We were to select our horses at 3 P.M.  At that hour Abraham, the dragoman, marshaled them before us.  With all solemnity I set it down here, that those horses were the hardest lot I ever did come across, and their accoutrements were in exquisite keeping with their style.  One brute had an eye out; another had his tail sawed off close, like a rabbit, and was proud of it; another had a bony ridge running from his neck to his tail, like one of those ruined aqueducts one sees about Rome, and had a neck on him like a bowsprit; they all limped, and had sore backs, and likewise raw places and old scales scattered about their persons like brass nails in a hair trunk; their gaits were marvelous to contemplate, and replete with variety under way the procession looked like a fleet in a storm.  It was fearful.  Blucher shook his head and said: 

“That dragon is going to get himself into trouble fetching these old crates out of the hospital the way they are, unless he has got a permit.”

I said nothing.  The display was exactly according to the guide-book, and were we not traveling by the guide-book?  I selected a certain horse because I thought I saw him shy, and I thought that a horse that had spirit enough to shy was not to be despised.

At 6 o’clock P.M., we came to a halt here on the breezy summit of a shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much about; all around us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of Tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars of these Lebanon hills to build portions of King Solomon’s Temple with.

Shortly after six, our pack train arrived.  I had not seen it before, and a good right I had to be astonished.  We had nineteen serving men and twenty-six pack mules!  It was a perfect caravan.  It looked like one, too, as it wound among the rocks.  I wondered what in the very mischief we wanted with such a vast turn-out as that, for eight men.  I wondered awhile, but soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some bacon and beans.  I had camped out many and many a time before, and knew just what was coming.  I went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up—­tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment!  I was speechless.  Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed.  Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels —­one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were sticking every where.  Then came the finishing touch—­they spread carpets on the floor!  I simply said, “If you call this camping out, all right—­but it isn’t the style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount.”