The above picture of the orange grove reflects life in modern day Israel. As you can see, the trees can hardly contain the abundant harvest of oranges.

This is a far different scene from what Mark Twain saw when he visited the land in 1867. In his book The Innocents Abroad, he described it as “A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent mournful expanse.... a desolation.... we never saw a human being on the whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”