orange-groves in full bloom, the palm-trees waving their plumes over
garden-walls, and rolled out upon the broad highroad across the fertile,
gently undulating Plain of Sharon. On each side were the neat,
well-cultivated fields and vegetable-gardens of the German colonists
belonging to the sect of the Templers. They are a people of antique
theology and modern agriculture. Believing that the real Christianity is
to be found in the Old Testament rather than in the New, they propose to
begin the social and religious reformation of the world by a return to
the programme of the Minor Prophets. But meantime they conduct their
farming operations in a very profitable way. Their grain-fields, their
fruit-orchards, their vegetable-gardens are trim and orderly, and they
make an excellent wine, which they call "The Treasure of Zion." Their
effect upon the landscape, however, is conventional.

But in spite of the presence and prosperity of the Templers, the spirit
of the scene through which we passed was essentially Oriental. The
straggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy
eucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a
semi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of
the leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive
donkeys carrying incredible loads, flocks of fat-tailed sheep and
lop-eared goats, bronzed peasants in flowing garments, and white-robed
women with veiled faces.

Beneath the tall tower of the forty martyrs at Ramleh (Mohammedan or
Christian, their names are forgotten) we left the carriages, loaded our
luggage on the three pack-mules, mounted our saddle-horses, and rode on
across the plain, one of the fruitful gardens and historic battle-fields
of the world. Here the hosts of the Israelites and the Philistines, the
Egyptians and the Romans, the Persians and the Arabs, the Crusaders and
the Saracens, have marched and contended. But as we passed through the
sun-showers and rain-showers of an April afternoon, all was tranquillity
and beauty on every side. The rolling fields were embroidered with
innumerable flowers. The narcissus, the "rose of Sharon," had faded. But
the little blue "lilies-of-the-valley" were there, and the pink and
saffron mallows, and the yellow and white daisies, and the violet and
snow of the drooping cyclamen, and the gold of the genesta, and the
orange-red of the pimpernel, and, most beautiful of all, the glowing
scarlet of the num