THE sojourner in Jerusalem falls into the habit of dropping in at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre nearly every afternoon. It is the centre of attraction. There the pilgrims all resort; there one sees, in a day, many races, and the costumes of strange and distant peoples; there one sees the various worship of the many Christian sects. There are always processions making the round of the holy places, sect following sect, with swinging censers, each fumigating away the effect of its predecessor.
The central body of the church, answering to the nave, as the rotunda, which contains the Holy Sepulchre, answers to choir and apse, is the Greek chapel, and the most magnificent in the building. The portion of the church set apart to the Latins, opening also out of the rotunda, is merely a small chapel. The Armenians have still more contracted accommodations, and the poor Copts enjoy a mere closet, but it is in a sacred spot, being attached to the west end of the sepulchre itself.
On the western side of the rotunda we passed through the bare and apparently uncared-for chapel of the Syrians, and entered, through a low door, into a small grotto hewn in the rock. Lighted candles revealed to us some tombs, little pits cut in the rock, two in the side-wall and two in the floor. We had a guide who knew every sacred spot in the city, a man who never failed to satisfy the curiosity of the most credulous tourist.
“Whose tombs are these?” we asked.
“That is the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that beside it is the tomb of Nicodemus.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know? You ask me how I know. Have n't I always lived in Jerusalem? I was born here.”
“Then perhaps you can tell us, if this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea and this to Nicodemus, whose is this third one?”
“O yes, that other,” replied the guide, with only a moment's paralysis of his invention, “that is the tomb of Arimathea himself.”
One afternoon at four, service was going on in the Greek chapel, which shone with silver and blazed with tapers, and was crowded with pilgrims, principally Russians of both sexes, many of whom had made a painful pilgrimage of more than two thousand miles on foot merely to prostrate themselves in this revered place. A Russian bishop and a priest, in the resplendent robes of their office, were intoning the service responsively. In the very centre of this chapel is a round hole covered with a grating, and tapers are generally burning about it. All the pilgrims kneeled there, and kissed the grating and adored the hole. I had the curiosity to push my way through the throng in order to see the object of devotion, but I could discover nothing. It is, however, an important spot: it is the centre of the earth; though why Christians should worship the centre of the earth I do not know. The Armenians have in their chapel also a spot that they say is the real centre; that makes three that we know of, for everybody understands that there is one in the Kaaba at Mecca.
We sat down upon a stone bench near the entrance of the chapel, where we could observe the passing streams of people, and were greatly diverted by a blithe and comical beggar who had stationed himself on the pavement there to intercept the Greek charity of the worshippers when they passed into the rotunda. He was a diminutive man with distorted limbs; he wore a peaked red cap, and dragged himself over the pavement, or rather skipped and flopped about on it like a devil-fish on land. Never was seen in a beggar such vivacity and imperturbable good-humor, with so much deviltry in his dancing eyes.
As we appeared to him to occupy a neutral position as to him and his victims, he soon took us into his confidence and let us see his mode of operations. He said (to our guide) that he was a Greek from Damascus,—O yes, a Christian, a pilgrim, who always came down here at this season, which was his harvest-time. He hoped (with a wicked wink) that his devotion would be rewarded.
It was very entertaining to see him watch the people coming out, and select his victims, whom he would indicate to us by a motion of his head as he hopped towards them. He appeared to rely more upon the poor and simple than upon the rich, and he was more successful with the former. But he rarely, such was his insight, made a mistake. Whoever gave him anything he thanked with the utmost empressement of manner; then he crossed himself, and turned around and winked at us, his confederates. When an elegantly dressed lady dropped the smallest of copper coins into his cap, he let us know his opinion of her by a significant gesture and a shrug of his shoulders. But no matter from whom he received it, whenever he added a penny to his store the rascal chirped and laughed and caressed himself. He was in the way of being trodden under foot by the crowd; but his agility was extraordinary, and I should not have been surprised at any moment if he had vaulted over the heads of the throng and disappeared. If he failed to attract the attention of an eligible pilgrim, he did not hesitate to give the skirt of his elect a jerk, for which rudeness he would at once apologize with an indescribable grimace and a joke.
