I can not tell—I do not know—when the seed was planted, but some ten years ago the plant of desire sprang up in my heart. I did not pluck it up. Gradually its rootlets intertwined themselves with the fibres of my very being, and finally they took deep root in my soul. Five years later the buds of hope appeared. I was happy. The plant was nurtured with patience and with care. The buds grew into flowers, and now the fruit appears. First, the desire, then the hope, and now the realization. Yes, for years I have thought of traveling through Palestine. This trip became my thought by day and my dream by night. I have often made nocturnal visits to Bethlehem and Calvary. While asleep I have wandered through the streets of Jerusalem; in my dreams I have seen Nazareth nestling on the hillside, and Damascus reposing in the valley. That desire grew stronger and stronger. It became the ruling passion of my life, and I said: “By God’s help I will go.” I set my face like a flint towards the Holy Land, and hither I have come. I feel profoundly thankful that that which was my youth’s fondest hope is now my manhood’s first glory to realize.

I have already begun the journey “through Palestine in the saddle,” and if the reader will exercise some of that “patience” which “beareth all things,” I will tell him who my companions are, and what the mode of traveling is in this country. Afterwards I may say something concerning the appearance and condition of the country; also something about the customs and habits of the people.

I have become quite a pedestrian, and I had hoped to go through Palestine and Syria, as I went through several European countries—on foot. But since arriving here I find that a “tramp trip” is quite impracticable, if not altogether impossible. I never undertake impossibilities, hence I give up my scheme of walking.

While Johnson and I were traveling in Bulgaria, we met Mr. Wm. Y. Hamlin and two ladies from Detroit, Michigan. The two ladies were sisters. One of them was unmarried; the other was Mr. Hamlin’s deceased wife’s mother. We met them again in Constantinople and some time afterward in Smyrna. We spent several days together around the islands and on the waters of the Mediterranean. The two parties proved mutually agreeable. So we have now resolved ourselves into one party for a trip through Syria and Palestine. We employ the same Dragoman who furnishes everything, and pays all expenses of the journey from one end to the other. We are to ride on horses and camels, and sleep in tents. Four days are required to make preparation, nor are four days any too many. Camels, and horses, and donkeys, and mules, and bridles, and saddles, and whips, and spurs, and tents, and beds, and provisions, and cooking utensils, are to be made ready. Packing is to be done, letters are to be written, and costumes purchased. The American Consul is to be seen officially, Turkish passports are to be gotten, and a number of other things to be looked after. What I have to do during these four days reminds me of the man who was, at one and the same time, a lawyer, a merchant, a druggist, a dentist, a physician, a shoemaker, a miller, pastor of four churches and general missionary besides!

At two o’clock on Saturday every thing is pronounced ready, and from that good hour we are to be known as the “Equestrian Pilgrims.” What a formidable turnout is ours! A veritable caravan! To accommodate and serve five pilgrims we have seven tents—I have to sleep in two tents—fifteen body-guards, or muleteers, and thirty head of camels, mules and donkeys! Nor is this all. Chairs and tables, tents and trunks, beds and blankets, and a hundred other things, are tied together and strapped on the backs of the animals. Thus laden, each little donkey, as he goes jogging along, looks like a veritable Jumbo; and the camels, with these great packs on their backs, look almost like walking mountains! These are all strung out one after another—one after another, the front end of the rear camel being tied to the hind end of the one before him, and that one to the next, and so on. I have been reading about caravans all my life and now I have one of my own. I am told to choose any one of the animals I want to ride, whereupon I select a small donkey, mouse-colored, except for the numerous stripes that wind around him—these give him something of a zebra-like appearance. I want to show the natives how supple I am, and, going up to the donkey and putting my arms on his back, I try to leap up. But, unfortunately, I leap over, and come down on the other end of my neck. Amid the loud acclamations of the natives, the stately procession moves off. The stars and stripes flutter in the breezes, while the music of the national hymn is borne away over the sea on the wings of the wind.

