M. Cheerfully, Clara; but learn from this never to despise any of God's creatures; they can all teach us some important and beautiful lesson which we should be happy to heed. And now, if you please, we will go and feed the snow-birds.
C. With all my heart!
MOUNT CARMEL.
SELECTED.
Mount Carmel is a high promontory, forming the termination of a range of hills running northwest from the plain of Esdraelon. Mount Carmel is the southern boundary of the Bay of Acre, on Acca, as it is called by the Turks; its height is about fifteen hundred feet, and at its foot, north, runs the brook Kishon, and a little further north the river Belus.
Mount Carmel is celebrated in Scripture history as the place where Elijah went up when he told his servant to look forth to the sea yet seven times, and the seventh time he saw a little cloud coming up from the sea "like a man's hand," when the prophet knew that the promised rain was at hand, and girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab's chariot even to the gates of Jezreel. (1 Kings xviii. 44-46.)
Towards the sea is a cave, where it has been supposed that Elijah desired Ahab to bring Baal's false prophets, and where fire from heaven descended on the altar he erected. The present appearance of Carmel is thus described by Dr. Hogg, who visited it in 1833. "The convent on Mount Carmel was destroyed by the Turks in the early part of the Greek revolution. Abdallah, the Turkish pasha, who commanded the district in which Carmel is situated, not only razed their convent to the ground, but blew up the foundations, and carried the materials to Acre for his own use. The convent is now being rebuilt, or probably is now completely finished, the funds having been supplied by subscriptions solicited all over Europe, and a great part of the East, by one of the brethren, Giovanni Battista, who has travelled far and wide for that purpose." Dr. Hogg gives the following account of the condition of the place at the time of his visit.