

Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall “Tales of All Countries”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                         A RIDE ACROSS PALESTINE.


CIRCUMSTANCES took me to the Holy Land without a companion, and compelled
me to visit Bethany, the Mount of Olives, and the Church of the Sepulchre
alone.  I acknowledge myself to be a gregarious animal, or, perhaps,
rather one of those which nature has intended to go in pairs.  At any
rate I dislike solitude, and especially travelling solitude, and was,
therefore, rather sad at heart as I sat one night at Z—’s hotel, in
Jerusalem, thinking over my proposed wanderings for the next few days.
Early on the following morning I intended to start, of course on
horseback, for the Dead Sea, the banks of Jordan, Jericho, and those
mountains of the wilderness through which it is supposed that Our Saviour
wandered for the forty days when the devil tempted him.  I would then
return to the Holy City, and remaining only long enough to refresh my
horse and wipe the dust from my hands and feet, I would start again for
Jaffa, and there catch a certain Austrian steamer which would take me to
Egypt.  Such was my programme, and I confess that I was but ill contented
with it, seeing that I was to be alone during the time.

I had already made all my arrangements, and though I had no reason for
any doubt as to my personal security during the trip, I did not feel
altogether satisfied with them.  I intended to take a French guide, or
dragoman, who had been with me for some days, and to put myself under the
peculiar guardianship of two Bedouin Arabs, who were to accompany me as
long as I should remain east of Jerusalem.  This travelling through the
desert under the protection of Bedouins was, in idea, pleasant enough;
and I must here declare that I did not at all begrudge the forty
shillings which I was told by our British consul that I must pay them for
their trouble, in accordance with the established tariff.  But I did
begrudge the fact of the tariff.  I would rather have fallen in with my
friendly Arabs, as it were by chance, and have rewarded their fidelity at
the end of our joint journeyings by a donation of piastres to be settled
by myself, and which, under such circumstances, would certainly have been
as agreeable to them as the stipulated sum.  In the same way I dislike
having waiters put down in my bill.  I find that I pay them twice over,
and thus lose money; and as they do not expect to be so treated, I never
have the advantage of their civility.  The world, I fear, is becoming too
fond of tariffs.

“A tariff!” said I to the consul, feeling that the whole romance of my
expedition would be dissipated by such an arrangement.  “Then I’ll go
alone; I’ll take a revolver with me.”

“You can’t