About fifty tourists left the Moltke at Beyrout in order to take the side trip of three days to Damascus, the oldest city in history, and to the ruins of the great Temple of Baal at Baalbek. A narrow-gauge railway extends across the Lebanon Mountains from Beyrout to Damascus. The distance is but ninety miles, but as the train has to rise to an elevation of nearly five thousand feet and then descend to the valley beyond, the average speed does not exceed ten or twelve miles an hour. On Wednesday morning the steamer stopped at the little seaport of Haifa just long enough to send ashore sixty passengers. Some of these wished to take the side trip to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee by carriage; the others, to make the excursion through the interior of Palestine on horseback, camping on the way, and rejoining the main party in Jerusalem.
At noon on Wednesday the Moltke anchored in the unprotected harbor of Jaffa over a mile from the shore, as it is not safe for a large steamer to approach nearer. This was the landing place in the Mediterranean most dreaded by the tourists; for we had heard of jagged rocks that projected their black heads from the water, and of rough seas that on windy days broke over the rocks making the passage from the vessel to the dock very dangerous. The weather, however, was fair and the sea unusually smooth that noon as the tourists one by one dropped from the platform at the foot of the stairway into the row-boats as they rose on the swell of the waves. The boats were large and built expressly for this dangerous harbor. Each boat was managed by eight men, six rowers, a helmsman, and a bowman, and each boat carried about twenty passengers. As the Syrians labored hard at the oars they chanted continually a prayer to Allah for a fair passage.
After safely landing at the stone steps of the dock, we proceeded through the streets to the special train which was waiting to carry us up to Jerusalem, not stopping to visit the traditional house of Simon, the tanner, where the Apostle Peter had a vision on the roof.
"The oranges of Jaffa are noted as being the finest in the world. Don't fail to buy some," said a gentleman from California. "We raise good oranges in my state, but ours are not quite equal to those of Jaffa."
Arab men and boys surrounded the tourists at the station offering carefully packed baskets, each containing two or three dozen fresh, juicy oranges at what seemed an extremely low price. When the train started every compartment contained one or more baskets of the delicious fruit.
IT WAS A TYPICAL SYRIAN GROUP.
The journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem was literally "up;" for the Sacred City is nearly three thousand feet above the sea, and four hours was required for the trip of fifty-four miles. After leaving Jaffa the train passed through a succession of interesting panoramic views: gardens where richness of soil was manifested by the rankness of the growth of the plants and flowers; groups of palm trees with long, rough trunks, and tufted heads high in the air; long rows of tall, narrow-leaved, evergreen eucalyptus trees; orchards of orange trees where yellow fruit clustered amid the glossy dark green leaves; orchards of almond trees covered with a delicate pink bloom; and orchards of gray olive trees with a carpet of grass underneath, as beautiful as a park; bare fig trees whose time for leaf and bloom had not yet come; and fences of huge leaved prickly cactus plants protecting garden plots.
"What queer looking plows they have," said a companion, as we noticed near the train a plowman who had stopped his camel, and thrown his plow, which looked like a crooked root with a point, out of the furrow, while he gazed at the passing train. "The first gardener must have obtained a plow of the same kind from the original forest."
In stretches of sod the rich brown earth was being turned up by farmers with teams of camels, one great camel to each little wooden plow, or with teams composed of an ox and an ass hitched together. In one field twelve camel teams were plowing the sod. We use the word field, but there were no fences except the cactus hedges around small plots. The farm boundaries from ancient times have been marked by corner stones to which Moses referred when he gave the law: "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark." We were in the midst of historic places mentioned in the Bible. To the north lay the fertile level fields of the Plain of Sharon. Fields of young wheat were beautified by the roses of Sharon,—red poppies with black centres and short stems,—which dotted the carpet of green with flecks of red. At Lydda, where Peter healed the man who had the palsy, Arab urchins begged the passengers to buy little bunches of the red poppies and other wild flowers that they offered for sale. To the south stretched the Plain of Philistia, the scene of Samson's adventures, and the fields through which he sent the three hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails. In that direction also lay battle fields where Philistines and Israelites struggled for supremacy.