The narrow streets of Beyrout are soon quitted, and we at once begin the ascent of Lebanon. The first thing that attracts our attention is a wide world of mulberry trees—it looks about seventeen thousand acres on either side of the road. The trees appear to be about eighteen feet high. Half naked boys and girls, men and women have climbed up the trees and are plucking off the leaves here and there. I don’t know what to make of it. The first thought that suggests itself is that “fig-leaf dresses” have come in fashion again. But Tolhammy my dragoman, says: “This is a great country for silk culture, and mulberry trees are cultivated, and the leaves gathered for the silk worms.” In Damascus he says we shall see plenty of silk manufactured by hand.

We meet a great many Arabs going into the city that we have just left. Several miles back I stopped one of these sons of the desert for a conversation. I think we talked about an hour and thirteen minutes, more or less, and would, no doubt, have talked longer, but neither one of us understood a word the other said. Occasionally there was a lag in the conversation. While I was gathering this valuable information from the stranger, the other part of the caravan slacked never a pace. And now, looking aloft, I see high on the mountain-side a white city—a city of tents. This reminds me of Balaam who was traveling in this same country not far from here, and, seeing a sight just like this, he exclaimed: “How goodly are thy tabernacles, O Jacob and thy tents, O Israel!”

The road, gleaming in the sunshine, looks at one time like a clothes-line hanging on the mountain-side; again it resembles a winding serpent crawling zigzag up the mountain as though it wants to swallow the tents. Climbing the hill, we pass a number of dilapidated villages on the right and left of the road. Just as the sun goes down to cool his hot face in the Mediterranean, we reach the tents pitched on Mt. Lebanon! At last the city is before us. Dismounting, and going into our new apartments, we can hardly believe we are in tents. The walls and ceiling look like white marble newly painted and beautifully frescoed. The rock floor is spread with rich Persian carpets and mats. Here are rocking-chairs, tables, bedsteads, washstands—every thing! “What style!” I say to the party.

While we are rejoicing, in steps an Arab and says: “Solimat neharicsiade emborak.” Joy departs at these words. With a look of surprise and a feeling of regret I say, “Sir?” He responds, “Solimat neharicsiade emborak.” Rising to my feet I say, “Repeat that remark, please.” Gesticulating wildly, the Arab repeats with great emphasis, “Solimat neharicsiade emborak!” I thought he said my horse was loose. But after a while, however, the Arab, by means of signs, gives me to understand that nothing serious has occurred; that he came in only to let me know supper is ready. I feel relieved and delighted. After a long ride over a rough country, we all have good appetites, and the announcement of supper is therefore joyful news. The evening meal being over, the pilgrims draw their chairs close together and sit for an hour or more talking about friends at home, about the past history and present condition of this country, and about Him whose footsteps have hallowed its soil. The prospect of traveling through this country thrills us all. Substituting the word Hill, for Grail, I can appropriate the language of Tennyson:

“Never yet has the sky appeared so blue, nor earth so green,
For all my blood dances in me, and I know
That I shall light upon the Holy Grail.”

Night brings sweet rest to our tired bodies. Early in the morning, bright rays of cheerful sunshine steal into our tents and drive sleep away. We awake to find a bright, beautiful Sabbath day; and while with our bodies it is to be a day of rest, we pray that with our souls it may be a Sabbath day’s journey towards the New Jerusalem. Stillness pervades the air. The solemn silence is broken only by the mournful music of yonder restless sea. All the pilgrims except Johnson spend the day reading and meditating. He occupies the time in writing to his—to his—grandmother.

