the large square net, with its sinkers of lead in his right hand, ready for a cast.  He had good luck, for the waves brought up plenty of large fish, and cast them at our feet, leaving them to struggle back into the treacherous brine.  Between Acre and Haifa we passed six or eight wrecks, mostly of small trading vessels.  Some were half buried in sand, some so old and mossy that they were fast rotting away, while a few had been recently hurled there.  As we rounded the deep curve of the bay, and approached the line of palm-trees girding the foot of Mount Carmel, Haifa, with its wall and Saracenic town in ruin on the hill above, grew more clear and bright in the sun, while Acre dipped into the blue of the Mediterranean.  The town of Haifa, the ancient Caiapha, is small, dirty, and beggarly looking; but it has some commerce, sharing the trade of Acre in the productions of Syria.  It was Sunday, and all the Consular flags were flying.  It was an unexpected delight to find the American colors in this little Syrian town, flying from one of the tallest poles.  The people stared at us as we passed, and I noticed among them many bright Frankish faces, with eyes too clear and gray for Syria.  O ye kind brothers of the monastery of Carmel! forgive me if I look to you for an explanation of this phenomenon.

We ascended to Mount Carmel.  The path led through a grove of carob trees, from which the beans, known in Germany as St. John’s bread, are produced.  After this we came into an olive grove at the foot of the mountain, from which long fields of wheat, giving forth a ripe summer smell, flowed down to the shore of the bay.  The olive trees were of immense size, and I can well believe, as Fra Carlo informed us, that they were probably planted by the Roman colonists, established there by Titus.  The gnarled, veteran boles still send forth vigorous and blossoming boughs.  There were all manner of lovely lights and shades chequered over the turf and the winding path we rode.  At last we reached the foot of an ascent, steeper than the Ladder of Tyre.  As our horses slowly climbed to the Convent of St. Elijah, whence we already saw the French flag floating over the shoulder of the mountain, the view opened grandly to the north and east, revealing the bay and plain of Acre, and the coast as far as Ras Nakhura, from which we first saw Mount Carmel the day previous.  The two views are very similar in character, one being the obverse of the other.  We reached the Convent—­Dayr Mar Elias, as the Arabs call it—­at noon, just in time to partake of a bountiful dinner, to which the monks had treated themselves.  Fra Carlo, the good Franciscan who receives strangers, showed us the building, and the Grotto of Elijah, which is under the altar of the Convent Church, a small but very handsome structure of Italian marble.  The sanctity of the Grotto depends on tradition entirely, as there is no mention in the Bible of Elijah having resided on Carmel, though it was from this mountain that he saw the cloud, “like a man’s hand,” rising from the sea.  The Convent, which is quite new—­not yet completed, in fact—­is a large, massive building, and has the aspect of a fortress.