In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase “all these kings.”  It attracted my attention in a moment, because it carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it always did at home.  I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine.  I must begin a system of reduction.  Like my grapes which the spies bore out of the Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a scale.  Some of my ideas were wild enough.  The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States.  I do not know why, but such was the case.  I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.  I think I was a little surprised to find that the grand Sultan of Turkey was a man of only ordinary size.  I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to a more reasonable shape.  One gets large impressions in boyhood, sometimes, which he has to fight against all his life.  “All these kings.”  When I used to read that in Sunday School, it suggested to me the several kings of such countries as England, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid robes ablaze with jewels, marching in grave procession, with sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing crowns upon their heads.  But here in Ain Mellahah, after coming through Syria, and after giving serious study to the character and customs of the country, the phrase “all these kings” loses its grandeur.  It suggests only a parcel of petty chiefs—­ill-clad and ill-conditioned savages much like our Indians, who lived in full sight of each other and whose “kingdoms” were large when they were five miles square and contained two thousand souls.  The combined monarchies of the thirty “kings” destroyed by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns, only covered an area about equal to four of our counties of ordinary size.  The poor old sheik we saw at Cesarea Philippi with his ragged band of a hundred followers, would have been called a “king” in those ancient times.

It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the air with their fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees.  But alas, there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees.  There is a plain and an unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains.  The tents are tumbling, the Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the campground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of packing them upon the backs of the mules is progressing with great activity, the horses are saddled, the umbrellas are out, and in ten minutes we shall mount and the long procession will move again.  The white city of the Mellahah, resurrected for a moment out of the dead centuries, will have disappeared again and left no sign.