American-German Colony

This guide to Tel Aviv's American-German Colony neighborhood opens with Mark Twain's blunt verdict on the settlers he saw here in 1867: poor, sick wretches. You'll hear how a preacher named George Adams led 157 Maine farmers and their families to Jaffa a year earlier believing the Second Coming was near, and how their prefabricated New England houses ended up stranded on a Mediterranean beach, pitched as tents beside a cemetery for cholera victims. Winter rains flooded those tents, and nine children died before the first spring.