Of Nazareth itself there is little to be said. It was always a secluded and unimportant place, and probably at the present day is larger and more important than even when it was the see of a Latin bishop. The cave-cisterns, which have been traditionally regarded for many centuries as the “Holy House,” of which part was carried by angels to Loretto, are enclosed in a modern church on the foundations of a Byzantine chapel, converted later into a Crusading cathedral. The Greek church farther north, over the spring head, is the reputed site of the Annunciation, according to the Eastern belief. Another Christian sect was busy, when I first visited Nazareth, in consecrating a round table of rock, which seemed to be newly hewn, but which was to be revered as the Mensa Christi, where Jesus had once sat with His disciples. Such sites have little claim to attention, since no hint is to be found in the Gospels of their locality or preservation. Nor are the mediæval legends connected with the “Leap of our Lord,” at the cliff where the road runs up to Nazareth from the great plain, of interest, save to the student of the curious Crusading chronicles. Antoninus, the pious pilgrim of the time of Justinian, says that “in this city the beauty of the Hebrew women is so great that no more beautiful women are found among the Hebrews, and this, they say, was granted them by the Blessed Mary, who they say was their mother.” The same is said in our own times of the Christian women of the town, and of those in Bethlehem also. Certainly their type of beauty is very superior to that of the peasant women of Moslem villages. The Nazareth girls are more Italian than Arab in feature, and often very comely; but there are many ways of explaining this besides the theory of Crusading ancestry. We must not forget that in Syria mixed types, half Aryan, have long existed, due to Greek, or Italian, or Frankish forefathers, and the blue eyes sometimes seen in Syria may be due to yet later admixture of European blood. More weight is, I think, to be given to such facts than to a comparison with blue and green eyes in the faded pictures at Karnak, which represent the Canaanites. The fairness of the Nazareth women is denied by Père Lievin’s orthodox guide-book, and by the Franciscan fathers--mainly Italians--who have monasteries at Nazareth and at Bethlehem.