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place. Some were particularly beautiful, but exceedingly delicate, and difficult to be carried. The first day I could have loaded a camel with them. The coral, too, such as it was, lay scattered about in lavish profusion. I remember, the first piece Paul found, he rubbed his hands like the toiling and untiring alchymist, when he thinks he has discovered the philosopher's stone; but when he came to a second he threw away the first, in the same spirit in which the Irishman, on his arrival in our country, the El Dorado of his dreams, threw down a sixpence which he had picked up in the street, assuring himself that there was more where that came from. Some of this coral was exceedingly beautiful; we did not know its value, but I did not think very highly of it, merely from the circumstance of its lying there in such abundance. It was not the rock or branch coral, but a light porous substance, resembling very much the honeycomb. Paul gathered a large quantity of it, and contrived to carry it to Jerusalem, though it got very much broken on the way. He had the satisfaction of knowing, however, that he had not sustained any great loss; for, on our first visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we found in the porch a green-turbaned Mussulman, who, returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca, had thought to indemnify himself for the expense and fatigue of his long and dreary journey with this treasure of the sea. Paul took up a large piece and asked him the price, when the Mussulman, with an air as dejected in telling as was that of Paul in hearing it, told him two paras, a para being about one eighth of a cent; and the next day I saw before the door of the convent at which we were staying a large heap of the coral which Paul had been so careful in carrying; and after that he talked only of his shells, the value of which was not yet ascertained.

At about twelve o'clock, close by the shore, we came to a stunted wild palm-tree, with a small stone fence around

A SANTON OF THE DESERT.

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it; and, looking down from my dromedary, I saw extended on the ground the figure of an Arab. I at first thought he was dead; but, at the noise of our approach, he raised his head from a stone which served him as a pillow, and the first greeting he gave us was to ask for bread. Among all the habitations of hermits I had yet seen, in caves, among rocks or mountains, there was none which could be compared with this by the shore of the sea; a small fence, but little higher than his recumbent body, protected him from the wind; the withered branches of the palm-tree were his only covering; his pillow a stone, and the bare earth his bed; and when he crawled out and stood before us, erect as age and infirmity would allow, I thought I had never seen such a miserable figure. I could not have believed, without seeing it, that anything so wretched, made in God's image, existed on the earth. He was more than sixty; his face was dried, and seamed with the deep wrinkles of age and exposure; his beard long and white; and his body thin to emaciation. Over his shoulders and breast was a miserable covering of rags, but the rest of his body was perfectly naked; his skin was dry, horny, and covered with blotches resembling large scales, which, on his legs, and particularly over his knees, stood out like the greaves of an ancient coat of mail; and he looked like one who literally crawled on his belly and licked the dust of the earth. He reminded me of the wild hermit of Engaddi, who came out upon the Saracen emir when he journeyed with the Knight of the Leopard on the shore of the Dead Sea. And this man was a saint, and my Arabs looked on him with respect and reverence; and when he died a public tomb would be erected over him, and they upon whose charity he now lived would resort to it as a shrine of prayer. We gave him some bread, and left him in his solitary den; and, before we had got out of sight, he had crawled back under his palm-leaves, and was again resting

upon his pillow of stone. In our busy and stirring world, we cannot imagine the possibility of existing in such a dronish state; but, in all probability, that man would lie there till the bread we gave him was exhausted, and, when he had taken his last morsel, again lie down in hope that more would come.

About an hour afterward we came upon a fisherman stealing along the shore with his net in his hand, looking into the sea, and ready to throw it when he saw any fish. The process, like everything else that one sees here, is perfectly primitive, and carries the beholder back to the early days of this ancient country. Carrying the net on his left arm crooked, cleared and prepared for a throw, with the one end in his right hand, and taking advantage of ripples made by the wind, and the sun throwing his shadow behind him, he runs along the shore until he sees a school of fish, when, with a gentle jerk, and without any noise, he throws his net, which opens and spreads as it falls, so that a little thing, which could be put easily into a hat, expands sufficiently to cover a surface of twenty or thirty feet. While running along with us he threw several times; and, as he managed his craft with skill, never throwing until he saw something, he was always successful. I could not make anything out of the Arabic name of the fish; but I have the flavour of them still on my tongue; a flavour at the moment finer than that of the sole or turbot of Paris, or the trout of Long Island.

In the afternoon the weather changed. Since we first struck the sea, our road along its shore had been one of uncommon beauty, and my time passed very pleasantly, sometimes allowing my dromedary to cool his feet in the clear water, sometimes dismounting to pick up a shell, and all the time having a warm sun and a refreshing breeze; but it was my fortune to see this ancient country under every hue of the changing elements. The sun was now obscured; a

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