Locations - Palestine

In April the land of Palestine looked like a huge garden and the fragrance and colours delighted the hearts of men.

• Locations - Palestine

It is a glorious morning and the air is clearer than usual. Distances seem to be shortened and remote things seem to be seen through a magnifying lens, so clear and neat are the tiniest details. The crowds are getting ready to listen to the Master. Day by day the country is becoming more beautiful in its luxurious dress at the height of the spring season, which in Palestine I think is at the end of March and beginning of April, because later it has the typical look of summer, with ripe crops and thick fully developed foliage.

The whole country is now in bloom. From the height of the mountain, which is adorned with its own flowers even in spots which would appear least suitable for blossom growth, one can see the flexuous corn undulating down in the plain, blown by the breeze making it look like sea-green waves, with a pale golden hue at the top of the ears now seeding in their bristly awns. The fruit trees, completely covered with petals stand straight above the crops undulating in the light breeze, and look like as many huge powder-puffs or balls of white, pale pink, dark pink, bright red gauze. The olive-trees by contrast, in their dress of penitent ascetics seem to be praying and their prayers are already changing into an attempted snowfall of tiny white flowers.

The top of Mount Hermon is like pink alabaster and is kissed by the sun. Two diamond threads – they look like threads from here – run down from the alabaster top twinkling in an unbelievable fashion in the sun, and disappear into the green woods; they appear once again down in the valley where they form water-courses which flow towards Lake Merom, which cannot be seen from here. They then flow out with the beautiful waters of the Jordan and later drop into the light sapphire sea of Galilee, which twinkles like chips of precious stones set in and lit up by the sun. The sails moving on the lake, calm and splendid in its frame of gardens and wonderful countryside, seem driven by the small light clouds sailing in the sea of the sky.

Nature really seems to be smiling in this early hour of a spring day.

• Locations - Hattin horns
• Locations - Palestine