When the crowd had passed, he slid himself into a corner, by a motion such as that with which a fish suddenly darts to one side, and set himself to empty his pocket into his cap and count his plunder, tossing the pieces into the air and catching them with a chuckle, crossing himself and hugging himself by turns. He had four francs and a half. When he had finished counting his money he put it in a bag, and for a moment his face assumed a grave and business-like expression. We thought he would depart without demanding anything of us. But we were mistaken; he had something in view that he no doubt felt would insure him a liberal backsheesh. Wriggling near to us, he set his face into an expression of demure humility, held out his cap, and said, in English, each word falling from his lips as distinctly and unnaturally as if he had been a wooden articulating machine,—
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
The rascal's impiety lessened the charity which our intimacy with him had intended, but he appeared entirely content, chirped, saluted with gravity, and, with a flop, was gone from our sight.
At the moment, a procession of Franciscan monks swept by, chanting in rich bass voices, and followed, as usual, by Latin pilgrims, making the daily round of the holy places; after they had disappeared we could still hear their voices and catch now and again the glimmer of their tapers in the vast dark spaces.
Opposite the place where we were sitting is the Chapel of the Apparition, a room not much more than twenty feet square; it is the Latin chapel, and besides its contiguity to the sepulchre has some specialties of its own. The chapel is probably eight hundred years old. In the centre of the pavement is the spot upon which our Lord stood when he appeared to the Virgin after the resurrection; near it a slab marks the place where the three crosses were laid after they were dug up by Helena, and where the one on which our Lord was crucified was identified by the miracle that it worked in healing a sick man. South of the altar is a niche in the wall, now covered over, but a round hole is left in the covering. I saw pilgrims thrust a long stick into this hole, withdraw it, and kiss the end. The stick had touched a fragment of the porphyry column to which the Saviour was bound when he was scourged.
In the semicircle at the east end of the nave are several interesting places: the prison where Christ was confined before his execution, a chapel dedicated to the centurion who pierced the side of our Lord, and the spot on which the vestments were divided. From thence we descend, by a long flight of steps partly hewn in the rock, to a rude, crypt-like chapel, in the heavy early Byzantine style, a damp, cheerless place, called the Chapel of Helena. At the east end of it another flight of steps leads down into what was formerly a cistern, but is now called the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. Here the cross was found, and at one side of the steps stands the marble chair in which the mother of Constantine sat while she superintended the digging. Nothing is wanting that the most credulous pilgrim could wish to see; that is, nothing is wanting in spots where things were. This chapel belongs to the Latins; that of Helena to the Greeks; the Abyssinian convent is above both of them.
On the south side of the church, near the entrance, is a dark room called the Chapel of Adam, in which there is never more light than a feeble taper can give. I groped my way into it often, in the hope of finding something; perhaps it is purposely involved in an obscurity typical of the origin of mankind. There is a tradition that Adam was buried on Golgotha, but the only tomb in this chapel is that of Melchizedek! The chapel formerly contained that of Godfrey de Bouillon, elected the first king of Jerusalem in 1099, and of Baldwin, his brother. We were shown the two-handed sword of Godfrey, with which he clove a Saracen lengthwise into two equal parts, a genuine relic of a heroic and barbarous age. At the end of this chapel a glimmering light lets us see through a grating a crack in the rock made by the earthquake at the crucifixion.
The gloom of this mysterious chapel, which is haunted by the spectre of that dim shadow of unreality, Melchizedek, prepared us to ascend to Golgotha, above it. The chapels of Golgotha are supported partly upon a rock which rises fifteen feet above the pavement of the church. The first is that of the Elevation of the Cross, and belongs to the Greeks. Under the altar at the east end is a hole in the marble which is over the hole in the rock in which the cross stood; on either side of it are the holes of the crosses of the two thieves. The altar is rich with silver and gold and jewels. The chamber, when we entered it, was blazing with light, and Latin monks were performing their adorations, with chanting and swinging of incense, before the altar. A Greek priest stood at one side, watching them, and there was plain contempt in his face. The Greek priests are not wanting in fanaticism, but they never seem to me to possess the faith of the Latin branch of the Catholic church. When the Latins had gone, the Greek took us behind the altar, and showed us another earthquake-rent in the rock.
