shattered, but this medley of visitors formed an interesting subject of study.
I next visited the kâdi, (judge,) who was holding his court in the open air, with a canvas screen to shelter his head from the sun, in the midst of orchards and a flower garden. A cause, in which some women were vociferating and screeching in Arabic, (to which that language lends peculiar facility,) was suspended in order to receive my visit, and the litigants had to remain in silence at some distance till I left, returning to the tents.
All the people here praise the air and water of Gaza, and declare that disease of any kind is nearly unknown, except ophthalmia, which, of course, can be generally prevented. Provisions are said to be cheap; but the bread, as sold in the market, not so good as in Jerusalem or Nabloos. Probably their excellent wheat is exported to a distance.
Saturday, 5th.—Rode southwards on a day’s excursion to Khan Yunas, with my people and an escort of two of the quarantine Bashi-bozuk. One of these, named Hadji Ghaneem, was a hardy old fellow, encircled by pistols and swords; his old gun, that was slung at his back, had the rusty bayonet fixed, perhaps fixed by the rust. The other, Hadji Khaleel, was an amusing companion, with plenty to tell and fond of talking.
Started before 7 a.m., passing between cornfields, with numerous larks trilling in the air.
At some distance we came to a low hill lying on our right hand, all the ground about being mere sea sand drifted inland. This is called Tell-ul-’Ejel, “the Calf’s Hill,” so named from its being haunted by the ghost of a calf, which no one has yet laid hold of, but whenever this shall be accomplished the fortunate person will come into possession of the boundless treasures concealed within the hill. Some say that this good luck will happen to any one that is favoured with a dream of the calf three times in succession. All our party professed to believe the local tradition, especially one who had been in Europe, and from whom such credulity had been less expected; but he was sure that some tales of that nature are well founded, and if so, why not this? In my opinion, it is probably a superstition connected with some ancient form of idolatry.
Half-way along our journey we came to a village called Ed Dair, (the convent, perhaps the Dair el Belahh of the list;) but this appellation Dair is often given to any large old edifice of which the origin is unknown. Here was a loop-holed Moslem tower occupied by twenty men of the Bashi-bozuk. Such towers are called Shuneh in the singular, Shuân in the plural.
Khan Yunas is a hamlet of unburnt bricks, dirty and ruinous, which is not always the case with
other villages of that material; the reason of this being so, I suppose to be, that most of its few houses are inhabited by Turkish soldiers. This is the last station southwards held by the sultan’s forces, the next, El Areesh, being an Egyptian outpost. I was desirous of visiting that place had time allowed, not only for the satisfaction of curiosity on the above account, but in order to get some idea from ocular inspection whether the little winter stream or Wadi there could ever have been the divinely-appointed boundary of the land promised to Abraham and his seed for ever. My prepossession is certainly to the contrary.
However, I rode ten minutes beyond Khan Yunas, and sat to rest in a field beneath a fig-tree; the day was hot and brilliant, but there was a fine breeze coming in from the sea. The scene was picturesque enough, for there was a mosque-minaret and a broken tower rising behind a thick grove of palm-trees and orchards of fig, vine and pomegranate—a high bank of yellow sand behind the houses of the village, and the dark blue Mediterranean behind that.