Late in the afternoon our attention is attracted by an unheard of medley of sound. The noise that falls upon our ears is not more strange than the sight that greets our eyes is curious. The dragoman tells us not to be alarmed, and says it is only a wedding procession. Johnson is glad of that. I stand it for his sake. The procession consists of about a hundred persons, ninety-eight on foot and two riding grey horses, all singing and dancing as they come. Ten or twelve of the footmen are in front of the horses, while the others are behind. The leader of the van is an Arab of unusual length and gracefulness, clad in the most fantastic robes imaginable. In his two hands he holds a stick about six feet long, wrapped around with gay and fancy colors. The leader is coming backward, facing the advancing throng and keeps about ten paces in front of them. He is first on one side of the road and then on the other. He leaps; he bobs up and down: he bows and bends. At one moment his face is almost on the ground, and the next his head is tossed high in the air. The stick is waved like a magician’s wand. The man is active as a cat and every movement is graceful. As he leads, the others follow his example. They all hop and skip and bow and bend and rise and fall together. Some sing while others blow or knock discordant sounds out of their rude instruments of music.

Never before did Johnson behold a sight like this, nor until now did such a babbling confusion ever strike his ears. The procession draws close. The two persons on horseback are riding side by side. One is the bride, decked in colors gay and wreathed with flowers many. There are two tall men walking, one on either side of the horse, with their arms locked around the bride; I suppose to keep her from falling. Johnson touches me in the side and says: “Whittle, if that were my bride, I wouldn’t let those fellows do that.” The bride’s face, according to the custom of the country, is covered by a long, flowing veil. The man by her side is not the groom. A man in this country will not condescend to go after a woman—not even after his bride! Woman is an inferior creature—she must humble herself and go to the man. The groom sends his friend or his servant for her, and I understand she is always willing to come. Johnson says it is very different in America. He says one refused to go with him when he went after her in person.

Brides are bought and sold here now as they were in olden times, though there has been a great increase in price. Hebrews are good traders and always have been. In Bible times they bought wives for twenty-five dollars, but now brides in this country sell for from seventy-five to one hundred dollars. I believe the men would buy them even if the price should be still higher. Of course they would buy them. Women are slaves. They are man’s burden-bearers and nothing more! The Mohammedans have two, four or a half dozen wives. The Sultan has five hundred, and the people follow his example as far as possible.

The wedding festivities, consisting of music, songs and dancing, last for a week, and then the bride is converted into a slave for her husband. In a few months she will probably be a slave for his next wife!

Monday morning bright and early, we fold our tents and renew our pilgrimage. Lebanon continues steep, rocky, rough and bare. Not a bush, not a blade of green grass, nothing but a long mountain range covered with loose stones, is to be seen. The hills are very productive—of rocks. Now and then we come to large camel pastures. As these long-legged, high-headed, two-storied animals are fat and flourishing, I conclude that they live on wind and stones. In the road we meet hundreds and hundreds of big camels and little camels, dun-colored, mouse-colored, white and black camels, laden with all kinds of oriental merchandise. Late in the afternoon, we for the first time catch a glimpse of snow-capped Hermon, some fifty miles away to the southwest. We take off our hats to this mountain monarch, promising him a visit later on. We now descend into the green valley, sixteen and a half miles wide and some sixty miles long, lying between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon. We want to see the Cedars of Lebanon; and in order to do this we are compelled just here to quit the Damascus road, and travel for three days up this beautiful valley, keeping close to the Lebanon side.

On the second day, traveling up this valley, we come to what tradition says is Noah’s tomb. Strange to say this tomb is eighty-five feet long. It is built of stone and is eight feet wide, seven feet high and eighty-five feet long! Seeing this, I am at once reminded of an incident that is said to have occurred with an American preacher. At the close of the Saturday service, the clergyman announced that he would preach again on Sunday, after reading a certain portion of scripture. Before the hour for Sunday service, some mischievous boys slipped into the church with a bottle of glue and pasted two leaves of the Bible together, so that in reading the minister would miss connection. Eleven o’clock came, and with it came also a large concourse of people. Ascending the pulpit, the reverend gentleman opened the sacred book and began to read. On the bottom of one page he read: “And Noah, when he was an hundred and twenty years old, took unto himself a wife who was”—and then turning over the leaf and missing connection, he continued, “who was an hundred and eighty-six cubits long, forty-seven cubits wide, built of gopher wood, stuck with pitch inside and out.” With trembling knees and confused head, the minister, with stammering tongue said: “Brethren, I have been preaching twenty years and yet I confess that I have never seen this in the Bible before. But it is here and I accept it. Yes, brethren, I accept it as an undying evidence of the fact that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.” So, since I find that Noah’s tomb is eighty-five feet long, I am not much surprised to learn that Mrs. Noah was one hundred and eighty-six cubits long.

