The handful of pioneers were obliged to work in the agricultural settlements near Jaffa, in _Mikweh Israel_, a foundation of the _Alliance Israelite_ in Paris, and in the colony _Rishon le-Zion_, which had been recently established by private initiative.

The youthful idealists had to endure many hardships in an unaccustomed environment and in a branch of endeavor entirely alien to them.

A considerable part of the pioneers were soon forced to give up the struggle and make way for the new settlers who were less intelligent perhaps but physically better fitted for their task.

The foundations of Palestinian colonization had been laid, though within exceedingly narrow limits, and the very idea of the national restoration of the Jewish people in Palestine was then as it was later a much greater social factor in Jewish life than the practical colonization of a country which could only absorb an insignificant number of laborers.

At those moments, when the Russian horrors made life unbearable, the eyes of many sufferers were turned Eastward, towards the tiny strip of land on the shores of the Mediterranean, where the dream of a new life upon the resuscitated ruins of gray antiquity held out the promise of fulfilment.
A contemporary writer, in surveying recent events in the Russian valley of tears, makes the following observations: Jewish life during the latter part of 1882 has assumed a monotonously gloomy, oppressively dull aspect True, the streets are no longer full of whirling feathers from torn bedding; the window-panes no longer crash through the streets.