As described by Jona, we found upon the hill which overlooks the city the once elegant rock castle, surrounded by a deep water channel quarried from the solid rock, as before described, but, apparently, no one had lived there for ages.
Then, by following his plat west of the city proper, we found ancient family tombs as he had described, but the receptacles for the dead, four tiers high, were empty, save as a retreat for bats and owls. Still we found no documents concerning Jesus, and Jona's journey to Tadmor with his two wives was, as far as Jesus and the Goddess of Galilee were concerned, a complete failure. Unless his many evenings spent with me, relating the disjointed traditional reminiscences concerning Mary Magdalene, satisfies others as it does me of the heroic, unremitting zeal of woman when clouds of sorrow overshadow the day.
In parting from my Bedouin friends I shook hands with the three, and got one more good squeeze from Jona's disobedient Fatima. Then, according to Oriental custom, Jona hugged and kissed me. Females of the desert who are not Mohammedans are accustomed to kiss at will, the same as the men do. Jona was a kind-hearted, truthful old Arab. His wife's affection for me was pure desire for soul liberty, like a bird confined in a cage while other birds play in the trees.
MARY MAGDALENE
While the orb of day is kissing a fond adieu to the Syrina highland which overlooks the great city Tandmor with its two million inhabitants, two sojourners from the far East, with their usual escort, turn in beside the fast flowing stream of hot water which still gushed forth from under the once beautiful city of the desert.
The fleet and pack animals gently kneel to be relieved of their burden, for even the patient ships of the desert become weary on their long journeys over the trackless, sand blown wilds.
Long after the hum of the city had ceased and the silence above had thrown its dark mantle over the sleeping face of nature, we sat by the babbling brook discussing the strange report, which for nearly two years had been heralded from the vine clad hills of Canaan, to the effect that one Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter, was imbued with spiritual power to the extent that he was healing all manner of diseases, and of late had raised a damsel twelve years old from the dead.
Next day, while crossing the Desert of Hor, we could see Tandmor when twenty miles away, and on the fifth day we reached Palestine. The evening we arrived at Capernaum we found the west shore of the Sea of Galilee from the ford of the Jordan north to the hot springs of Tiberias, south, as well as the western hillside, literally strewn with groups of wise men from different parts of the world, together with the high and low of the Hebrew clan.