Haifa, Sept. 15.—When I last visited Jericho, six years ago, it consisted of a miserable village of mud huts, containing a population of mixed negroes and Bedouins, amounting at most to three hundred souls. I was astonished now to find that, of all places in the world, it was going ahead. There was a sort of boom going on; a very minute boom, it is true, but still it was progress, and there is no saying what it may lead to.
It is due entirely to the Russians, and I think that a progressive Jericho, owing to Russian enterprise, is a phenomenon worthy of remark. Indirectly it may be attributed to the passion Russian pilgrims have for bathing in the Jordan and carrying away bottles full of the water of that sacred stream. This passion for holy ablutions is one which a wise and far-seeing government has turned to profitable political account. It was only in obedience to the most ordinary instincts of humanity that some sort of accommodation should be provided for the pious crowds, consisting largely of old and frail women, who trudge thirty miles in a broiling sun to bathe in the Jordan, and who could not find a roof to shelter them, or a place in which to be fed, until they got back to Jerusalem. So a large, handsome, red-stone building, not unlike a state lunatic asylum, has been erected for their accommodation at Jericho. Here not only the Russian pilgrim, but the ordinary travelling lunatic, can find first-class accommodation.
The protection which so handsome an establishment afforded was all that was required to give a start to the place. Devout Russians, always acting under the auspices of a pious, intelligent, and paternal government, are beginning gradually to make Jericho a place of winter resort. They build little cottages there, surround them with gardens which supply them with most delicious fruit and vegetables, spend their summers in Jerusalem, and come down here in the winter and bathe in the Jordan to their hearts' content. In other words, in a religious and quite unostentatious way, Russia is quietly colonizing Jericho. The obnoxious word colony, so hateful to Turkish ears, is never pronounced, but I counted no fewer than twelve neat little whitewashed cottages, where a few years ago there was not one.