Mark Twain’s journey through “The Holy Land”, as described in his book “The Innocents Abroad” , tells of his disenchantment with the Biblical tales he grew up with. This was not the land of “milk and honey” he might have expected. He did not hear the cooing of the turtledove. The land Twain experienced was geographically the same location but the landscape was not as found in those tales. By the same token, the land Twain visited is not what we find there today. It is an ancient land that had been occupied by Neolithic peoples. It had as well been home to Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. These had all been greatly influenced by the preceding Phœnicians.

Richard F. Burton, British consul in Damascus in 1868, wrote of the region in his “Unexplored Syria”, published in 1872. What Burton found there was :

...hardly a mile without a ruin, hardly a ruin that would not be held deeply interesting between Hudson's Bay and the Tierra del Fuego; and, in places, mile after mile and square mile upon square mile of ruin. It is a luxuriance of ruin; and there is not a large ruin in the country which does not prove upon examination to be the composition of ruins more ancient still. The whole becomes somewhat depressing, even to the most ardent worker; whilst everywhere the certainty that the mere surface of the antiquarian mine has been only scratched, and that years and long years must roll by before the country can be considered explored — before even Jerusalem can be called 'recovered' suggests that the task must be undertaken by Societies, not by the individual.

He commented on one of the issues Twain dealt with among the pilgrims accompanying him on the voyage of the “Quaker City”, “Holy Land on the Brain”:

"The fact is, we find here, and not elsewhere, a complaint which may be called `Holy Land on the Brain.' It is no obscure cerebral disorder, like the morbid delusions of the poisoner it rather delights to announce its presence, to flaunt itself in the face of fact. This perversion of allowable sentiment is the calenture which makes patients babble of hanging gardens and parterres of flowers, when all they beheld was sere and barren. The green sickness mostly attacks the new and unseasoned visitor from Europe and North America, especially from regions where he has rarely seen a sun. It is a 'strange delusion that the man should believe,' Carlyle says, `the thing to be which is not.'"

It was not Twain’s intention to write a “guide” …

This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it is only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea—other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.

Nevertheless, my own purpose is to provide the context of Twain’s journey. To do this I have called upon two publishers of travel guidebooks from the time period of Twain’s journey: John Murray’s “Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine”, 1858 and Karl Bædeker’s guidebooks “Palestine and Syria”, three editions from 1876, 1894 and 1898. The eyes of those who traveled before him. Bias is found in these handbooks but I believe the writers have avoided the “Holy Land on the Brain” problem.

https://twainsgeography.com/episode/innocents-holy-land