chiefly in mixed farming. They raise grain, vegetables, and live stock. Most of them are found in the fertile plains of the valley of Jezreel, which only a few years ago was covered with malarial

swamps.

No unanimity of opinion exists as yet as to the best way to treat different kinds of soil, the best methods of cultivation, what fertilizers to use, what implements are best, or even how to irrigate to the greatest advantage. The colonists know that they must go into intensive farming to compete with the cheap fellah labor of the big estates. But 'experts' debate interminably as to what particular kind of intensive farming should be pursued in different districts. In fact, I have the impression that most of the experts in Palestine are of the self-appointed type. Only a few Jews have a thorough agricultural education, and neither universities nor trained public opinion exists to decide who is qualified. But this is a situation that time will cure.

A characteristic feature of all the talk I have heard here about agricultural settlement in Palestine is that the people are more interested in the social side than in the professional side of farming. One important settlement had to change its site at great expense because it had been laid out in an impossible situation. A new water-tower was no sooner finished than it was discovered that it could not supply the people for whom it was intended. One of the older colonies has been raising live stock for years without using the manure. Nevertheless the settlers seem mainly interested in the relative advantages of communal or individual tenure, and whether communal settlements should be small or large. They debate passionately and interminably over theoretical matters, when actual success depends upon practical farming-methods. This is quite natural, of

course, for the people are beginners at farming and they have been interested in social problems all their lives. The labor pioneers are not hard-fisted, practical-minded peasants, but social and national enthusiasts.

Private property does not exist in the communal settlements. The members eat together and have family dormitories; they are even clothed by the community. Naturally, the children are reared in community nurseries and schools. Labor is assigned by a committee, and no one receives wages. Even agricultural colonies whose members cultivate individual allotments have many communal features-interchange of labor, coöperative buying and selling, common ownership of farm machinery, and the like. Since the members cannot sell or enlarge the allotments that they have leased from the Administration of the Jewish National Fund, no one is richer or poorer than his neighbor.

I do not mean to criticize the great interest the immigrants show in the social aspects of these experiments. In fact, that interest is what gives them their chief inspiration. It accounts for the joy in doing that lightens the hardships and privations of the new settlers.

Jerusalem has many old-time Jewish residents who have moved there out of religious sentiment and live largely upon remittances from abroad. In addition there are the newcomers, who include the employees of the Zionist organization, professional men, -especially physicians, - a little academic circle grouped around the Hebrew University, and merchants and artisans, chiefly building mechanics. Tel Aviv, the strictly Jewish suburb of Jaffa, which has grown like an American boom town from a place of two or three thousand inhabitants to a city with a population of thirty-six thousand

within five years, presents another aspect of urban development. The settlers there, especially those who have come within the last year or two, are not to so large an extent enthusiasts filled with the idea of building up a national home for their race, but are money-makers who have transferred their small capitals from Poland or Lithuania to Palestine in order to escape economic oppression and to live a freer and a happier life. They are not so ready to make great sacrifices for an ideal as the chassidim pilgrim fathers. They bring some of the unpleasant habits of the ghetto with them, grasp eagerly after profits, go into real-estate speculation, and hold reactionary social views. On the other hand, their capital has given employment to many immigrants who possess a very different outlook, and their children will gradually acquire the New Palestine spirit.

Tel Aviv still looks like a half-finished town. Wherever you go, a house is being built here, another story or a wing is being added there. At least half of the people live directly or indirectly from the building trades. The houses so far erected are neither beautiful nor particularly well constructed, and one sees little evidence of systematic city-planning. Things have been allowed to take their own course. The settlers have never built houses, laid out streets, or planned towns before, and they have never governed a city. They have had to learn everything from the beginning, and they are paying for their tuition.

The big problem is to find something for the people to do when the building boom collapses. Already a number of industrial enterprises have been started at Tel Aviv and at Haifa. Some of

these seem to be well established, others are still in the experimental stage, and others are already involved in difficulties that they are not likely to survive. There are reported to be forty-two textile factories here. Haifa has a big cement works, flour mills, and a soap factory. Tel Aviv has also brickyards, furniture factories, and a box factory, and miscellaneous enterprises. Several of these sell their products, not only in Palestine, but also in Syria, with which there is a customs union, and in other parts of Asia Minor. A small export trade exists even to America and Europe. Up to the present there is little opportunity for large investments. It is very fortunate that some of the wealthy Jews who have settled in Palestine are investing their money without expecting to receive the usual rate of profit.

