Readers are likely to have heard, in one form or another, the New Testament proverb, “And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).  The saying is an old one, and probably was in common currency centuries before its alleged utterance by Jesus.  I find proverbs and adages interesting, as they contain not just worldly wisdom, but information about the culture and period in which they were composed.  This point was recently impressed upon me while reading a forgotten bit of nineteenth-century travel literature, the Rev. F.J. Arundell’s 1834 memoir Discoveries in Asia Minor.

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