This was all after we got beyond Bethany.  We stopped at the village of Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem.  They showed us the tomb of Lazarus.  I had rather live in it than in any house in the town.  And they showed us also a large “Fountain of Lazarus,” and in the centre of the village the ancient dwelling of Lazarus.  Lazarus appears to have been a man of property.  The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great injustice; they give one the impression that he was poor.  It is because they get him confused with that Lazarus who had no merit but his virtue, and virtue never has been as respectable as money.  The house of Lazarus is a three-story edifice, of stone masonry, but the accumulated rubbish of ages has buried all of it but the upper story.  We took candles and descended to the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat at meat with Martha and Mary, and conversed with them about their brother.  We could not but look upon these old dingy apartments with a more than common interest.

We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like a blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander.  It was such a dreary, repulsive, horrible solitude!  It was the “wilderness” where John preached, with camel’s hair about his loins—­raiment enough—­but he never could have got his locusts and wild honey here.  We were moping along down through this dreadful place, every man in the rear.  Our guards—­two gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols and daggers on board—­were loafing ahead.

“Bedouins!”

Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle.  My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins.  My second was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that direction.  I acted on the latter impulse.  So did all the others.  If any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they would have paid dearly for their rashness.  We all remarked that, afterwards.  There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there that no pen could describe.  I know that, because each man told what he would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of.  One man said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need be, but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience, till he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin’s jacket, and then count them and let him have it.  Another was going to sit still till the first lance reached within an inch of his breast, and then dodge it and seize it.  I forbear to tell what he was going to do to that Bedouin that owned it.  It makes my blood run cold to think of it.  Another was going to scalp such Bedouins as fell to his share,