To travel with any degree of security in Palestine, Phoenicia, etc., it is necessary to go in large companies, and in some places it even becomes advisable to have an escort.  The stranger should further be provided with cooking utensils, provisions, tents, and servants.  To provide all these things would have been a hopeless task for me; I had therefore resolved to return from Jerusalem as I had come, namely, via Joppa, and so to proceed to Alexandria or Beyrout, when, luckily for me, the gentlemen whom I have already mentioned arrived at Jerusalem.  They intended making several excursions by land, and the first of these was to be a trip to the banks of the Jordan and to the Dead Sea.

I ardently wished to visit these places, and therefore begged the gentlemen, through Father Paul, to permit my accompanying them on their arduous journey.  The gentlemen were of opinion that their proposed tour would be too fatiguing for one of my sex, and seemed disinclined to accede to my request.  But then Count Wratislaw took my part, and said that he had watched me during our ride from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and had noticed that I wanted neither courage, skill, nor endurance, so that they might safely take me with them.  Father Paul immediately came to me with the joyful intelligence that I was to go, and that I had nothing to do but to provide myself with a horse.  He particularly mentioned how kindly Count Wratislaw, to whom I still feel obliged, had interested himself in my behalf.

The journey to the Jordan and the Dead Sea should never be undertaken by a small party.  The best and safest course is to send for some Arab or Bedouin chiefs, either at Jerusalem or Bethlehem, and to make a contract with them for protection.  In consideration of a certain tribute, these chiefs accompany you in person, with some of their tribe, to your place of destination and back again.  The Counts paid the two chiefs three hundred piastres, with the travelling expenses for themselves and their twelve men.

At three o’clock in the afternoon of the 7th of June our cavalcade started.  The caravan consisted of the four counts, Mr. Bartlett, a certain Baron Wrede, two doctors, and myself, besides five or six servants, and the two chiefs with the body-guard of twelve Arabs.  All were strongly armed with guns, pistols, swords, and lances, and we really looked as though we sallied forth with the intention of having a sharp skirmish.

Our way lay through the Via Dolorosa, and through St. Stephen’s Gate, past the Mount of Olives, over hill and dale.  Every where the scene was alike barren.  At first we still saw many fruit-trees and olive-trees in bloom, and even vines, but of flowers or grass there was not a trace; the trees, however, stood green and fresh, in spite of the heat of the atmosphere and the total lack of rain.  This luxuriance may partly be owing to the coolness and dampness which reigns during the night in tropical countries, quickening and renewing the whole face of nature.