The Holy Land

JERUSALEM.
From the traditional spot on the Mount of Olives where Christ wept over the city.
Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh . First Edition, with 93 illustrations, published in October 1902 Reprinted in 1904 and 1912 Second Edition, revised, with 32 illustrations, published in 1923
The secrets of satisfactory travel are mainly two—to have certain questions ready to ask; and to detach oneself from preconceptions, so as to find not what one expects, or desires to find, but what is there. These rules I endeavoured to follow while in the Holy Land. As to this book, I have tried to write it “with my eye on the object”—to describe things as they were seen, and to see them again while describing them. The extent to which this ideal has been reached, or missed, will be the measure of the book’s success or failure.
No attempt has been made to add anything original to the scientific knowledge of Palestine. For that task I am not qualified either by sufficient travel or by expert study of the subject. On the other hand, this is not merely an itinerary, or journal of experiences and adventures of the road. I have freely introduced notes from my journal in illustration of characteristics of the country and its life, and have claimed the privilege of digressing in various directions. But the main object has been to give a record of impressions rather than of incidents.
These impressions are arranged in three parts, as they bear upon the geography, the history, and the spirit of Syria. They have been corrected and amplified by as wide reading as the short time at my disposal allowed. A few of the books read or consulted are referred to in footnotes, but many others have helped me. To append a list of them to so small a contribution to the subject as this, would be but to remind the reader of the old fable, Nascetur ridiculus mus . I must, however, acknowledge with much gratitude my obligation to two volumes above all others—Major (now Colonel) Conder’s Tent Work in Palestine , and Professor George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land . To these every chapter is indebted more or less, some chapters very deeply. Among the pleasures which this task has brought with it, none is greater than the intimate acquaintance with these two works which it entailed.