Adjoining this chapel is the Latin Chapel of the Crucifixion, marking the spot where Christ was nailed to the cross; from that we looked through a window into an exterior room dedicated to the Sorrowing Virgin, where she stood and beheld the crucifixion. Both these latter rooms do not rest upon the rock, but upon artificial vaults, and of course can mark the spots commemorated by them only in space.
Perhaps this sensation of being in the air, and of having no standing-place even for tradition, added something to the strange feeling that took possession of me; a mingled feeling that was no more terror than is the apprehension that one experiences at a theatre from the manufactured thunder behind the scenes. I suppose it arose from cross currents meeting in the mind, the thought of the awful significance of the events here represented and the sight of this theatrical representation. The dreadful name, Golgotha, the gloom of this part of the building,—a sort of mount of darkness, with its rent rock and preternatural shadow,—the blazing contrast of the chapel where the cross stood with the dark passages about it, the chanting and flashing lights of pilgrims ever coming and going, the neighborhood of the sepulchre itself, were well calculated to awaken an imagination the least sensitive. And, so susceptible is the mind to the influence of that mental electricity—if there is no better name for it—which proceeds from a mass of minds having one thought (and is sometimes called public opinion), be it true or false, that whatever one may believe about the real location of the Holy Sepulchre, he cannot witness, unmoved, the vast throng of pilgrims to these shrines, representing as they do every section of the civilized and of the uncivilized world into which a belief in the cross has penetrated. The undoubted sincerity of the majority of the pilgrims who worship here makes us for the time forget the hundred inventions which so often allure and as often misdirect that worship.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre offers at all times a great spectacle, and one always novel, in the striking ceremonies and the people who assist at them. One of the most extraordinary, that of the Holy Fire, at the Greek Easter, which is three weeks later than the Roman, and which has been so often described, we did not see. I am not sure that we saw even all the thirty-seven holy places and objects in the church. It may not be unprofitable to set down those I can recall. They are,—
The Stone of Unction.
The spot where the Virgin Mary stood when the body of our Lord was anointed.
The Holy Sepulchre.
The stone on which the angel sat.
The tombs of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
The well of Helena.
The stone marking the spot where Christ in the form of a gardener appeared to Mary Magdalene.
The spot where Mary Magdalene stood.
The spot where our Lord appeared to the Virgin after his resurrection.
The place where the true cross, discovered by Helena, was laid, and identified by a miracle.
The fragment of the Column of Flagellation.
The prison of our Lord.
The “Bonds of Christ,” a stone with two holes in it.
The place where the title on the cross was preserved.
The place of the division of the vestments.
The centre of the earth (Greek).
The centre of the earth (Armenian).
The altar of the centurion who pierced the body of Christ.
The altar of the penitent thief.
The Chapel of Helena.
The chair in which Helena sat when the cross was found.
The spot where the cross was found.
The Chapel of the Mocking, with a fragment of the column upon which Jesus sat when they crowned him with thorns.
The Chapel of the Elevation of the Cross.
The spot where the cross stood.
The spots where the crosses of the thieves stood.
The rent rock near the cross.
The spot where Christ was nailed to the cross.
The spot where the Virgin stood during the crucifixion.
The Chapel of Adam.
The tomb of Melchizedek.
The rent rock in the Chapel of Adam.
The spots where the tombs of Godfrey and Baldwin stood.
No, we did not see them all. Besides, there used to be a piece of the cross in the Latin chapel; but the Armenians are accused of purloining it. All travellers, I suppose, have seen the celebrated Iron Crown of Lombardy, which is kept in the church at Monza, near Milan. It is all of gold except the inner band, which is made of a nail of the cross brought from Jerusalem by Helena. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has not all the relics it might have, but it is as rich in them as any church of its age.
A place in Jerusalem almost as interesting to Christians as the Holy Sepulchre, and more interesting to antiquarians, is the Harem, or Temple area, with its ancient substructions and its resplendent Saracenic architecture. It is largely an open place, green with grass; it is clean and wholesome, and the sun lies lovingly on it. There is no part of the city where the traveller would so like to wander at will, to sit and muse, to dream away the day on the walls overhanging the valley of the Kidron, to recall at leisure all the wonderful story of its splendor and its disaster. But admission to the area is had only by special permit. Therefore the ordinary tourist goes not so much as he desires to the site of the Temple that Solomon built, and of the porch where Jesus walked and talked with his disciples. When he does go, he feels that he treads upon firm historical ground.