Urban Palestine has all the social conflicts of the rest of the world, and others in addition. Labor is fighting to improve its condition. Coöperative societies and trade-union undertakings are struggling to extend their operations. Bitter conflicts arise, as they do wherever interests clash. One unique feature of the situation is, however, that class lines and cultural lines do not run parallel. The working people are mostly well educated. Besides, behind all these controversies lies a common

[OCCASIONALLY an official document possesses such enduring interest as to justify its occasional republication. That probably explains why the following letter is appearing in the contemporary press of Europe. It is translated from a copy preserved in the Munich National Library.]

A letter of Christopher Columbus, to whom our age owes much, upon the newly found islands of India beyond the Ganges, to discover which he was sent in the eighth month of last year under the protection and with the money of Ferdinand, the unconquered King of the Spaniards, written to the eminent gentleman Raphael Sanxis, His Royal Majesty's Treasurer, which the noble and learned Señor Aliander de Cosco has translated from the Spanish idiom into Latin, on the third day before the first of November, 1493, in the first year of the Pontificate of Alexander VI.

Since I know that you will be pleased to learn that I have completed taking possession of the new provinces, I have decided to write down briefly the facts. and discoveries, that you may have in mind every incident of our voyage.

On the thirty-seventh day after leaving the Canaries, I came into the Indian Sea, where I found several islands inhabited by a very great number of people, of which I took possession for our blessed King by solemn proclamation and with flying

1 From Frankfurter Zeitung (Liberal daily), January 12, 14

banners without any resistance thereto. And the first of them I have given the name of the Holy Saviour, trusting to whose assistance I reached it and the other islands. The Indians, however, call it Guanahani. I have also given a new name to each of the others. And I have directed that one of the other islands shall be named Santa Maria, and another Ferdinanda, and another Isabella, and another Juana, and similar names for the rest.

As soon as we sighted the island that I have called Juana [Cuba] I coasted along it toward the west without discovering the end for a distance so great that I am inclined to think it is not an island but the mainland and a province of Chatai [Cathay]. Yet I saw no cities or inhabited places on the land near to the sea, except a few villages and country fields. I was not able to talk with the inhabitants, for as soon as they saw us they took to flight. I continued my course, thinking that I should find a city or some villages, but though I proceeded a long distance farther nothing new appeared.

Thus we were heading toward the north, which I wished to avoid, for fog hung low over the land, and it was my design to travel southward. And the wind no longer favored us. So I decided not to undertake anything further, and turning around steered to a harbor that I had observed. From this point I sent two of my people on land to ascertain if there were a king in this province or if there were any cities. These men traveled for three days and

met many natives and little dwellingplaces that were under no ruler's government. For this reason they came back. Meanwhile I had learned from certain Indians, whom I myself had discovered, that the province was an island. And so I continued my course along the coast for three hundred and twenty-two miles to the farthest extremity of this island. From this point I saw another island to the eastward distant fifty-four miles from Juana, which I later named Hispaniola [Haiti]. I steered for this island and continued my course along its northern coast in the same direction as along Juana, toward the east for five hundred and sixty-four miles. The island called Juana and the other island are very fertile. They have many large and safe harbors and are therefore not to be compared with the other islands I have seen. Numerous very large rivers of fresh water flow through them. Many very tall mountains stand upon them. All these islands are unusually beautiful and distinguished for the diversified form and the great variety of their trees, which rise almost to the stars, and which I believe never shed their leaves. For when I saw them their foliage was as dense and green as it is in Spain in the month of May. Some of them were in blossom, others bore ripe fruit, and each seemed to be in the full bearing season in its way. Nightingales and countless other songbirds of every character were singing in the month of November when I coasted along the shore. Furthermore, there are upon the island Juana seven or eight kinds of palm trees, which, like the other trees, vegetables, and fruit, far exceed our own in luxuriance and beauty. There are also wonderful nut trees, broad fields and meadows, many kinds of birds, many kinds of sweet vegetables, and many metals, excepting only iron.

