Years ago, when I first began to think of making the trip I am now describing, I had no thought of the many interesting places that I could easily and cheaply visit on my way to Palestine.  I did not then think of what has been described on the foregoing pages.  Now I have come to the place where I am to tell my readers the story of my travels in the Land of Promise, and I want to make it as interesting and instructive as possible.  It is important to have a knowledge of the geography of all the lands mentioned, but it is especially important to know the location of the various places referred to in Palestine.  These pages will be more profitable if the reader will make frequent reference to maps of the land, that he may understand the location of the different places visited.  I shall first describe my trip across the province of Galilee, and take up my sight-seeing in Judaea in other chapters.

The ancient Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon were on the coast between Beyrout and Haifa, where I entered Galilee on the fourth of October, but we passed these places in the night.  Haifa, situated at the base of Mount Carmel, has no Biblical history, but is one of the two places along the coast of Palestine where ships stop, Jaffa being the other.  Mount Carmel is fourteen miles long, and varies in height from five hundred and fifty-six feet at the end next to the sea to eighteen hundred and ten feet at a point twelve miles inland.  There is a monastery on the end next to the Mediterranean, which I reached after a dusty walk along the excellent carriage road leading up from Haifa.  After I rested awhile, reading my Bible and guide-book, I walked out to the point where the sea on three sides, the beautiful little plain at the base of the mountain, Haifa, and Acre across the bay, all made up one of the prettiest views of the whole trip.  Owing to its proximity to the sea and the heavy dews, Carmel was not so dry and brown as much of the country I had seen before.

By the direction of Elijah, Ahab gathered the prophets of Baal, numbering four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah, four hundred more, at some point on this mountain, probably at the eastern end, passed on my way over to Nazareth later in the day.  “And Elijah came near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the two sides?  If Jehovah be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).  He then proposed that two sacrifices be laid on the wood, with no fire under them; that the false prophets should call on their god, and he would call on Jehovah.  The God that answered by fire was to be God.  “All the people answered and said, It is well spoken.”  The prophets of Baal called upon him from morning till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us.  But there was no voice, nor any that answered.  And they leaped about the altar that was made.  And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god:  either he is musing,