Day has succeeded night again. This is the third day since we left the Damascus road. We are now camped in the valley at the base of Lebanon, which is at this point 10,000 feet high and almost as steep as the roof of a house. Many loose rocks and bowlders of all shapes and sizes are scattered promiscuously over the mountain side. There is no road to be seen—nothing more than a cow trail or hog path. And yet in order to see a single Cedar we are compelled to climb to yonder giddy heights. Well, we all start—three gentlemen and two ladies. One woman soon gives out, but the other is the kind of a woman who, when she says, “I will,” means with a twist on it, “I will!” She says that she started and she is going. She reminds me of the French woman who started to the top of Mont Blanc. Twelve hundred feet before reaching the summit she gave out, and, being dragged by guides, she kept crying: “If I die carry me to the top.”

To climb Lebanon at this place is barely within the limits of possibility. The way is steep, high and rough, and at times perilous. To be sure, on foot one could climb it without danger, but not without great physical exertion. On horseback, however, it is a hazardous undertaking. No four-footed animal, save a mountain goat or an Arabian steed, dare undertake the ascent. If I live to get down, I shall christen my Arabian pony “Amnon, the reliable, the sure-footed.” The mountain is scaled, the summit is reached, and no Cedars yet. I am now standing on the heights of Lebanon, looking down upon the blue Mediterranean 10,000 feet below me and only three miles away towards the setting sun. The gray clouds, lying along the western horizon, look like white-winged ships floating on the bosom of the sea. For aught I know, they are ships freighted with whirlwinds and thunder-storms; or perchance they may be—I hope they are—freighted with rain to refresh this parched earth.

Leaving the summit and coming down three thousand feet on the western side, I find myself resting under the venerable Cedars of Lebanon, seven thousand feet above the sea. It is a perfect day. The sky is of a rich, deep, azure blue and seems only a few feet above me. The atmosphere is pure and crisp. It is a glorious thing to be here. Look where you will, you find something to admire. The air is delightful; the earth, sea and sky are beautiful; but the waving Cedars are the one central object of interest and admiration—their age, their history, their beauty! Then come the sacred associations that cluster about the Cedars of Lebanon. All my life I have been reading of these trees. Before I could read, my mother used to sing me a sweet song about the Cedars of Lebanon. All of mother’s songs were sweet, but especially sweet, I thought, was this one about the Cedars. And now I am here looking at them with my own eyes. Of all trees on earth those are by far the most renowned. Of all the vegetable kingdom they are the crowning glory.

From this mountain Solomon got the timber to build his temple on Mount Moriah. In all probability some of these trees that I am now looking at were here in Solomon’s day. I feel that I am in the presence of Age. These venerable Cedars are not ringed round by years or decades, but by centuries! And yet their wrinkles may be counted by the score. These trees are mentioned more than twenty-five times in the pages of Sacred Writ. They are called “goodly Cedars.”

