But we did not
know how near fate was to us then. Fires were lighted, and fowls
and eggs divided, and tea and coffee served round in tin panikins,
and here we lighted pipes, and smoked and laughed at our ease. I
believe everybody was happy to be out of Jerusalem. The impression
I have of it now is of ten days passed in a fever.
We all found quarters in the Greek convent at Ramleh, where the
monks served us a supper on a terrace, in a pleasant sunset; a
beautiful and cheerful landscape stretching around; the land in
graceful undulations, the towers and mosques rosy in the sunset,
with no lack of verdure, especially of graceful palms. Jaffa was
nine miles off. As we rode all the morning we had been accompanied
by the smoke of our steamer, twenty miles off at sea.
The convent is a huge caravanserai; only three or four monks dwell
in it, the ghostly hotel-keepers of the place. The horses were
tied up and fed in the courtyard, into which we rode; above were
the living-rooms, where there is accommodation, not only for an
unlimited number of pilgrims, but for a vast and innumerable host
of hopping and crawling things, who usually persist in partaking of
the traveller's bed. Let all thin-skinned travellers in the East
be warned on no account to travel without the admirable invention
described in Mr. Fellowes's book; nay, possibly invented by that
enterprising and learned traveller.
