of Mohammedan despotism, nothing is seen in some of the richest fields except thistles and withered grass. Here and there, indeed, are scanty plantations of cotton, with a few patches of doura, barley, and wheat. The villages, which are commonly surrounded with olive-trees and sycamores, are for the most part in ruins; exhibiting a melancholy proof that, under a bad government, even the bounty of Heaven ceases to be a blessing. The path by which the hilly barrier is penetrated is difficult, and in some places dangerous. But before you reach it, turning towards the east you perceive Rama or Ramla, the ancient Arimathea, distinguished by its charming situation, and well known as the residence of a Christian community. The convent, it is true, had been plundered five years before it was visited by Chateaubriand, and it was not without the most urgent solicitation that the friars were permitted to repair their building; as if it were a maxim among the Turks, who by their domination continue to afflict and disgrace the finest parts of Palestine, that the progress of ruin and decay should never be arrested. Volney tells us, that when he was at Ramla, a commander resided there in a serai, the walls and floors of which were on the point of tumbling down. He asked one of the inferior officers why his master did not at least pay some attention to his own apartment. The reply "if another shall obtain his place next year, repay the expense ?" was, who will In those days the aga maintained about one hundred horsemen and as many African soldiers, who were lodged in an old Christian church, the nave of which was converted into a stable, as also in an ancient khan, which was disputed with them by the scorpions. The adjacent country is planted with lofty olives; the greatest part of which are as large as the walnut-trees of France, though they are daily perishing through age and the ravages of contending factions. When a peasant is disposed to take revenge on his enemy, he goes by night and cuts his trees close to the ground, when the wound, which he carefully covers from the sight, drains off the sap like an issue. Amid these plantations are seen at every step dry wells, cisterns fallen in, and immense vaulted reservoirs, which prove that, in ancient times, this town must have been upwards of four miles in circumference. At present it does not contain more than a hundred miserable families. The houses are only so many huts, sometimes detached, and sometimes ranged in the form of cells round a court, enclosed by a mud wall. In winter the inhabitants and their cattle may be said to live together; the part of the building allotted to themselves being raised only two feet above that in which they lodge their beasts. The peasants are by this means kept warm without burning wood,-a species of economy indispensable in a country absolutely destitute of fuel. As to the fire necessary for culinary purposes, they make it, as was the practice in the days of Ezekiel the prophet, of dung kneaded into cakes, which they dry in the sun, exposing them to its rays on the walls of their huts. In summer their lodging is more airy, but all their furniture consists of a single mat and a pitcher for carrying water. The immediate neighbourhood of the village is sown at the proper season with grain and water-melons; all the rest is a desert, and abandoned to the Bedouin K Arabs, who feed their flocks on it. There are frequent remains of towers, dungeons, and even of castles with ramparts and ditches, in some of which are a few Barbary soldiers with nothing but a shirt and a musket; these ruins, however, are more commonly inhabited by owls, jackals, and scorpions.* The only remarkable antiquity at Ramla is the minaret of a decayed mosque, which, by an Arabic inscription, appears to have been built by the Sultan of Egypt. From the summit, which is very lofty, the eye follows the whole chain of mountains, beginning at Nablous, and skirting the extremity of the plain till it loses itself in the south. A ride of two hours brings the traveller to the verge of the mountains, where the road opens through a rugged ravine, and is formed in the dry channel of a torrent. A scene of marked solitude and desolation surrounds his steps as he pursues his journey, in what is so simply described in the gospel as the "hill country of Judea." He finds himself amidst a labyrinth of mountains, of a conical figure, all nearly alike, and connected with each other at their base. A naked rock presents strata or beds, resembling the seats of a Roman amphitheatre, or the walls which support the vineyards in the valleys of Savoy. Every recess is filled with dwarf oaks, box, and rose-laurels. From the bottom of the ravines olive-trees rear their heads, sometimes forming continuous woods on the sides of the hills. On reaching the most elevated summit of this chain, he looks down towards the south-west on the beautiful Valley of Sharon, bounded by the Great Sea; * Chateaubriand, Itinéraire, tom. i. p. 380. Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 335. before him opens the Vale of St Jeremiah; and in the same direction, on the top of a rock, appears in the distance an ancient fortress called the Castle of the Maccabees. It is conjectured that the author of the Lamentations came into the world in the village which has retained his name amidst these mountains; so much is certain, at least, that the melancholy of this desolate scene appears to pervade the compositions of the prophet of sorrows. The unvarying manners of the East exhibit to the view of the stranger, at the present day, the same picture of rural innocence and simplicity which might have met the eye of the mother of the Redeemer when she came into this pastoral country to salute her cousin Elizabeth. Herds of goats with pendant ears, sheep with large tails, and asses which remind you, by their beauty, of the onagra of Scripture, issue from the villages at the dawn of day. Arab women are seen bringing grapes to dry in the vineyards; others with their faces veiled, carrying pitchers of water on their heads, like the daughters of Midian. From the Valley of Jeremiah the traveller towards Zion descends into that which bears the name of Turpentine, and is deeper and narrower than the other. Here are observed some vineyards, and a few patches of doura. He next arrives at the brook where the youthful David picked up the five smooth stones, with one of which he slew the gigantic Goliath. Having crossed the stream, he perceives the village of Heriet-Lefta on the bank of another dry channel, which resembles a dusty road. El Biré appears in the distance on the summit of a lofty hill on the way to Nablous, the Shechem of the Israelites and the Neapolis of the Herods. He now pursues his course through a desert, where wild figtrees thinly scattered wave their embrowned leaves in the southern breeze. The ground, which had hitherto exhibited some verdure, becomes altogether bare; the sides of the mountains, expanding themselves, assume at once an appearance of greater grandeur and sterility. Presently all vegetation ceases; even the very mosses disappear. The confused amphitheatre of the mountains is tinged with a red and vivid colour. In this dreary region he keeps ascending a whole hour to gain an elevated hill which he sees before him; after which he proceeds during an equal space across a naked plain strewed with loose stones. All at once, at the extremity of this plain, he perceives a line of Gothic walls flanked with square towers, and the tops of a few buildings peeping above them ;-he beholds Jerusalem, once the joy of the whole earth! "I can now account," says M. Chateaubriand, "for the surprise expressed by the crusaders and pilgrims at the first sight of Jerusalem, according to the reports of historians and travellers. I can affirm that whoever has, like me, had the patience to read nearly two hundred modern accounts of the Holy Land, the Rabbinical compilations, and the passages in the ancient writers respecting Judea, still knows nothing at all about it. I paused with my eyes fixed on Jerusalem, measuring the height of its walls, reviewing at once all the recollections of history from the patriarch Abraham to Godfrey of Bouillon, reflecting on the total change accomplished in the world by the mission of the Son of Man, and in vain seeking that Temple, not one |