As all travelers are told, it was said that a man would go down one pyramid and come up on another in so many minutes. I had seen such a number of "fakes" in my travels that, as I could not tell one Chinaman from another, how should I be able to tell one Arab from another? When this trick was done for me I thought it did not follow that the man on the other pyramid was the man who had been with me.
I was surprised when I left Cairo to find a modern railway, that had been built by Said Pasha. We took the train for Alexandria. At Alexandria we took passage for the Holy Land. The Rev. J. R. MacFarlane, chaplain of Madras, wanted to see Jerusalem and landed at Joppa, or Jaffa, which has become famous for Napoleon's massacre.
In going through the Valley of Sharon, we saw orange and lemon groves, and fruits of all kinds. It was a lovely valley, but all of a sudden we struck into the most desolate country I had ever seen--a mountain, a desert, a wilderness of rocks, ravines and cañons. There were rocks to the right, rocks to the left, and rocks everywhere. My dragoman had a mule and I a donkey. One of these mules had irreverently been named Christ and the other Jesus. To the perfect horror of the clergyman--until he understood that the men could say nothing else in English--the names of the donkeys were spoken with every crack of the whip all the way to Jerusalem. The lashing of those donkeys became a medley of seeming profanity.
A few weeks before, several people had been killed by the Bedouins on the desert. Every one was talking about the dangers of the journey. After we got over this wild district, through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, we came upon a plateau and saw Jerusalem in the distance. Beautiful is that city for situation. Said my companions, at the same instant, "There are the Bedouins!" A half dozen horsemen were coming from the direction of Jerusalem. We feared danger, but Abram the dragoman showed no fear. These men were really not dangerous, being only "barkers" for the hotels of Jerusalem. Neither my companion nor myself had any idea that they were employes of that kind.
One asked if we would go to "Smith's" near Mount Calvary, to "Jones's" near the Via della Rosa, or to another house on the site of Solomon's Temple. MacFarlane said, "Don't notice these people. Leave it to the dragoman." He decided that we should go to Smith's. From that time, until we left, for three days, I saw nothing but humbug and tinsel, lying and cheating, ugly women, sand-fleas and dogs, from Joppa through Ramlah. The one lovely place was an oasis where we stopped for luncheon. Of course this was a long time before Mark Twain went there and wept over the tomb of Adam.