A Ride Across Palestine

In A Ride Across Palestine, the narrator says circumstances took him to the Holy Land without a companion, compelling him to visit Bethany, the Mount of Olives, and the Church of the Sepulchre alone. The narrator says he dislikes solitude, and especially travelling solitude, and was rather sad at heart as he sat one night in Jerusalem, thinking over his proposed wanderings for the next few days. The narrator intended to start early on the following morning, on horseback, for the Dead Sea, the banks of Jordan, Jericho, and those mountains of the wilderness.

The narrator says Jones is a good travelling name and that he will call himself Jones on the present occasion. A visitor is described as some twenty or twenty-one years of age, slight and well made, with very black hair which he wore rather long, and he gives his name as John Smith. The narrator says the shore was muddy with the feet of the pilgrims, and the river so rapid that he hardly dared to get beyond the mud.