When I reached the forest I found it to be a large orange grove surrounded by a high hedge and a ditch filled with water. There was not a house in sight. The trees were loaded with fruit. I emptied my knapsack, plunged through ditch and hedge, and tore savagely at the tempting fare. With half-filled bag I got back to the plain, caught up my scattered belongings, and struck southward, peeling an orange. The skin was close to an inch thick; the fruit inside looked juicy enough to make anybody hungry. Greedily I stuffed a large piece into my mouth, and stopped stock-still, feeling as if I had been struck a sudden blow in the back of the neck. The orange was as green as the Emerald Isle, its juice more sour and bitter than half and half of vinegar and gall. I peeled another, and another. Each was more sour and bitter than the last. Tearfully I dumped the golden treasure into the mire and stumbled on.
In the early afternoon I fell in with a band of roving Bedouins, and traveled on with them, splashing long hours through surf and stream along the narrow beach. Night had fallen before we parted in the Haifa market-place.
At a Jewish inn in Haifa I made the acquaintance of a fellow countryman. He was born in Nazareth, of Arab blood, and had never been outside Asia Minor. But his grandfather had lived for a few years in New York, and, though the good old gentleman had long since been resting in his grave, his descendants were considered citizens of the United States in their native land, and did not have to pay taxes to the Turkish officials. They had the right to greet travelers from the new world as fellow countrymen. Nazry Kawar was overjoyed at meeting a man from his own country. He spent the afternoon drawing sketches of the routes of Palestine for me, and took his leave, promising to write me a letter of introduction to his uncle, a Nazarene dentist.
Early the next morning I started out on the road to Nazareth. Toward noon, in the lonely hills beyond the first village, two Bedouins, less bloodthirsty than hungry, fell upon me while I ate my lunch by the wayside. They bombarded me with stones from opposite sides; but they threw like girls, and dodged like ocean liners, so that I caused more injury than I received. Finally I started a race down the highway. They were no mean runners; but, when over the hill, they caught sight of a road-repair gang of bronze-faced and muscular women, and were forced to stop.
An hour later I reached the highest point of the route. Far beyond, colored by the delicate blue air that trembled and wavered in the afternoon sunshine, stretched a vast plain, walled by mountain ranges, that seemed many miles away. I followed the route along the top of the western wall, now passing between two mountain-peaks, now coming out on a plateau; and, rounding at last a gigantic rock, I burst into Nazareth, the city where Christ spent his boyhood.
On the road between Haifa and Nazareth I met a road repair gang, all women but the boss.
Nazareth was a mere village in the time of Christ. To-day it covers the bowl-shaped valley in which it is built, and climbs to the summits of the surrounding hills. Seen from a distance, it looks like the amphitheater of a circus.
I went on down into the city. In the crowded, babbling bazaars, I tried in vain to find the dentist Kawar to whom my letter was addressed. When my legs grew a-weary of wandering through the winding streets, and my tongue could no longer misshape itself in attempts to pronounce the peculiar sounds of the Arabic language, I sat down on a bazaar stand and leaned back carelessly, knowing that I should soon be taken care of. Near me on all sides rose a whisper, in the hoarse voice of squatting shop-keepers, in the high-pitched voice of passing children: “Faranchee! Fee wahed faranchee!”
Hardly a moment had passed before a scared-looking boy stopped near by to stare at me, in the manner of one ready to run in terror at the first sign of an unfriendly move on the part of this strange creature, whose clothes were so queer, whose legs were clothed in separate garments. Here, surely, was one of those dread bogey men who are known to dine on small Arabs, and so near that—perhaps he had better edge away and take to his heels before—But no; here are a dozen men of familiar look collecting in a half-circle back of him! And there comes his uncle, the camel-driver. Perhaps the bogey man is not so fearful, after all, for the men crowd close around, calling him faranchee and efendee, and appearing not in the least afraid.