Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage.  The pilgrims read “Nomadic Life” and keep themselves in a constant state of Quixotic heroism.  They have their hands on their pistols all the time, and every now and then, when you least expect it, they snatch them out and take aim at Bedouins who are not visible, and draw their knives and make savage passes at other Bedouins who do not exist.  I am in deadly peril always, for these spasms are sudden and irregular, and of course I cannot tell when to be getting out of the way.  If I am accidentally murdered, some time, during one of these romantic frenzies of the pilgrims, Mr. Grimes must be rigidly held to answer as an accessory before the fact.  If the pilgrims would take deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all right and proper—­because that man would not be in any danger; but these random assaults are what I object to.  I do not wish to see any more places like Esdraelon, where the ground is level and people can gallop.  It puts melodramatic nonsense into the pilgrims’ heads.  All at once, when one is jogging along stupidly in the sun, and thinking about something ever so far away, here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels fly higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes a little potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop, and a small pellet goes singing through the air.  Now that I have begun this pilgrimage, I intend to go through with it, though sooth to say, nothing but the most desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to the present time.  I do not mind Bedouins,—­I am not afraid of them; because neither Bedouins nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us, but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.

Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little way up a hill and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch.  Her descendants are there yet.  They were the wildest horde of half-naked savages we have found thus far.  They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of hovels of the dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out of crevices in the earth.  In five minutes the dead solitude and silence of the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob were struggling about the horses’ feet and blocking the way.  “Bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh!” It was Magdala over again, only here the glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of hate.  The population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half the citizens live in caves in the rock.  Dirt, degradation and savagery are Endor’s specialty.  We say no more about Magdala and Deburieh now.  Endor heads the list.  It is worse than any Indian ‘campoodie’.  The hill is barren, rocky, and forbidding.  No sprig of grass is visible, and only one tree.  This is a fig-tree, which maintains a precarious footing among the rocks at the mouth of the dismal cavern