English merchant for whom I had a letter of introduction, and whose active kindness procured me a travelling servant, named Achmet, a native of the place, who was directed to lay in a stock of provisions for a two or three days' cruise, and to take our places in a boat sailing that evening for Jaffa. My lady pilgrim, of whom I had lost sight during the confusion of landing, was now sought out; nor was it long before she made her appearance at the merchant's. At first, my friend was rather shy of this part of the business, but the mature age, grave appearance, and simple manners of my new acquaintance, soon set at rest any ungenerous suspicions.

No sooner had this got wind, than we were besieged by one or two other women, who also wanted to go up under escort to Jerusalem; but this additional responsibility it was judged prudent to decline. I might otherwise have made my entry in the same style as the Protestant Bishop, accompanied by such a bevy of ladies, that when the Turks beheld it, and supposed them to be his harem, they declared he was a right good fellow who knew how to live, and not like those miserable monks, who never suffer a woman to come near them.

The evening came, and we repaired on board. The boat proved to be an undecked Arab craft, of the very rudest description, with two masts, and huge latine or triangular sails. A small cabin, about six feet square, into which it was necessary to creep on all-fours, was contrived at the stern, but it was so foul that to take refuge there except in case of a storm was impossible. The rest of the boat had a flooring of sand and shingle, and its rough ribs served for couches, and sofas, and berths, at once. The places of honour, including the aforesaid cabin, had been reserved for ourselves; the rest of the vessel was crowded with a motley collection of passengers.

Having myself roughed it before in this way, I was prepared for what I met with; but nothing surprised me more than the passive indifference of my companion. Though certainly not

A FRENCH DOCTOR.

147

cabined," we were cribbed and confined" with a vengeance. Wilkie, when putting up for the night in the one room of a Spanish posada, with a party of ladies and gentlemen, talks of curtains and other contrivances for decorum. I thought of the fastidious delicacy of Hood's "School-mistress under such alarming circumstances. But there was no remedy. "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." All distinctions were literally brought to one level; and when night came on, and we were forced to lie down in the sand, which formed the sheeting of the general bed, with the canopy of heaven for a curtain, we made so tight a fit of it, that, as Stephens somewhere says, "if the bottom of the boat had fallen out, we could hardly have tumbled through."

Among our fellow-companions was a young French doctor, in the employ of the sultan, one of that wandering crew of adventurers, who, unable to find an opening at home, are compelled to seek employment in eastern lands, and contrive to accommodate themselves, far more than our own countrymen can ever do, to the manners and the humours of other nations. Our medico wore an uniform, which had become most wofully shabby, and his linen was none of the cleanest, but this did not affect the liveliness of his conversation, or the unceasing flow of his animal spirits. His stock of baggage and provisions was the slenderest possible, and, somehow or other, he always made one when the smoking platter of pilau was served up for our noonday meal. His entire equipage seemed rolled up in a mysterious blue cloak, an imposing garment, which was only assumed on occasions of ceremony, and which, like charity, concealed a multitude of defects. Apropos of this famous cloak; we afterwards heard, that having missed it at Jerusalem, he taxed his servant with having stolen and sold it. This, the poor fellow strenuously denied. The Frenchman, in a fury, drew his sabre, and threatened him with instant death, unless he confessed the theft, which the terrified creature, falling on his knees, was

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CESAREA ITS ORIGIN

compelled to do, and was put to his wit's end how to invent a parcel of lies, in order to criminate himself. A day or two afterwards the cloak arrived, having been rolled up accidentally by the servant of an English traveller, a fellow-sojourner in the same convent, who had left the city, and who returned it to the owner as soon as discovered.

About dawn we were abreast of the ruins of Cæsarea, and hoisting out the boat, rowed ashore to visit the remains of what was once the principal seaport of Palestine.

