movements with a kind of grunt. While this went on, the leader flourished a drawn sword in their faces, it being a point of skill to come as near as possible without touching them. Every few moments one or another would quit the ranks and rush up to me with a piercing shriek and yell, which they hissed in my very ears. After a few moments I thought I had had enough of this "concert," and told the dragoman that he might tell them the Howadji was satisfied. "What shall I give them?" I asked; to which Yohanna, who always liked to play the prince with other people's money, replied in a careless sort of way "Give them a napoleon — four medjidies" (Turkish dollars); to which I immediately responded by handing over the money, which was probably four times what any one used to the ways of the country would have given. "A fool and his money are soon parted." It is in this way that "high art" is patronized by travellers in the land of the East. The fellows went off in great glee, probably thinking they had caught "a green one." I heard them shouting all the way down to Jericho. However, I was glad to have them depart, much better pleased with a chorus which now filled my ears, and which was genuine, home-made music. It was the croaking of the frogs, which rose up from all the plain, and in which there was more music than in the throats of all the Arabs from here to Mount Sinai.
While this was going on, the muleteers had been sitting round their camp-fires, smoking their pipes. At length the fires burned low, and they dropped off to slumber, while we lay down in our tent, with the flood of moonlight pouring over us, and the sound of rushing waters to lull us to rest.