We walked down the gutter (called street) of David; we did not enter the Harem area by the Bab es-Silsileh (Gate of the Chain), but turned northward and went in by the Bab el-Katanm (Gate of the Cotton-Merchants), which is identified with the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. Both these gates have twisted columns and are graceful examples of Saracenic architecture. As soon as we entered the gate the splendor of the area burst upon us; we passed instantly out of the sordid city into a green plain, out of which—it could have been by a magic wand only—had sprung the most charming creations in stone: minarets, domes, colonnades, cloisters, pavilions, columns of all orders, horseshoe arches and pointed arches, every joyous architectural thought expressed in shining marble and brilliant color.
Our dragoman, Abd-el-Atti, did the honors of the place with the air of proprietorship. For the first time in the Holy City he felt quite at home, and appeared to be on the same terms with the Temple area that he is with the tombs of the Pharaohs. The Christian antiquities are too much for him, but his elastic mind expands readily to all the marvels of the Moslem situation. The Moslems, indeed, consider that they have a much better right to the Temple than the Christians, and Abd-el-Atti acted as our cicerone in the precincts with all the delight of a boy and with the enthusiasm of faith. It was not unpleasant to him, either, to have us see that he was treated with consideration by the mosque attendants and ulemas, and that he was well known and could pass readily into the most reserved places. He had said his prayers that morning, at twelve, in this mosque, a privilege only second to that of praying in the mosque at Mecca, and was in high spirits, as one who had (if the expression is allowable) got a little ahead in the matter of devotion.
Let me give in a few words, without any qualifications of doubt, what seem to be the well-ascertained facts about this area. It is at present a level piece of ground (in the nature of a platform, since it is sustained on all sides by walls), a quadrilateral with its sides not quite parallel, about fifteen hundred feet long by one thousand feet broad. The northern third of it was covered by the Fortress of Antonia, an ancient palace and fortress, rebuilt with great splendor by Herod. The small remains of it in the northeast corner are now barracks.
This level piece of ground is nearly all artificial, either filled in or built up on arches. The original ground (Mount Moriah) was a rocky hill, the summit of which was the rock about which there has been so much controversy. Near the centre of this ground, and upon a broad raised platform, paved with marble, stands the celebrated mosque Kubbet es-Sukhrah, “The Dome of the Rock.” It is built over the Sacred Rock.
This rock marks the site of the threshing-floor of Oman, the Jebusite, which David bought, purchasing at the same time the whole of Mount Moriah. Solomon built the Temple over this rock, and it was probably the “stone of sacrifice.” At the time Solomon built the Temple, the level place on Moriah was scarcely large enough for the naos of that building, and Solomon extended the ground to the east and south by erecting arches and filling in on top of them, and constructing a heavy retaining-wall outside. On the east side also he built a porch, or magnificent colonnade, which must have produced a fine effect of Oriental grandeur when seen from the deep valley below or from the Mount of Olives opposite.
To this rock the Jews used to come, in the fourth century, and anoint it with oil, and wail over it, as the site of the Temple. On it once stood a statue of Hadrian. When the Moslems captured Jerusalem, it became, what it has ever since been, one of their most venerated places. The Khalif Omar cleared away the rubbish from it, and built over it a mosque. The Khalif Abd-el-Melek began to rebuild it in a. d. 686. During the Crusades it was used as a Christian church. Allowing for decay and repairs, the present mosque is probably substantially that built by Abd-el-Melek.
At the extreme south of the area is the vast Mosque of Aksa, a splendid basilica with seven aisles, which may or may not be the Church of St. Mary built by Justinian in the sixth century; architects differ about it. This question it seems to me very difficult to decide from the architecture of the building, because of the habit that Christians and Moslems both had of appropriating columns and capitals of ancient structures in their buildings; and because the Moslems at that time used both the round and the pointed arch.