The origin of this city is thus described by Josephus: "There was a certain place by the sea-side, formerly called Strato's Tower, which Herod looked upon as conveniently situated for the erection of a city. He drew his model, set people to work upon it, and finished it. The buildings were all of marble, private houses as well as palaces; but his master-piece was the port, which he made as large as the Piræus (at Athens), and a safe station against all winds and weathers, to say nothing of other conveniences. This work was the more wonderful, because all the materials for it were brought thither at a prodigious

DESCRIBED BY JOSEPHUS.

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expense from afar off. This city stands in Phoenicia, upon the pass to Egypt, between Joppa and Dora, two wretched sea-towns, where there is no riding in the harbour with a S.W. wind, for it beats so furiously upon the shore, that merchantmen are forced to keep off at sea many times for fear of being driven on the reefs. To encounter these difficulties, Herod ordered a mole to be made in the shape of a half-moon, and large enough to contain a royal navy. He directed, also, prodigious stones to be let down there in twenty fathom water-stones fifty feet long, and eighteen broad, and nine deep, some greater, some less. This mole was two hundred feet in extent, the one half of it to break the setting of the sea, the other half served for the foundation of a stone wall, fortified with turrets, the largest and the fairest of them called by the name of the Tower of Drusus, from Drusus the son-in-law of Augustus, who died young. This port opens to the northward, the clearest quarter of the heavens. Upon a mount in the middle stood a temple dedicated to Cæsar, which was of great use to the mariners as a sea-mark, and contained two statues, of Rome and of Cæsar, and hence the city took the name of Cæsarea. The contrivance of the vaults and sewers was admirable. Herod built also a stone theatre, and on the south side of the harbour, an amphitheatre, with a noble seaview. In short, he spared neither labour nor expense, and in twelve years this work was brought to perfection." "It was finished," says Josephus, (speaking of the city,) "in the tenth year from its foundation, the twenty-eighth of Herod's reign, and in the Olympiad 192. Its dedication was celebrated with all the splendour and magnificence imaginable; masters procured from all parts, and the best that could be gotten too, in all exercises, such as musicians, wrestlers, swordsmen, and the like, to contend for the prizes. They had their horse-races also, and shows of wild beasts, with all other spectacles and entertainments then in vogue, either at Rome or elsewhere. This solemnity was instituted in honour of Cæsar, under the appella

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DEATH OF HEROD AGRIPPA.

tion of Certamen quinquennale, and the ceremony to be exhibited every fifth year."

66

Such was the superb seaport which Herod built, not only as a monument of his public-spirited munificence, but in the hope that it might long remain in the proud possession of his race. We need not dwell here upon the awful domestic tragedy, in which this passionate and unhappy monarch became the executioner of the best members of his own family, and the destroyer of his own hopes of the permanency of his line. The disputes of his descendants were terminated at no distant period by the sway of Rome. Herod Agrippa, his successor, and the last monarch of the Jews, had reigned, in dependence upon the Roman power, three years over Palestine, when he ordered a splendid festival at Cæsarea in honour of the Emperor Claudius. "Upon the second day of this festival," says Josephus, who gives a fuller version of the incident mentioned in the "Acts," Agrippa went early in the morning to the theatre in a silver stuff so wonderfully rich and curious, that as the beams of the rising sun struck upon it, the eyes were dazzled by the reflection; the sparkling of the light seemed to have something divine in it, that moved the spectators at the same time with veneration and Insomuch that a fawning crew of parasites cried him up as a god; beseeching him, in form, to forgive them the sins of their ignorance, when they took him only for flesh and blood, for now they were convinced of an excellency in his nature that was more than human. This impious flattery he repelled not, but while in the full vanity of this contemplation, he beheld an owl above him seated on a rope, a presage of evil to him, as it had been before of good fortune. For immediately he was seized with a fearful agony, in which he exclaimed to his friends, Behold your god condemned to die, and prove his flatterers a company of profligate liars, and to convince the world that he is not immortal. But God's will be done! In the life that I have led, I have had no reason to envy the happiness of any

awe.