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AN OUTPOST OF THE MODERN WOULD 285 just, but still the whole coast of Palestine, and its beautiful inland mountains, seemed to be saying to the world of steam and of steam-boats, 'Am I nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? ' Not even the presence of Cook's boatman, and the arrival that evening of two dismal English tourists, could dissipate the im-pression I speak of; and I closed the day with a reading that seemed made for the place and hour. It was the litany which the Jews recite at the Place of Wailing. ' For the palace that is destroyed, We sit in solitude and mourn. For the walls that are over-thrown, We sit in solitude and mourn. For our priests who have stumbled, For our kings who have despised Him, For the majesty that is departed, We sit and we mourn in solitude.' Twenty hours, however, had not elapsed before wailing of my own quite eclipsed that of the Jews. By eleven o'clock next day I was in the New Hotel at Port Said digesting the intelligence that the P. and 0. boat for Brindisi had gone yesterday, and that there would not be another for a week. Could any prospect be more hopeless or miserable than a week at Port Said without friends or resources? The town is a large collection of flimsy sheds and houses built on an island between some salt lakes and the sea, and bounded on one side by the turbid breadth of the canal. Twenty years ago its site was a patch of the sandy desert ; and level sands and water form all its horizon. It is a mongrel product—a puppy—of the modern East and West, unique with-

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