I
INVITATION
Who would not go to Palestine?
To look upon that little stage where the drama of
humanity has centred in such unforgetable scenes; to trace the rugged paths and ancient highways along which so many heroic and pathetic figures have travelled; above all, to see with the eyes as well as with the heart
"Those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross"—
for the sake of these things who would not travel far and endure many hardships?
It is easy to find Palestine. It lies in the south-east corner of the Mediterranean coast, where the "sea in the midst of the nations," makes a great elbow between Asia Minor and Egypt. A tiny land, about a hundred and fifty miles long and
sixty miles wide, stretching in a fourfold band from the foot of snowy Hermon and the Lebanons to the fulvous crags of Sinai: a green strip of fertile plain beside the sea, a blue strip of lofty and broken highlands, a gray-and-yellow strip of sunken river-valley, a purple strip of high mountains rolling away to the Arabian desert. There are a dozen lines of steamships to carry you thither; a score of well-equipped agencies to conduct you on what they call "a de luxe religious expedition to Palestine."
But how to find the Holy Land—ah, that is another question.