The rapidly improving facilities for travelling in Palestine, the annual increase in the number of tourists who each year visit it, the numerous ecclesiastical and charitable establishments which have been already constructed and are yearly extended, the influx of foreign capital resulting therefrom, and the increase of the foreign population, both Jew and Christian, all tend to give Palestine an exceptional position as a province in the Turkish empire. It is the only one, indeed, where the evidences of progress are steady and substantial; and there can be no doubt that one of the most marked results of this progress will be the importance which the Holy Land is destined to assume in the event of the Eastern question being reopened, for there is no province in the empire upon which political and religious interests of so varied and universal a nature are concentrated.
Jerusalem, June 23.—I was much struck on my way from Jaffa to this place the other day by contrasting the different systems which are resorted to by the varied races of foreigners who are invading Palestine. There is the Jew, with curling ear-locks and greasy gaberdine, and wallet slung over his shoulder, trudging painfully along the dusty road. He has had hard work to slip into the country at all, and has only succeeded probably by means of backshish and a false passport. He has undergone discomfort and privations innumerable to win the privilege, which, to judge by his wan and sickly face, is not likely long to be denied him, of dying in Jerusalem.
As he plods on, leaning wearily on his long staff, he is almost run over by a bright yellow barouche dashing along the road, with four horses, in a style which shows how rapidly Western civilization is striding into the East. It is an English duke “doing” Palestine. He is followed by a motley group of his own country men and women, mounted on horses and donkeys, the women for the most part apparently old maids in straw hats, green spectacles, and veils, while a large proportion of the men are evidently parsons, who wear clerical coats and waistcoats and unclerical pith hats and jack boots. The whole party, consisting of about thirty persons, white with dust, are preceded by an elaborately attired dragoman, whom they are about to follow over the country like a flock of sheep, for they are the last batch of the season of Cook's tourists.