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EASTERN WATER-SELLER.

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REEF of sharp jagged rocks, over which the surf breaks fiercely, runs parallel with the shore, forming a natural breakwater. Inside the reef the water is smooth enough, but too shallow to admit anything except fishing-boats and small coasting-craft. The harbour has silted up by the sand-drift from Arabian and African deserts, so that steamers and sea-going vessels must anchor outside. Jaffa, a town of four thousand inhabitants, picturesque at a distance, as all eastern towns are, stands on the slope of a hill and comes close down to the beach. It is encircled by a broad belt of gardens and orange groves. A rich fertile plain stretches for ten or twelve miles inland. Then a range of hills bounds the view.

This ancient port was famous both in legend and history. It is the site of the fabled rescue of Andromeda by Perseus, and the city

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is declared by Piiny to have been standing before the Flood. The cedar-wood for building the Temple was sent hither by Hiram, king of

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A

The har

REEF of sharp jagged rocks, over which
the surf breaks fiercely, runs parallel
with the shore, forming a natural
breakwater. Inside the reef the water
is smooth enough, but too shallow to
admit anything except fishing-boats
and small coasting-craft.
bour has silted up by the sand-drift
from Arabian and African deserts, so
that steamers and sea-going vessels
must anchor outside. Jaffa, a town of
four thousand inhabitants, picturesque
at a distance, as all eastern towns
It
are, stands on the slope of a hill and
comes close down to the beach.
is encircled by a broad belt of gardens
A rich fertile
and orange groves.
plain stretches for ten or twelve miles
inland. Then a range of hills bounds
the view.

This ancient port was famous both in legend and history. It is the site of the fabled rescue of Andromeda by Perseus, and the city to have been standing before the Flood. The cedar-wood for building the Temple was sent hither by Hiram, king of

[graphic]

EASTERN WATER-SELLER.

is declared by Piiny

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Tyre. Here Jonah, flying "from the presence of the Lord," found a ship about to sail to Tarshish, "so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it." Somewhere within the circuit of those grey walls, "widows stood

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weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas had made, whilst she was yet with them." amongst the tan-pits on the shore once stood, perhaps still stands, the house of Simon the Tanner, where Peter was taught by vision that Jewish exclusiveness was to end,

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JAFFA FROM THE NORTH.

and that henceforth he should call "nothing common

"nothing common or unclean."3

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FIRST VIEW OF THE HOLY LAND.

A number of boats, manned by half-naked Arabs, howling, yelling, and fighting like demons, cluster round the steamer. In one of them, retained for the use of our party, the fight is so fierce that our dragoman leaps down into it, and lays about him right and left with his heavy korbash. This proving of no avail, he seizes one of the Arabs by the throat, and throws him into the sea, to sink or swim as it may happen. Order being at length restored, we take our seats in the boat, are skilfully steered through a gap in the reef, and soon find ourselves at the foot of some black slimy steps, leading to the Turkish custom-house. A crowd of wretched creatures press round us, clamouring for backshish. The unpaved road is ankle-deep in mud. Foul sights, and yet fouler smells, offend the senses. To most of my companions the sight was altogether new and strange. For myself, having had some previous experience of the filth and squalor of an Oriental town, I was not taken by surprise. But the disenchantment of the rest of the party, as they first set foot on the soil of Palestine, was complete. One American gentleman, who had come prepared to go into ecstasies, and had avowed his intention of falling on his knees on landing, to express his gratitude for being permitted to tread the sacred soil, looked round with a comical expression of bewilderment, and exclaimed, "Is this the Holy Land?"

Picking our way through a tortuous labyrinth of dismal alleys, we found our tents pitched outside the town. The camping ground is a spot of rare beauty. The Mediterranean, of a clear crystalline blue, studded with white sails, rolls up upon the beach. The long coast-line of Philistia runs north and south. Groves of orange, lemon, citron, fig, and pomegranate, vineyards and gardens, the produce of which is famous throughout Syria, form a broad belt round the city. The plain of Sharon, bright with verdure and enamelled with flowers, stretches inland. The mountains of Ephraim, blue against the eastern sky, form a beautiful frame for a lovely picture. It was easy to understand how a name meaning "the beautiful" should have been borne by the town for three thousand years.

The traditional house of Simon the Tanner furnishes, from its flat roof, a fine point of view for this charming scene. And there is reason to believe that the tradition is not far wrong. The house is "by the seaside;" the waves beat against the wall of its courtyard. An ancient well, fed by a perennial spring, furnishes the water needful for the tanner's trade; and tanneries of immemorial antiquity probably go back to the time of Peter's visit or even earlier. The vision here vouchsafed to the apostle gains a new appropriateness on this spot. Joppa has always been the port of Jerusalem. It is, indeed, the only port of Southern Palestine. Thence "the ships of Tarshish" were seen coming and going. The "isles of Chittim (Cyprus) lie just below the horizon. It was the point at which the Jewish and Gentile world came into contact. Peter, looking out over the waters of

1 Acts x. 6.

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