The Prince of the House of David

My Dear Father:


My first duty, as it is my highest pleasure, is to comply with your command to write you as soon as I should arrive at Jerusalem; and this letter, while it conveys to you intelligence of my arrival, will confirm to you my filial obedience.


I will not fail to write by every caravan that leaves here monthly for Cairo; and if there are more frequent opportunities, my love, dear father, and sympathy for you in you separation from me, will prompt me to avail myself of them.


My journey hither occupied many days, Rabbi Ben Israel says seventeen, but although I kept the number up to ten. I soon became too weary to keep the account. When we traveled in sight of the sea, which we did for three days, I enjoyed the majesty of the prospect, it seemed so like the sky stretched out upon the earth. I also had the good fortune to see several ships, which the Rabbi, who was always ready to gratify my thirst for information, informed me were Roman galleys, bound some to Sidon and others into the Nile; and after one of these latter, as it was going to you, I sent a prayer and a wish. Just as we were leaving the sea-shore to turn off into the sea-shore, I saw a wrecked vessel. It looked so helpless and bulky, with its huge black body all out of the water, that it seemed to me like a great sea-monster, stranded and dying; and I felt like pitying it. The Rabbi gave me to understand that it had come from Alexandria, laden with wheat, bound for Italia, and been cast ashore in a storm. How terrible a tempest must be upon the sea! I was in hopes to have seen a Leviathan, but was not gratified in the wish. The good Rabbi, who seemed to know all about these things, told me that they seldom appear now in the Middle Sea, but are seen beyond the pillar of Hercules at the world’s end.