“Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren.… The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent.… It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.… Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies… Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho… accursed… Jerusalem… a pauper village… Palestine is desolate and unlovely"

Mark Twain (1867)