In the island that I have named Hispaniola, however, are the largest and handsomest mountains, great stretches of fine country, forests and fertile fields well suited for pasturage and cultivation. On this island the harbors are so convenient and the streams of sweet water are so numerous and so large that no one would credit it without seeing them. The trees, meadows, and fruits are very different from those of Juana. Moreover, this island Hispaniola has various spices, gold, and metals in greater abundance than all the other islands that I saw or that I have ever heard of.

The natives of both sexes go about as naked as they were born, except that the women occasionally wear wreaths or pieces of cotton fabric for ornament. The men, as I have said, have no iron; neither have they weapons, which are entirely unknown among them and which they do not seem fitted to employ. This is not on account of physical faults, for they are strong and vigorous; but they are extremely shy and timid. Instead of weapons they carry with them a piece of sun-dried reed to the end of which is attached a point of sharpened wood. Even this they seldom use. For it often happened when I sent two or three of my men to some of their towns to talk with the natives a great crowd of them would gather, but as soon as they saw our men approach they would take to their heels, leaving even their children and property behind them. And this was not because we designed them any harm or injustice. On the contrary, wherever I landed and was able to converse with them I gave them presents presents - cloth and many other things; and I did not do this to gain some advantage of them. But they are by nature shy and timid.

On the other hand, as soon as they feel that they are safe and have cast

aside their fear, they are mild and trusting and very generous with anything they have. No one will refuse a thing he owns to another one who asks for it. In fact, they told us to ask for what we wanted. They conducted themselves with the greatest kindness toward everyone. They will give the most valuable thing they own for a trifle. They are satisfied with the simplest article or with nothing. Nevertheless, I forbade my people to give them such trifles and worthless articles, plates, cups, pieces of glass, and the like, nails and spoons, although they invariably thought them the finest things in the world. On one occasion a sailor received for a spoon as much gold as would make three golden ducats. And the same happened to others for things of little value. Above all, they would give whatever a person asked for new Castilian coppers or for a few bright pennies. For instance, for an onza or two, or a half of one, in money they would give thirty or forty pounds of cotton, which they already know. And so my sailors

bartered bits of broken armor and fragments of pottery and dishes for cotton and gold as greedily as wild animals. Since this was clearly unjust, I forbade it. I gave them many pretty articles that they liked that I had brought with me and that were of no great value, in order that they might become my friends and embrace Christianity and that they might love the King and the Queen and the Princes and all the people of Spain, and that they might exert themselves to collect and give us the things which they have in abundance but which we lack.

They are not idolaters. On the contrary, they believe that all power and strength and all that is good is in Heaven and that I and my ships and sailors have come down from there. And it was with this belief that I was

received wherever I appeared after the natives had overcome their fear. And they are not stupid and rude, but shrewd and intelligent. And these people, who navigate that sea, inform themselves eagerly of whatever exists there. But they have never seen men who wear clothing, or ships the size of our own. But as soon as I reached that sea I captured by force a couple of Indians on the first island, in order that they might learn from us and teach us what they knew of that part of the world. And this succeeded according to my wish. For in a short time we understood them and they understood us through gestures and signs and later through words. They were of great use to us. And certain Indians also accompanied me of their own free will, who still believe that I have descended from Heaven, although they have lived for a long time with us and are still living with us. These were the ones who first announced us wherever we landed. Thereupon the natives of the place would call to the others in a loud tone of voice, 'Come, come and see the folks from Heaven.' And thereupon men and women, children and adults, young people and grayhaired grandsires, would hasten to join us after they had overcome the fear that seized them in the beginning. They stood in dense crowds along our path. Some brought food and others brought drink with the greatest kindness and amazing confidence.

And every island has many canoes hollowed out of logs, which, although they are narrow, are long and similar in form to our own two-bank galleys, which they excel in speed. They are propelled with paddles. Some are large, some small, and some of medium size. Most of the larger two-bankers have more than eighteen sets of paddles. With these they travel about from island to island, of which there are an