leaved,
evergreen eucalyptus trees; orchards of orange trees where yellow fruit
clustered amid the glossy dark green leaves; orchards of almond trees
covered with a delicate pink bloom; and orchards of gray olive trees
with a carpet of grass underneath, as beautiful as a park; bare fig
trees whose time for leaf and bloom had not yet come; and fences of huge
leaved prickly cactus plants protecting garden plots.

"What queer looking plows they have," said a companion, as we noticed
near the train a plowman who had stopped his camel, and thrown his plow,
which looked like a crooked root with a point, out of the furrow, while
he gazed at the passing train. "The first gardener must have obtained a
plow of the same kind from the original forest."

In stretches of sod the rich brown earth was being turned up by farmers
with teams of camels, one great camel to each little wooden plow, or
with teams composed of an ox and an ass hitched together. In one field
twelve camel teams were plowing the sod. We use the word field, but
there were no fences except the cactus hedges around small plots. The
farm boundaries from ancient times have been marked by corner stones to
which Moses referred when he gave the law: "Cursed be he that removeth
his neighbor's landmark." We were in the midst of historic places
mentioned in the Bible. To the north lay the fertile level fields of the
Plain of Sharon. Fields of young wheat were beautified by the roses of
Sharon,--red poppies with black centres and short stems,--which dotted
the carpet of green with flecks of red. At Lydda, where Peter healed the
man who had the palsy, Arab urchins begged the passengers to buy little
bunches of the red poppies and other wild flowers that they offered for
sale. To the south stretched the Plain of Philistia, the scene of
Samson's adventures, and the fields through which he sent the three
hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails. In that direction
also lay battle fields where Philistines and Israelites struggled for
supremacy.

[Illustration: A CARAVAN WITH BALES OF RUGS HAD JUST ARRIVED.]

The towns and villages on the route were small and mean. The better
buildings were constructed of stone with flat stone roofs, but many were
made of mud with mud roofs on which a crop of grass was growing. After
the first hour's ride, fertile rolling plains succeeded the level sandy
loam. When about thirty miles from Jaffa, after a two hours' ride, the
hill country