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372 their youngest child alone was permitted to reach in safety. He probably was the only one of the family who had not learned to love it, and to believe it to be the land which was promised to his forefather Abraham, and to his seed forever.

Perhaps the descendants of this little Hebrew boy will some day be a subject of discussion, and a puzzling ethnological enigma for scientific travelers.

Beyond the bay the sands were broad and smooth. I could see in the distance, straight before us, the well-remembered rocky islands, and the village of Tantûra, where, in September, we landed, "because the winds were contrary." When we had nearly reached this place we turned away from the seashore, and rode inland toward a little Moslem village, called Kefr Lamm. We approached it through a district in which fine building-stone abounds. We rode through ancient quarries, and over large, smooth slabs of rock, polished like marble. We looked into the arched recesses, and peered into large, artificial, gloomy caverns, where, perhaps, the stone-cutters of old used to eat and sleep. These quarries have evidently not been worked for centuries—not, perhaps, since Athlite and Dora were built. Large trees and shrubs had sprung up out of the earth which had fallen from above, or had been drifted by wind and rain into sheltered places in the bottom of the quarries.

The sheikh, and all the chief men of Kefr Lamm, came out to meet us, for we were expected, and were well known there. We rode through flourishing fields of Indian corn, millet, sesame, and tobacco, and alighted on the outskirts of the village, which consists of low houses, built of mud and stone. I found my tent, which had preceded me, already pitched amid little mountains of wheat and barley, near to an extensive thrashing-floor, where oxen were busy treading out the corn. Carpets and cushions were soon spread for us on rising ground, in the open air, and coffee and pipes were brought. The sheikh, and the priest, and