"Your kind letter, strange to say, found me alive. You ask me to send you an account of our Model Farm. The farm is surrounded by a stockade, and we mount not less than fifty forty-two pounders. These are constantly double-loaded with grape of the very best vintage. Thus our guns bear upon our fields, if nothing else does. Indeed, every thing about us may be said to be shooting, except the crops. Still, I do not despair. Two months ago we plowed two hundred Arabs into a field of four acres, and now find that they are coming up very nicely in turnips. The agricultural glory there is rotting like bone-dust.
"It is amazing to see how glory blesses us in this country. We feed the Gallic cock upon small-shot; and, strange to say, the hens lay nothing but bullets. Indeed, such is the violence of the Arabs, that we are compelled to stand to our guns at milking-time and feed the pigs with fixed bayonets. We are, however, exercising the milk-maids in platoon-firing, and trust they are quite able to take the field with the cows, now that the guns, which they are to carry, have been provided us.
"We yesterday held a court-martial on the sentinel who mounted guard at the ducks' house; a party of the enemy having scaled the wall at night, and carried off our only brood of ducklings. The drake and duck were found with their throats cut! Were there ever such barbarous villains as these Arabs? The sentinel was shot at six this morning, with all the honors. Although the villains stole our ducks, they fortunately missed the onions: I say fortunately, for they might have found at least a rope apiece.
"We are, however, preparing for a grand operation. We have deposited an immense quantity of gunpowder under the dunghill. We purpose to appear off our guard—shall suffer the enemy to scale our stockade, plant their banners on our dunghill, and then—as they think, in the moment of victory—blow them to atoms! Thus may true glory be obtained, like mushrooms, even from a dunghill!
"You will, from the above, judge of the delightful employment of cultivating beet-root and laurels in the same field.
"But I am called away. Our shepherd has returned without his nose and ears. Our two sheep are carried off! We hasten to make a sortie, to avenge the honor of outraged France! 'Vive la France!'"
They are building a railroad in Egypt; and late accounts from Alexandria tell us that nine or ten thousand workmen are actively engaged upon it. Think of that! Crossing the desert after a locomotive! Good-by to camels and dromedaries! Farewell to tents beneath the spacious blue firmament overhead! A "long farewell" to Arab guides and Arab extortions! Railroads and steamboats will yet thread through Palestine, and paddle the sluggish waters of the Dead Sea! Now look for trade in "pots and pearls," made from the "ash-apples" on "the Dead Sea's shore." Sing the following, on the twenty-sixth page, "irregular metre." Air: "Go ahead!"
Over the billows and over the brine,
Over the water to Palestine!
Am I awake, or do I dream?
Over the ocean to Syria by steam!
My say is sooth, by this right hand,
A steamer brave
Is on the wave,
Bound positively for the Holy Land!
Godfrey of Boulogne and thou
Richard, Lion-hearted King,
Candidly inform us now,
Did you ever
No, you never
Could have fancied such a thing.
Never such vociferations
Entered your imaginations
As the ensuing:
——"Ease her! stop her!"
"Any gentleman for Joppa?"
"'Mascus, 'Mascus?" "Ticket, please, sir;"
"Tyre or Sidon?" "Stop her! ease her!"
"Jerusalem, 'lem, 'lem!"—"Shur! Shur!"
"Do you go on to Egypt, sir?"
"Captain, is this the land of Pharaoh?"
"Now look alive there! Who's for Cairo!"
"Back her! stand clear, I say, old file!"
"What gent or lady's for the Nile?
Or Pyramids?" "Thebes, Thebes, sir, steady!"
"Now. Where's that party for Engeddi?"
Pilgrims, holy Red-Cross knights,
Had you e'er the least idea,
Even in your wildest flights,
Of a steam-trip to Judea?
What next marvel Time will show,
It is difficult to say:
"Omnibus to Jericho,
Only sixpence all the way?"
Cabs in Jerusalem may ply:
'Tis not an unlikely tale;
And from Dan the tourist hie
Unto Beersheba by rail.