MY HOME IN PALESTINE. 119 



All this has been the work of scarce fifteen years ; and 

 when we compare these sound practical results with 

 all that the Carmelites have to show, after a seven 

 hundred years' occupation of the mountain, with all 

 the wealth and prestige of their order and their church 

 behind them, we are enabled to contrast the effects of 

 practice with those of theory, and are driven to the 

 conclusion that a very small amount of ploughing, 

 done from a right spirit, may be worth a good deal of 

 baptism. 



But of all the numerous benefits which the German 

 colony has conferred upon the native population, that 

 which has perhaps exercised the most marked influ- 

 ence upon them has been the construction of roads 

 for wheeled vehicles. When they came here, such a 

 thing as a cart of any kind was unknown in the coun- 

 try. Now they are extensively used by the Arabs, 

 and their numbers are constantly increasing. To 

 make the cart before the road seems to be a proceed- 

 ing somewhat analogous to putting the cart before the 

 horse ; and yet there is a wide difference between the 

 performances. Given a horse and cart, and a toler- 

 ably level country, your cart becomes your road- 

 maker. You find the line of country offering the 

 least natural obstruction, and you go along it. There 

 is not a vestige of a road from Haifa to Acre a dis- 

 tance of about ten miles but there are omnibuses, 

 driven by natives, running almost every hour, who 

 take you between the two places in two hours and 