This platform is beyond all comparison the most beautiful place in Jerusalem, and its fairy-like buildings, when seen from the hill opposite, give to the city its chief claim to Oriental picturesqueness.
The dome of the mosque Kubbet-es-Sukhrah is perhaps the most beautiful in the world; it seems to float in the air like a blown bubble; this effect is produced by a slight drawing in of the base. This contraction of the dome is not sufficient to give the spectator any feeling of insecurity, or to belittle this architectural marvel to the likeness of a big toy; the builder hit the exact mean between massiveness and expanding lightness. The mosque is octagonal in form, and although its just proportions make it appear small, it is a hundred and fifty feet in diameter; outside and in, it is a blaze of color in brilliant marbles, fine mosaics, stained glass, and beautiful Saracenic tiles. The lower part of the exterior wall is covered with colored marbles in intricate patterns; above are pointed windows with stained glass; and the spaces between the windows are covered by glazed tiles, with arabesque designs and very rich in color. In the interior, which has all the soft warmth and richness of Persian needlework, are two corridors, with rows of columns and pillars; within the inner row is the Sacred Rock.
This rock, which is the most remarkable stone in the world, if half we hear of it be true, and which by a singular fortune is sacred to three religions, is an irregular bowlder, standing some five feet above the pavement, and is something like sixty feet long. In places it has been chiselled, steps are cut on one side, and various niches are hewn in it; a round hole pierces it from top to bottom. The rock is limestone, a little colored with iron, and beautiful in spots where it has been polished. One would think that by this time it ought to be worn smooth all over.
If we may believe the Moslems and doubt our own senses, this rock is suspended in the air, having no support on any side. It was to this rock that Mohammed made his midnight journey on El Burak; it was from here that he ascended into Paradise, an excursion that occupied him altogether only forty minutes. It is, I am inclined to think, the miraculous suspension of this stone that is the basis of the Christian fable of the suspension of Mohammed's coffin,—a miracle unknown to all Moslems of whom I have inquired concerning it.
“Abd-el-Atti,” I said, “does this rock rest on nothing?”
“So I have hunderstood; thim say so.”
“But do you believe it?”
“When I read him, I believe; when I come and see him, I can't help what I see.”
At the south end of the rock we descended a flight of steps and stood under the rock in what is called the Noble Cave, a small room about six feet high, plastered and whitewashed. This is supposed to be the sink into which the blood of the Jewish sacrifices drained. The plaster and whitewash hide the original rock, and give the Moslems the opportunity to assert that there is no rock foundation under the big stone.
“But,” we said to Abd-el-Atti, “if this rock hangs in the air, why cannot we see all around it? Why these plaster walls that seem to support it?”
“So him used to be. This done so, I hear, on account of de women. Thim come here, see this rock, thim berry much frightened. Der little shild, what you call it, get born in de world before him wanted. So thim make this wall under it.”
There are four altars in this cave, one of them dedicated to David; here the Moslem prophets, Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus, used to pray. In the rock is a round indentation made by Mohammed's head when he first attempted to rise to heaven; near it is the hole through which he rose. On the upper southeast corner of the rock is the print of the prophet's foot, and close to it the print of the hand of the angel Michael, who held the rock down from following Mohammed into the skies.
In the mosque above, Abd-el-Atti led us, with much solemnity, to a small stone set in the pavement near the north entrance. It was perforated with holes, in some of which were brass nails.
“How many holes you make 'em there?”
“Thirteen.”
“How many got nails?”
“Four.”
“Not so many. Only three and a half nails. Used to be thirteen nails. Now only three and a half. When these gone, then the world come to an end. I t'ink it not berry long.”
“I should think the Moslems would watch this stone very carefully.”
“What difference? You not t'ink it come when de time come?”
We noticed some pieces of money on the stone, and asked why that was.
“Whoever he lay backsheesh on this stone, he certain to go into Paradise, and be took by our prophet in his bosom.”
We wandered for some time about the green esplanade, dotted with cypress-trees, and admired the little domes: the Dome of the Spirits, the dome that marks the spot where David sat in judgment, etc.; some of them cover cisterns and reservoirs in the rock, as old as the foundations of the Temple.
