I AWOKE in Palestine.
There was the broken, bare-hilled country I had seen in the pictures pored over when I was a child. There were the short, black, scrubby trees, just as I had pictured them on the Mount of Olives. There were the low, flat-roofed, earth-covered houses. There were the flocks, attended by the shepherds. There was Esau, shaggy, swart and fierce. And there—why, buenas dias, Rebecca! But who would have expected to see you at the well so early in the day, Rebecca?
Olla on her head, the Mexican girl walked down to the well. Walked, did I say? We have but the one word for it. It means, also, the stumpy stumble of our deformed American women. Let us say that this girl did not walk, but swam upright over the ground, as angels do in a fairy spectacular, with a wire at the waist, scorning the ground.
At the well the girl rested the big jar on the curb, and stood looking toward the east, falling into poses of pure grace and beauty as naturally as a shifting scene of statuary—the poses of a noble, grand and normal physical life, ripe and untrammeled for centuries. That they were not poses for effect, or at least for the spectator under the wagon, was very plain, for when I crawled out and appeared, the girl screamed, left her water-jar, and ran into the house near by. “So, this is Palestine,” thought I. “I wonder where is Jacob?”
The inhabitants of the little placita, fifty or sixty in number, perhaps, turned out en masse to see the Americano. Doubtless there were those among them who had never before seen a white man. I do not think curiosity was altogether mingled with approbation, though no positive distrust was shown beyond a black look or two.
It was not altogether a comfortable situation. I could assign, even to my own mind, only the flimsiest reasons for my intrusion; and it did seem almost as much an intrusion as if I had forced my way into a home uninvited. I sighed at my own foolishness, made my morning salutations, bought three pieces of turquoise, and then coming swiftly to the point, said I was hungry. ’Pache didn’t say anything. He wasn’t hungry. He bit an occasional piece out of an unwary dog, but he just did that for fun. He wasn’t hungry.
With that grave courtesy which is coin sterling the world round, the centuries through, these simple people asked me into a house, invited me to sit upon a sheepskin mat, and brought me what they had.
After breakfast I found that the little crowd had dispersed, though where they went was not apparent. Many of the men, Italian fashion, followed the business of wood-cutting in the hills, and quite a little troop of pannier-laden burros could be seen moving down the trail bound for the Fort with their big burdens of piñon wood.
I wandered about the little place, which soon sank into apathy again, and approached several houses under pretense of wishing to buy some smoky topaz. As I stopped at the door of one I heard an exclamation—
“Ysleta! el Americano.”