How much Gaza owes to him and his Northumbrian helpers will only appear when the great audit of all things takes place.[48]
Canon Sterling is largely his own clerk of the works. He is to be congratulated that after twenty years of missionary and medical work in Southern Palestine, he has been enabled to complete the group of medical and educational buildings which now adorn the C.M.S. Gaza compound.
FOOTNOTE:
[48] Adapted from Handbooks of the C.M.S. Missions, The Palestine Mission, 1910, a typewritten document by Dr. Sterling, 1912, and Mercy and Truth, 1911.
It may not be generally known that General Gordon paid two visits to Gaza in 1883. On the first occasion he spent a fortnight, and afterwards three weeks in the C.M.S. compound. An interesting relic is the iron bedstead on which he slept. It is still associated with his name, and is being carefully preserved.
CHAPTER XXII
EL ARÎSH AND C.M.S. MISSION
The border town of Egypt, El Arîsh, seventy miles south of Gaza, is generally identified as the "River of Egypt," which was the most southern boundary of the Holy Land in patriarchal times. At present the actual boundary between Palestine and Egypt is a line running from Rafah, the ancient Rhaphia, some thirty miles to the north of El Arîsh, to Akaba.[49]
The country between Rafah and El Arîsh is desolate. The large sand dunes, the dust of ages, have encroached upon the land, whereas the Land of Promise may be recognised by its fertility. Around the villages which lie between Gaza and Rafah are orchards which produce an abundance of fruit; the fig, vine, pomegranate, almond, olive, apricot, date, mulberry, palm, apple, orange, and banana, are all grown, besides vegetables of all kinds, of a size rarely met with in Great Britain.