material for fuel. But in the Holy Land, which is so scantily supplied with trees, the passage is perfectly applicable, for in the absence of wood, necessity compels the people to burn brush, roots, dried grasses and weeds of all kinds, so plentifully growing in the fields; and immense donkeyloads are daily brought to the city for this purpose. found his balances, which every Oriental | wide spread forests afford abundance of carries at all times, with which the coin is weighed and by which its value is determined, and if accompanied by his wife and children, you will be reminded of the words of Isaiah: "They shall bring their sons in their arms, and their daughters shall be carried on their shoulders." The woman occasionally carries her child on her shoulders, with a water-skin on her back. Along the dark and narrow alleys rather than streets we groped our way, now retreating within a door at the approach of the towering camel, and now hastily stepping out of the way of a string of donkeys trudging along under a load of brush of gigantic dimensions. This is intended for fuel, and reminds one of the expression used by our Saviour: "The grass which to day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven," a passage which greatly perplexes those living in a country whose There is a ditch in the centre of most of the streets, but there are no side-walks and no pavements, for the unevenly laid stones do not deserve the name; nor are there any lamp-posts. At night you see here and there the dim flickering of a little earthen lamp of olive oil beside a reclining figure of a man, who lies sleeping upon a raised platform in front of his bazaar; and this is the only light one enjoys in a nocturnal walk through the city. Hence the necessity of carrying our own lamp, a necessity seam. caps without Calicoes are not only rare, but almost worthless, and their prices nearly as high as those of silks. Further on is a fancy shop, with sparkling cut glass narghilehs, and little coffee-cup stands of richly embossed silver,-Mohammed's prohibition of silver to the contrary notwithstanding. For these they charge a hundred piastres, or, five dollars. Other trinkets of hareem use are here displayed; and next is the drug bazaar, where all kinds of spices, drugs and perfumes, are sold. Otto of roses, as well as rose water, made from the roses of Wady el Werd, (valley of roses,) can be bought at a marvelously low price. Further on, the respectable Armenian is seen manufacturing small trinkets and trifles with his scanty supply of instruments; and those, of the rudest manufacture. With them, however, he forms a ring, or sets an amulet, with wonderful skill. Interspersed among those are shops where bushels of beads are displayed, made of camel's bone, amber, sandal, and olive wood; then there are amulets, blood stones from India, and trinkets in pearl, made by the Bethlehemites, in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and a long catalogue of saints which are in great requisition among the devout pilgrims. Here and there a man may be seen standing by a small earthen furnace of embers, across which he throws wires strung with small pieces of mutton-a very popular dish. which is still farther enforced by the regu- | in length,-striped silk sashes from Damaslation inflicting fine and imprisonment cus,-napkins perfumed with otto of rose, upon all who are caught in the street with- and embroidered in the corners,-ready out a light after an early hour. Thus made trowsers, and red Fez Jerusalem wears an air of gloom and misery, and its inhabitants move about in keeping with the wretchedness of the streets and houses. It is impossible to discern a glad face among them, and the camels carefully plant their feet, noiselessly pursuing their way as if intuitively afraid of breaking the silent gloom. Suddenly, however, we enter a street where the people move more briskly, the camels are hurried along by loud threats from their drivers, and the shopmen still more loudly proclaim the merits of their wares. Country women are seated on the sides of the streets with baskets of fruits and vegetables. The shops of the dry goods venders are nothing more than rows of small platforms, four or five feet square, with shelves arranged around them on which the goods are placed. The purchaser stands in the street, while the merchant indolently reclines on a rug spread over the platform. With utter indifference he lays aside his narghileh, and at first seems very careless whether we buy or not; but presently launches into great volubility on the excellence of his fabrics. Oriental bazaars have not the least pretensions to taste, but often make a great display of rich embroidered goods. A white handkerchief is unfolded, which although embroidered in gold, is of the coarsest cotton, and tears in the opening. Speaking of taste reminds me that, among other purchases of one of my companions, was a spool of white cotton, with which she intended making up her robe of black silk. Huge piles of slippers are tumbled from the shelves, some of the plain yellow morocco without ornament, and others with embroidery and rosettes of pearls enclosing colored stones;-embroidered jack-cry-" stand aside, your back, your face," ets of purple,-cotton velvet, worked with tinsel and bright silks, or gold and silk braid;-caps of scarlet cloth with high raised gold work, and tassels half a yard The bazaar is densely crowded with shrouded women and pilgrims from all parts of the world, and the air resounds with the screams of the camel and donkey drivers. "Rooh, dahrac, woojac," they which, united to the babel of languages, and the fierce gesticulation, characteristic of Orientals, presents a scene of noise and confusion completely bewildering. Add to WOMAN WITH WATER SKIN-TURKISH SOLDIER-ARAB SPINNING. this the braying of donkeys, the growling of camels, the clattering of horses' hoofs on the uneven stones, one's care to avoid, at every step, the accumulated heaps of filth and debris, and the hot rays of the sun piercing through the ragged mattings overhead, and the reader may be content with the picture without wishing to participate in the reality. One of the most attractive features of Oriental country life is the vivid, everyday reproduction of scriptural incidents. How many passages are to be found in which allusion is made to skin bottles, which formed our most indispensable article of furniture. The use of these still prevails extensively throughout the East, and although earthen jugs are also used, the former are greatly preferred, and much more common. They are made of the skin of a goat or a sheep, and are so slightly mutilated by preparation for use, that they retain almost the exact shape of the animal from