r hills of Judea.

Riding on over the long, low swells, fragrant with wild thyme and
camomile, we saw at last the tower of Ramleh, and down the valley, an
hour's ride to the north-east, the minaret of Ludd, the ancient Lydda.
Still further, I could see the houses of the village of Sharon, embowered
in olives. Ramleh is built along the crest and on the eastern slope of a
low hill, and at a distance appears like a stately place, but this
impression is immediately dissipated on entering it. West of the town is a
large square tower, between eighty and ninety feet in height. We rode up
to it through an orchard of ancient olive trees, and over a field of
beans. The tower is evidently a minaret, as it is built in the purest
Saracenic style, and is surrounded by the ruins of a mosque. I have rarely
seen anything more graceful than the ornamental arches of the upper
portions. Over the door is a lintel of white marble, with an Arabic
inscription. The mosque to which the tower is attached is almost entirely
destroyed, and only part of the arches of a corridor around three sides of
a court-yard, with the fountain in the centre, still remain. The
subterranean cisterns, under the court-yard, amazed me with their extent
and magnitude. They are no less than twenty-four feet deep, and covered by
twenty-four vaulted ceilings, each twelve feet square, and resting on
massive pillars. The mosque, when entire, must have been one of the finest
in Syria.

We clambered over the broken stones cumbering the entrance, and mounted
the steps to the very summit. The view reached from Jaffa and the sea to
the mountains near Jerusalem, and southward to the plain of Ascalon--a
great expanse of grain and grazing land, all blossoming as the rose, and
dotted, especially near the mountains, with dark, luxuriant olive-groves.
The landscape had something of the green, pastoral beauty of England,
except the mountains, which were wholly of Palestine. The shadows of
fleecy clouds, drifting slowly from east to west, moved across the
landscape, which became every moment softer and fairer in the light of the
declining sun.

I did not tarry in Ramleh. The streets are narrow, crooked, and filthy as
only an Oriental town can be. The houses have either flat roofs or domes,
out of the crevices in which springs a plentiful crop of weeds. Some
yellow dogs barked at us as we passed, children in tattered garments
stared, and old turbaned heads were raised from the pipe, t