female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and

some who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the

"Adams Jaffa Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr.

Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money but

did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement made

to us. Our forty were miserable enough in the first place, and they lay

about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their

misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and

by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little information.

They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having

been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and

unhappy. In such circumstances people do not like to talk.

The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as could

get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams--once an actor,

then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary, always an

adventurer--remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The

forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though not all of

them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them then they

did not know and probably did not care--any thing to get away from hated

Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after many appeals to the

sympathies of New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the

newspapers, and after the establishment of an office there for the

reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa colonists, One Dollar

was subscribed. The consul-general for Egypt showed me the newspaper

paragraph which mentioned the circumstance and mentioned also the

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The Innocents Abroad