Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/297

 

THROUGH THE HILL COUNTRY TO BETHLEHEM.

If one test of the civilization of a country be the existence of roads, we are in a land as yet but very imperfectly civilized: for there is not a road in all Palestine — or only one, and that hardly worthy of the name. Some years ago, when the Empress Eugénie, having been to Egypt to give by her presence Imperial pomp and state to the ceremony of opening the Suez Canal, was to pay a brief visit to the Holy Land, the authorities, by extraordinary exertions, smoothed the rough places, so that a carriage could be driven from Jaffa to Jerusalem; and Mr. Cook still sends a waggon over the road, in which travellers can be jolted up and down the hills; though one who is used to the saddle will suffer less fatigue on horseback. There is also a macadamized road from Beirut over the Lebanon to Damascus, built some years since by a French company, but that is far to the North, in Syria; so that it remains true that, with the exception of forty miles of driving to Jaffa, there is not a road in all Palestine, and we have still to go mounted, as when we were on the desert. The only change is from camels to horses. But this we found a great relief. Horses are much better suited to Palestine, where, instead of long stretches of sand, one has to pick his way — at least as soon as he enters the Hill Country — over rough, stony paths, both in the narrow valleys and along the sides of the mountains. The