In the corridor of the Mosque of Aksa are two columns standing close together, and like those at the Mosque of Omar, in Cairo, they are a test of character; it is said that whoever can squeeze between them is certain of Paradise, and must, of course, be a good Moslem. I suppose that when this test was established the Moslems were all lean. A black stone is set in the wall of the porch; whoever can walk, with closed eyes, across the porch pavement and put his finger on this stone may be sure of entering Paradise. According to this criterion, the writer of this is one of the elect of the Mohammedan Paradise and his dragoman is shut out. We were shown in this mosque the print of Christ's foot in a stone; and it is said that with faith one can feel in it, as he can in that of Mohammed's in the rock, the real flesh. Opening from this mosque is the small Mosque of Omar, on the spot where that zealous khalif prayed.
The massive pillared substructions under Aksa are supposed by Moslems to be of Solomon's time. That wise monarch had dealings with the invisible, and no doubt controlled the genii, who went and came and built and delved at his bidding. Abd-el-Atti, with haste and an air of mystery, drew me along under the arches to the window in the south end, and showed me the opening of a passage under the wall, now half choked up with stones. This is the beginning of a subterranean passage made by the prophet Solomon, that extends all the way to Hebron, and has an issue in the mosque over the tomb of Abraham. This fact is known only to Moslems, and to very few of them, and is considered one of the great secrets. Before I was admitted to share it, I am glad that I passed between the two columns, and touched, with my eyes shut, the black stone.
In the southeast corner of the Harem is a little building called the Mosque of Jesus. We passed through it, and descended the stairway into what is called Solomon's Stables, being shown on our way a stone trough which is said to be the cradle of the infant Jesus. These so-called stables are subterranean vaults, built, no doubt, to sustain the south end of the Temple platform. We saw fifteen rows of massive square pillars of unequal sizes and at unequal distances apart (as if intended for supports that would not be seen), and some forty feet high, connected by round arches. We were glad to reascend from this wet and unpleasant cavern to the sunshine and the greensward.
I forgot to mention the Well of the Leaf, near the entrance, in the Mosque of Aksa, and the pretty Moslem legend that gave it a name, which Abd-el-Atti relates, though not in the words of the hand-book:—
“This well berry old; call him Well of the Leaf; water same as Pool of Solomon, healthy water; I like him very much. Not so deep as Bir el-Arwâh; that small well, you see it under the rock; they say it goes down into Gehenna.”
“Why is this called the Well of the Leaf?”
“Once, time of Suleiman [it was Omar], a friend of our prophet come here to pray, and when he draw water to wash he drop the bucket in the bottom of the well. No way to get it up, but he must go down. When he was on the bottom, there he much surprised by a door open in the ground, and him berry cur'ous to see what it is. Nobody there, so he look in, and then walk through berry fast, and look over him shoulder to the bucket left in the well. The place where he was come was the most beautiful garden ever was, and he walk long time and find no end, always more garden, so cool, and water run in little streams, and sweet smell of roses and jasmine, and little birds that sing, and big trees and dates and oranges and palms, more kind, I t'ink, than you see in the garden of his vice-royal. When the man have been long time in the garden he begin to have fright, and pick a green leaf off a tree, and run back and come up to his friends. He show 'em the green leaf, but nobody have believe what he say. Then they tell him story to the kadi, and the kadi send men to see the garden in the bottom of the well. They not find any, not find any door. Then the kadi he make him a letter to the Sultan—berry wise man—and he say (so I read it in our history), 'Our prophet say, One of my friends shall walk in Paradise while he is alive. If this is come true, you shall see the leaf, if it still keep green.' Then the kadi make examine of the leaf, and find him green. So it is believe the man has been in Paradise.”
“And do you believe it?”
“I cannot say edzacly where him been. Where you t'ink he done got that leaf?”
Along the east wall of the Harem there are no remains of the long colonnade called Solomon's Porch, not a column of that resplendent marble pavilion which caught the first rays of the sun over the mountains of Moab, and which, with the shining temple towering behind it, must have presented a more magnificent appearance than Babylon, and have rivalled the architectural glories of Baalbek. The only thing in this wail worthy of note now is the Golden Gate, an entrance no longer used. We descended into its archways, and found some fine columns with composite capitals, and other florid stone-work of a rather tasteless and debased Roman style.
