spring-time, he would see the hills and valleys
covered with their grass, and sprinkled abundantly with a great variety of
wild flowers, daisies, poppies, the Star of Bethlehem, tulips and
anemones--a broad sheet of color, of scarlet, white and green. Perhaps,
very long ago, there were trees also where now there are none; and on
those hills, gray with the stone that peeped out through the grass, stood
the mighty cedars of Lebanon, stretching out their sweeping branches, and
oaks, sturdy and rich with dark foliage, green the year round. At any
rate, then, as now, we may believe that there were vineyards upon the
sunny slopes, and we know that the wind blew over corn-fields covering the
plains that lay between the ranges of hills.

It is of the time long since that we are thinking, when there were no
massive buildings on Bethlehem hill, such as are to be seen in the town as
it now appears. Instead, there were low houses, many of mud and sunburnt
brick, some so poor, doubtless, that the cattle were stalled, if not in
the same room with the people of the house, yet so near that they could be
heard through the partition, stamping, and crunching their food. There was
an inn there, also; but we must not think of it as like our modern
public-houses, with a landlord and servants, where one could have what he
needed by paying for it. Rather, it was a collection of buildings for the
convenience and accommodation of travelers, who brought with them whatever
they required of food, and the means of preparing it, finding there only
shelter and the roughest conveniences. The larger inns of this sort were
built in the form of a great courtyard surrounded by arcades, in which
people stayed, and kept their goods, if they were merchants.

The inn at Bethlehem was not probably one of these great
caravanserais,--as they are called now in the East, because caravans stop
at them; and it is even possible that the stables about the inn were
simply caves scooped out of the soft chalk rock, for the country there
has an abundance of these caves used for this very purpose.

From the hill on which Bethlehem stands, one can see travelers
approaching, and at that time, long ago, no doubt the people who lived
there saw companies of travelers, on foot or mounted, coming up to the
village. For it was a busy time in Judea. The Emperor at Rome, the capital
of the world, had ordered a tax to be laid upon his subjects, and first it
had to be known just who w