A Blizzard

       This is our last day in Palestine. Farewell to its mountains, its lakes, its valleys. I feel myself worn with the emotions of this journey in the Holy Land. One cannot live over the most exciting scenes of eighteen hundred or four thousand years, without feeling the result in every nerve of his body. Beside that, it is a very arduous journey. Six and seven hours of horseback in a country which is one great rock, split and shattered and ground into fragments, some of them as large as a mountain and some of them as small as the sand of the sea. This afternoon we are caught in a tempest that drenches the mountain. One of the horses falls and we halt amid blinding rain. It is freezing cold. Fingers and feet like ice. Two hours and three-quarters before encampment. We ride on in silence, longing for the terminus of to-day's pilgrimage. It is, through the awful inclemency of the weather, the only dangerous day of the journey. Slip and slide and stumble and climb and descend we must; sometimes on the horse and sometimes off, until at last we halt at a hovel of the village, and instead of entering camp for the night; are glad to find this retreat from the storm. It is a house of one story, built out of mud. A feeble fire in mid-floor, but no chimney. It is the best house in the village. Arabs, old and young, stand round in wonderment as to why we come. There is no window in the room where I write, but two little openings, one over the door and the other in the wall, through which latter out-look I occasionally find an Arab face thrust to see how I am progressing. But the door is open and so I have light. This is an afternoon and a night never to be forgotten for its exposures and acquaintance with the hardships of what an Arab considers a luxurious apartment. We have passed from Palestine to Syria, and are spending the last night out before reaching Damascus. Tomorrow we shall have a forced march and do two days in one, and by having carriages sent some twenty miles out to meet us, we shall be able to leave stirrup and saddle, and by accelerated mode reach Damascus at six or seven o'clock in the evening. Let only those in robust health attempt to take the length of Palestine on horseback. I do not think that it is because of the unhealthiness of the climate in the Holy Land that so many have sickened and died while here, or afterwards, but because of the fatigues. The number of miles gives no indication of the exhaustions of the way. A hundred and fifty miles in Palestine and Syria on horseback demand as much physical strength as four hundred miles on horseback in regions of easy travel. I am to-night in good health notwithstanding the terrible journey; and seated by a fire, the smoke of which, finding no appropriate place of escape, takes lodgment in my nostrils and eyes. For the first time in my life I realize that chimneys are a luxury, but not a necessity. The only adornments in this room are representations of two tree branches in the mud of the wall, a circle supposed to mean a star, a bottle hung from the ceiling, and about twelve indentations in the wall, to be used as mantels, for anything that may be placed there. This storm is not a surprise, for through pessimistic prophets we have expected that at this season we should have rain and snow and hail throughout our journey.

       For the most part it has been a bright and tonic atmosphere, and not a moment has our journey been hindered. Gratitude to God is to-night the prominent emotion. "Bless the Lord; O our souls, who redeemeth our lives from destruction."

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