Ten napoleons were to be paid at starting, and the remainder, half in Jerusalem and half in Jaffa, on our return. Ali Solomon was the name of our dragoman, and I will do him the credit to say that we were entirely satisfied with him. He kept his contract more faithfully than we expected he would, and in some points exceeded its terms.
I don’t recommend him to anybody else, for fear he may have suffered a change of heart, and become a rascal; men are very uncertain in this respect.
I once had a servant whom I supposed to be honest enough to be a model for the rising generation. He left my employ to seek fortune and turn an honest penny elsewhere, and I gave him a ‘character’ which a student of theology might ertvy. On the strength of my recommendation, he obtained a situation with a gentleman, whose milk of human kindness had not been curdled by experience. John was trusted with things in general, and requited the confidence by stealing a hundred dollars, and then stealing away. And no man, so far as I have heard, knoweth, to this day, the place of his sojourn.
Since then, I have been cautious about commendations, and, for this reason, I will only say of Ali, that we were entirely satisfied with him, and believed him honest and faithful. If he robbed his next customers of the filling of their back teeth, it is no affair of ours.
We selected horses from a large number, and very good horses they were. About 2 o’clock we rode out of the German colony of Jaffa, which has bought the property formerly held by the American colony from Maine. The Germans are prospering, and promise well for the future. I was told that the Americans might have prospered, if their affairs had been well managed, but that their leader was about the worst head that could have been chosen. Only four, I believe, of the American colonists remain there, three women and one man. One woman is in a state of poverty, but I was told that the rest were making a good living. The Germans have a good manager at their head, and all of them are industrious. They have a second village about two miles away from the one originally founded by the Americans.
Through a street paved with mud and filth, and bordered by tents and booths, where oranges and other things edible—in theory or in practice—were exposed for sale, we moved toward the interior and away from the sea. Orange groves were on every side, and we appreciated the reputation of Jaffa for this excellent fruit.
Even the “Doubter” was convinced of the excellence of the oranges, as he filled his pockets without expense, and became liberal enough to bestow an orange upon a small boy who held his horse and wanted a slight “backsheesh” in return. “I don’t believe money is good for you,” he said to the boy; “you had better take an orange.” The boy could have had all of this sort of thing that he wanted, and indicated an objection to receiving payment in fruit, but his objections were of no avail.