth for." There is a deep meaning in the words, "The earth is the
Lord's," when applied to that peculiar country; for it is a reserved
property, an estate in abeyance, and not even in a subordinate sense can
it be the fief of the men whom it eats up. (Numb. xiii. 32, and Ezek.
xxxvi. 13, 14.) I have seen enough to convince me that astoni