As I see these historic trees bowing and bending in the cold and cutting breeze, I am naturally reminded of a thought beautifully expressed by the “sweet singer of Israel” where he says: “There shall be an handful of corn in the earth on the tops of the mountain; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon, and they of that city shall flourish like grass.” We are told also that “the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree and grow like a Cedar of Lebanon.” I wonder why and how it is that the righteous can grow like a Cedar in Lebanon. Upon examination I find that these Cedars grow on a mountain top; that they grow out of a rock; that they are rooted in barrenness. I find that every crack and crevice in the rock is filled with their roots and fibres. The roots of the trees shoot themselves deep down through the rended rocks and take a firm hold upon the eternal hills. And when earthquakes come and the mountains reel and totter on their bases; when cyclones come with death and destruction locked up in their wings; when the storms howl and the sea is lashed into rage and fury,—the Cedars of Lebanon do then bow and bend gracefully in the breezes; but they are uprooted never. They say,

“Let the winds be shrill,
Let the waves roll high,
We fear not wind or wave.”

And when the earthquakes have ceased and the mountains no longer reel; when the cyclones have passed; when the sea is lulled to sleep and the winds are only a whisper, then the Cedars of Lebanon lift themselves up in their pillared majesty, spread wide their broad arms and look up smilingly in the face of God as if to say: “We thank thee, O Lord God Almighty, for the firm footing that thou hast given us in the eternal rocks—in the everlasting hills.” I thank thee, O God, that the righteous grow like the Cedars of Lebanon. I bless thee that the righteous grow on a mountain top—on mount Calvary; that they grow out of a rock—Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages.

Wherever the nails have torn His hands and His feet, where the cruel spear has pierced His side, these are the cracks and crevices where the roots and fibres of my heart can so fix and fasten themselves that when earthquakes social and cyclones moral shall come, I will be uprooted never. I may bow and bend with the breezes, but when the earthquakes have passed and the storms are no more; when the waves of infidelity have passed, as always passed they have and always pass they must, then I will look up smilingly in the face of Jehovah and say: “I thank thee, O God, that none of these things move me; that I can say with Paul of old, ‘I am rooted and grounded in Christ;’ that I stand now and forever unmoved and immovable, like the Cedars!”

Reader, I have just stated that Solomon secured timber from this mountain to build the great temple in Jerusalem. It is quite possible that some of the trees before me were here in Solomon’s day, and that because of their knots and roughness they were rejected by his workmen. We are told that God is building another temple in that other Jerusalem, and that our characters are to furnish the sticks of timber out of which it is to be built. We should see to it that our characters will not be rejected, but that they will be smoothed and polished ready to be wrought into that spiritual temple which shall stand throughout the endless cycles of eternity!

The Cedars of Lebanon have almost become sacred, holy trees. I am therefore grieved to find so few of them left. This long mountain range that was once covered with them is now as bare as if it had never known any vegetation. Seeing that only a few hundred of the old Cedars remain, I am reminded of the language of Zechariah: “Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy Cedars. Howl, fir-tree, for the Cedar is fallen. Howl, O ye oaks of Bashan, for the forest of the vintage has come down.” Most of the Cedars have indeed “come down,” but some of the remaining ones are splendid enough to make up for those that are gone. One of these patriarchs of the forest is forty-eight feet in circumference. Some of them rise up in their pillared majesty for eighty, one hundred or one hundred and twenty-five feet high, I suppose. Some of the largest ones are probably one hundred and fifty feet across, from bough to bough. The limbs usually grow out from the trunk at right angles. Other limbs grow out from those at right angles and so on, until even the smallest branches and twigs are horizontal like arbor vitÆ, except that arbor vitÆ stands up and the Cedar lies down flat like a shingle. One limb of the Cedar is very much like a square of shingles on a flat-roofed house, and when limb is placed above limb they form a roof that turns water very well, and shuts out much of the sunlight. Another peculiarity of the Lebanon Cedar is that it bears a cone something like our pine burrs, except that it never opens.

Again, I say it is a grand, a glorious, a sweet privilege to sit beneath the wide-spreading branches of these time-honored trees and read what holy men of old wrote concerning them. But the day is far spent. Amnon is saddled. I must mount and see if he proves worthy of his new name.