-or rather, they were
blended together, and composed the colourless light of day.
Then the moon, which still shone overhead, 'paled her
ineffectual fire,' and melted away in the general illumination
of the heavens.

"After having ascended a second ridge, more lofty and naked
than the former, the horizon suddenly opens to the right, and
presents a view of all the country which extends between the
last summits of Judea and the mountains of Arabia. It was
already flooded with the increasing light of the morning; but
beyond the piles of grey rock which lay in the foreground,
nothing was distinctly visible but a dazzling space, like a
vast sea, interspersed with a few islands of shade, which stood
forth in the brilliant surface. On the shores of that imaginary
ocean, a little to the left, and about a league distant, the
sun shone with uncommon brilliancy on a massy tower, a lofty
minaret, and some edifices, which crowned the summit of a low
hill of which you could not see the bottom. Soon the points of
other minarets, a few loopholed walls, and the dark summits of
several domes, which successively came into view, and fringed
the descending slope of the hill, announced a city. It was
JERUSALEM, and every one of the party, without addressing a
word to the guides or to each other, enjoyed in silence the
entrancing spectacle. We rested our horses to contemplate that
mysterious and dazzling apparition; but when we moved on, it
was soon snatched from our view; for as we descended the hill,
and plunged into the deep and profound valley which lay at its
feet, we lost sight of the holy city, and were surrounded only
by the solitude and desolation of the desert."--(II. 163-165.)

The environs of Jerusalem are described with equal force by the same
master-hand:--

"The general aspect of the environs of Jerusalem may be
described in a few words. Mountains without shade, and valleys
without water--the earth without verdure, rocks without
grandeur. Here and there a few blocks of grey stone start up
out of the dry and fissured earth, between which, beneath the
shade of an old fig-tree, a gazelle or a hyaena are occasionally
seen to emerge from the fissures of the rock. A few plants or
vines creep over the surface of that grey and parched soil; in
the di