which they were made. They are hung on the back of a donkey, or more frequently a woman, and having been filled with water, thousands are carried daily to the city. Abraham provided Hagar with a bottle of water on sending her to the desert; but, properly rendered, might it not be water skin? They are sometimes regularly tanned into leather. This was no doubt the material of the wine-bottles of the Gibeonitish spies who "did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been embassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine-bottles old and rent, bound up." These bottles, from constant use, become rent, and when mended and patched give full proof of good service and an ancient date. Hence, to put new wine in these old bottles would be utter folly, for the process of ferment- | to roll the stone away, when she came to ation would cause them to "break water the flocks of her father. through," which would not be the case while new and flexible. Our camping-ground being very near the well that supplies the village with water, I often meet the village maidens there, who repaired thither to fill their jugs. Their usual time for drawing water is just before nightfall, and the office is always performed by the women, as in the days of the Patriarchs; for we read that Eleazar, whom Abraham had sent to obtain a wife for Isaac, made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water. And Rebekah, the very maiden whom he sought, "came out with her pitcher upon her shoulder, and she went down to the well and filled her pitcher and came up." How often have I called upon fancy to imagine the retreating form of a Fellahah, with a vessel on her head or shoulder, and decorated with bracelets and ear-rings, to be the veritable Rebekah of old! A stone trough is generally placed near the well, from which cattle are watered, and around it a flock of goats or sheep is usually gathered, as in the days of Jacob, who beheld a well in the field, and "three flocks of sheep lying by it." And in another particular they agree with the wells of the days of the Patriarchs, in having the mouth covered with a large stone of great weight, requiring the strength of two men sometimes to move it. The usual method of drawing water is with a jug or leathern bucket, let down by a rope tied to its mouth; and when the well has been long in use, deep incisions are made by the rope in the topmost lining stones. This method was no doubt referred to by the woman at the well of Samaria, when she said, "The well is deep, and I have nothing to draw with." It is also seen from Genesis xxix. 8, that the present manner of covering the well is the same as that which made it necessary for Rachel to require the greater strength of Jacob THE TOMB OF RACHEL. The tomb of Rachel is another spot held by them in great veneration; and I envy neither the head nor the heart of the stranger who can pass from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, without deviating a few hundred yards from the stony path, to muse awhile, and perhaps drop a tear at the tomb of the ill-fated but "beautiful and well-favored" Rachel. The pillar set upon her grave, thirty-five long centuries and a generation ago, has long since crumbled into dust, or, more probably, been chipped into fragmentary amulets; but the venerated spot is still marked, and no doubt correctly indicated by a picturesque mausoleum, containing two rooms, the innermost of which is the consecrated sanctum where her idolized remains lie interred beneath a rude oblong tomb of plastered stones, four or five feet in height; Ephrath, or Ephratah, being but a mile or two distant; for "she was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem;” “and there was but a little way to go to Ephrath." Ramah, in the Hebrew, means an eminence, and it was doubtless on the top of the intervening hill in the coasts of Bethlehem, and not at Ramley, near Joppa, as Charlotte Elizabeth imagines, (in that admirable production of her pen, “Judah's Lion,") that a "voice was heard," lamentations and bitter weeping, "Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were not." How touchingly is the traveler reminded of that soul-rending cry, in passing this cherished monument of the mother of millions of the noblest race on earth, where, beneath its dome and around its walls, he hears the plaintive wailings of the daughters of this revered "mother in Israel." But they weep not for the hecatombs of innocent infants, sacrificed in the vain attempt of Herod the Great, (monster of cruelty) to destroy the infant Messiah; for that event they profess to disbelieve. | grimage of life is full of difficulties and They are weeping for their own state of anxieties, and shoals and quicksands beset hopeless degradation, and the misery that us on all sides. The wisest, the most has come upon them. Well did our ador- prudent, the nicely watchful and the careable Redeemer say to certain devoted fully cautious, cannot always guard against females, who had ministered to him of them. Sickness, misfortune, and death their substance, and, faithful to the bitter are constantly around us. Turn whichever end, sorrowfully followed Him to Golgotha, way we may, and one of these is sure to be "Weep not for me, but weep for your seen. If not the sufferers or victims ourselves and your children." Oh! the un-selves, we nevertheless feel by sympathy told miseries that have come upon the de- for others, especially if they be relatives graded daughter of Zion! Fountainless or friends. And thus it is that life, in its indeed must be the eye that can witness the harrowing anguish of mind and contortion of body manifested around this tomb, and shed no tear. Harder than the nether mill-stone, and "deaf to pity's soulsubduing cry," that bosom that can remain unmoved amid such a scene of wailing, lamentation, and despair. CHRISTMAS. "Its joyous scenes, its hallowed dreams, best condition, is constantly varied and chequered. Joy and sunshine may beam and brighten to-day, while storm and tempest may lower and threaten to-morrow. Prosperity may cheer and stimulate one year, and adversity oppress and retard the next. Alas! for the changes that have taken place within the last twelve months, and for the worse! How many who, but the other day, were among the merchant princes of the land, who had toiled on for half a century, and become, as they supposed, beyond the reach of difficulties, have been prostrated as by a sudden blow, and are even now struggling with all their energies and strength to recover. Let HRISTMAS has been eloquently described as the holiday of the heart. It is so with many, and it should, as far as possible, be made so with all. The pil- them continue to struggle. It is the only |