I can still quite vividly remember my emotions the morning I first set eyes on Palestine. ... I wondered if it was not all a fantasy— wondered if those palms and olive-groves and little flat-roofed houses were not mere daubs on a canvas drop. The sun climbed up behind the rolling weathered hills, raining fierce heat on our caravan. Out of the carriage windows we could see bedraggled Arabs ploughing in the fields with oxen, or guiding strings of camels along the roads, or wandering with flocks of sheep and goats. We stopped at wayside stations half-covered with wind-swept sand; we passed through palm-groves, over dry river-beds, around high sand-dunes, by thronged villages. . . . And then at last we reached our journey's end: Jerusalem. High on top of the hills it stood, a wondrous thing of yellow walls and grim gray towers and cluttered domes and minarets. . . . Not until I stood in the very shadow of its walls, and ran my fingers over the crumbling boulders, could I believe a real city to be there.
—From "The Graphic Bible"
