less price. But then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, and the
steamer with the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel windows;
whilst to Jerusalem they have to carry the ale on camels' backs from
Beyrout or Jaffa, and through hordes of marauding Arabs, who evidently
don't care for pale ale, though I am told it is not forbidden in the
Koran. Mine would have been very good, but I choked with rage whilst
drinking it. A florin for a bottle, and that bottle having the words
"imperial pint," in bold relief, on the surface! It was too much. I
intended not to say anything about it; but I MUST speak. A florin a
bottle, and that bottle a pint! Oh, for shame! for shame! I can't cork
down my indignation; I froth up with fury; I am pale with wrath, and
bitter with scorn.

As we drove through the old city at night, how it swarmed and hummed
with life! What a special clatter, crowd, and outcry there was in the
Jewish quarter, where myriads of young ones were trotting about the
fishy street! Why don't they have lamps? We passed by canals seeming
so full that a pailful of water more would overflow the place. The
laquais-de-place calls out the names of the buildings: the town-hall,
the cathedral, the arsenal, the synagogue, the statue of Erasmus.
Get along! WE know the statue of Erasmus well enough. We pass over
drawbridges by canals where thousands of barges are at roost. At
roost--at rest! Shall WE have rest in those bedrooms, those ancient
lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we have to pay a florin for a pint
of pa--psha! at the "New Bath Hotel" on the Boompjes? If this dreary
edifice is the "New Bath," what must the Old Bath be like? As I feared
to go to bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as I might; but three
young men were imparting their private adventures to each other with
such freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their
artless prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bedclothes and
darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense of terror--that sort
of sensation which I should think going down in a diving-bell would
give. Suppose the apparatus goes wrong, and they don't understand your
signal to mount? Suppose your matches miss fire when you wake; when you
WANT them, when you will have to rise in half an hour, and do battle
with the horrid enemy who crawls on you in the darkness? I protest I
never was more surprised than when I woke and beheld the light of dawn.
Indian birds and strange