knelt and bowed down my face till I met the smooth rock
with my lips.

One moment--my heart, or some old pagan demon within me, woke up, and
fiercely bounded--my bosom was lifted and swam as though I had touched
her warm robe. One moment--one more, and then--the fever had left me. I
rose from my knees. I felt hopelessly sane. The mere world reappeared.
My good old monk was there, dangling his keys with listless patience;
and as he guided me from the church, and talked of the refectory and the
coming repast, I listened to his words with some attention and pleasure.

Having engaged a young Nazarene as guide to Jerusalem, our party passed
by Cana, and the house in which the water had been turned into wine, and
came to the field in which our Saviour had rebuked the Scotch
Sabbath-keepers of that period by suffering His disciples to pluck corn
on the Sabbath day.

I rode over the ground on which the fainting multitude had been fed, and
was shown some massive fragments--relics, I was told, of that wondrous
banquet, now turned into stone. The petrifaction was most complete. I
ascended the heights on which our Lord was standing when He wrought the
miracle, and looked away eagerly eastward. There lay the Sea of Galilee,
less stern than Wastwater, less fair than gentle Windermere, but still
with the winning ways of an English lake. My mind, however, flew away
from the historical associations of the place, and I thought of the
mysterious desert which stretched from these grey hills to the gates of
Bagdad.

I went on to Tiberias, and soon got afloat upon the water. In the
evening I took up my quarters in the Catholic church. Tiberias is one of
the four holy cities, the others being Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safet;
and, according to the Talmud, it is from Tiberias, or its immediate
neighbourhood, that the Messiah is to arise. Except at Jerusalem, never
think of attempting to sleep in a "holy city."

After leaving Tiberias, we rode for some hours along the right bank of
the Jordan till we came to an old Roman bridge which crossed the river.
My Nazarene guide, riding ahead of the party, led on over the bridge. I
knew that the true road to Jerusalem must be mainly by the right bank,
but I supposed that my guide had crossed the bridge in order to avoid
some bend in the river, and that he knew of a ford lower down by which
we should regain the western bank. For two days we wandered, unable to
find a ford across the swollen river, and a