'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
Shake hands before you die,
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die!"
Each of us had our special regret as we stood beside that grave, each our special hopes as, only a few minutes later, we greeted the stranger guest and wished each other A Happy New Year!
CHAPTER IV
HAIFA AND CARMEL
"Traversing this fertile country one is more and more impressed with the incorrectness of the judgment of the ordinary tourist who, confining himself to the route prescribed by Cook, is taken through the barren hills of Judæa and to one or two holy places in Galilee, and then goes home and talks about the waste and desolation of Palestine."—Laurence Oliphant
The early hours of the next morning were devoted to sketching and photography, and after a midday lunch we mounted for a ride, of some nine hours, to Haifa. We soon found ourselves back in the plain, with the great precipice of Carmel before us for our goal. The general features of the country were the same as yesterday, except that we had the River Kishon for our companion. Even the slight amount of rain which had fallen had had its effect here, and the road in parts was heavy enough to disconcert the horses, who picked their way as daintily as if they remembered nothing of the fact that it had rained, with considerable mud as a result, even in their own royal city of Jerusalem, only nine months ago. We could not wonder, however, that the River Kishon should have swept away the hosts of Sisera, for on ground such as this the horse-hoofs might well be "broken by means of the prancings," and nine hundred chariots of iron, hemmed in between the river and the steep hillside, would have a very poor chance, especially in the rainy season, which one may imagine it to have been, as Jael, whom one thinks of as of the Medici, or the knitting-women of the Fronde, "brought forth butter in a lordly dish"; and butter, except at a prohibitive price, at a convent or two in Jerusalem, is not to be had in the summer months. Surely so vile a woman was never celebrated in song!