TENT LIFE
IN THE HOLY LAND.
WHAT a charm there is in tent life on the hills and plains of Palestine! It presents such a contrast to the staid routine, alike of labor and recreation in our island home [England], to the rapidity and regularity of rail and hotel, that one can scarcely think himself in the same world.
The sense of complete freedom, of absolute independence, is strange and new. Then there is the dash of danger, the exhilarating effect of pure air and exercise, and, above all, the magic influence of places of sacred and historic associations ever crowding on the mind, suggested and awakened ay names and scenes, all of them of hoary antiquity, and yet all familiar as household words and childhood's home. Every spot on which we tread is holy. Every ruin we pass by has a place in history. Every mountain and vale the eye roams over has a story written in the oldest and nest of books. All we see belongs to and illustrates the past. The costumes of the people, the implements of husbandry, the houses, the tents, are all such as were familiar to Abraham; and the salutations are the very same with which Abraham was greeted when he visited the Philistine Lords at Gerar, or bargained for the field if Machpelah at Hebron. We roam through these hallowed scenes all the day, find when evening comes, we select some grassy spot beside a bubbling fountain or old well. We dismount; and then, as if by magic, horses are picketed, tents are pitched, fires are kindled, and all got ready in true gypsy style, in patriarchal style, I should say for thus the old patriarchs lived and traveled through these very hills and plains.
Syria's Holy Places.
