Counts paid the two chiefs three hundred piastres, with the
travelling expenses for themselves and their twelve men.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 7th of June our cavalcade
started. The caravan consisted of the four counts, Mr. Bartlett, a
certain Baron Wrede, two doctors, and myself, besides five or six
servants, and the two chiefs with the body-guard of twelve Arabs.
All were strongly armed with guns, pistols, swords, and lances, and
we really looked as though we sallied forth with the intention of
having a sharp skirmish.

Our way lay through the Via Dolorosa, and through St. Stephen's
Gate, past the Mount of Olives, over hill and dale. Every where the
scene was alike barren. At first we still saw many fruit-trees and
olive-trees in bloom, and even vines, but of flowers or grass there
was not a trace; the trees, however, stood green and fresh, in spite
of the heat of the atmosphere and the total lack of rain. This
luxuriance may partly be owing to the coolness and dampness which
reigns during the night in tropical countries, quickening and
renewing the whole face of nature.

The goal of our journey for to-day lay about eight miles distant
from Jerusalem. It was the Greek convent of "St. Saba in the
Waste." The appellation already indicates that the region around
becomes more and more sterile, until at length not a single tree or
shrub can be detected. Throughout the whole expanse not the
lowliest human habitation was to be seen. We only passed a horde of
Bedouins, who had erected their sooty-black tents in the dry bed of
a river. A few goats, horses, and asses climbed about the
declivities, laboriously searching for herbs or roots.

About half an hour before we reach the convent we enter upon the
wilderness in which our Saviour fasted forty days, and was
afterwards "tempted of the devil." Vegetation here entirely ceases;
not a shrub nor a root appears; and the bed of the brook Cedron is
completely dry. This river only flows during the rainy season, at
which period it runs through a deep ravine. Majestic rocky
terraces, piled one above the other by nature with such exquisite
symmetry that the beholder gazes in silent wonder, overhang both
banks of the stream in the form of galleries.

A silence of death brooded over the whole landscape, broken only by
the footfalls of our horses echoing sullenly from the rocks, among
which the poor animals struggled heavily forward. At intervals some
l