We climbed the wall by means of the steps, a series of which are placed at intervals, and sat a long time looking upon a landscape, every foot of which is historical. Merely to look upon it is to recall a great portion of the Jewish history and the momentous events in the brief life of the Saviour, which, brief as it was, sufficed to newly create the earth. There is the Mount of Olives, with its commemorative chapels, heaps of stone, and scattered trees; there is the ancient foot-path up which David fled as a fugitive by night from the conspiracy of Absalom, what time Shimei, the relative of Saul, stoned him and cursed him; and down that Way of Triumph, the old road sweeping round its base, came the procession of the Son of David, in whose path the multitude cast their garments and branches of trees, and cried, “Hosanna in the highest.” There on those hills, Mount Scopus and Olivet, were once encamped the Assyrians, and again the Persians; there shone the eagles of Rome, borne by her conquering legions; and there, in turn, Crusaders and Saracens pitched their tents. How many times has the air been darkened with missiles hurled thence upon this shining prize, and how many armies have closed in about this spot and swarmed to its destruction! There the Valley of Jehoshaphat curves down until it is merged in the Valley of the Brook Kidron. There, at the junction of the roads that run over and around Olivet, is a clump of trees surrounded by a white wall; that is the Garden of Gethsemane. Near it is the tomb of Mary. Farther down you see the tomb of Absalom, the tomb of St. James, the monolith pyramid-tipped tomb of Zacharias (none of them apparently as old as they claim to be), and the remains of a little temple, the model of which came from the banks of the Nile, that Solomon built for his Egyptian wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, wherein they worshipped the gods of her country. It is tradition also that near here were some of the temples he built for others of his strange wives: a temple to Chemosh, the Moabite god, and the image of Moloch, the devourer of children. Solomon was wiser than all men, wiser than Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; his friend Hiram of Tyre used to send riddles to him which no one in the world but Solomon could guess; but his wisdom failed him with the other sex, and there probably never was another Oriental court so completely ruled and ruined by women as his.
This valley below us is perhaps the most melancholy on earth: nowhere else is death so visibly master of the scene; nature is worn out, man tired out; a gray despair has settled down upon the landscape. Down there is the village of Siloam, a village of huts and holes in the rocks, opposite the cave of that name. If it were the abode of wolves it would have a better character than it has now. There is the grim cast of sin and exhaustion upon the scene. I do not know exactly how much of this is owing to the Jewish burying-ground, which occupies so much of the opposite hill. The slope is thickly shingled with gray stones, that lie in a sort of regularity which suggests their purpose. You fall to computing how many Jews there may be in that hill, layer upon layer; for the most part they are dissolved away into the earth, but you think that if they were to put on their mortal bodies and come forth, the valley itself would be filled with them almost to the height of the wall. Out of these gates, giving upon this valley of death, six hundred thousand bodies of those who had starved were thrown during the siege, and long before Titus stormed the city. I do not wonder that the Moslems think of this frightful vale as Gehenna itself.
From an orifice in the battlemented wall where we sat projects a round column, mounted there like a cannon, and perhaps intended to deceive an enemy into the belief that the wall is fortified. It is astride this column, overhanging this dreadful valley, that Mohammed will sit at the last, the judgment day. A line finer than a hair and sharper than a razor will reach from it to the tower on the Mount of Olives, stretching over the valley of the dead. This is the line Es-Serat. Mohammed will superintend the passage over it. For in that day all who ever lived, risen to judgment, must walk this razor-line; the good will cross in safety; the bad will fall into hell, that is, into Gehenna, this blasted gulf and side-hill below, thickly sown with departed Jews. It is in view of this perilous passage that the Moslem every day, during the ablution of his feet, prays: “O, make my feet not to slip on Es-Serat, on that day when feet shall slip.”
WHEREVER we come upon traces of the Knights of St. John, there a door opens for us into romance; the very name suggests valor and courtesy and charity. Every town in the East that is so fortunate as to have any memorials of them, whatever its other historic associations, obtains an additional and special fame from its connection with this heroic order. The city of Acre recalls the memory of their useless prowess in the last struggle of the Christians to retain a foothold in Palestine; the name of the Knights of Rhodes brings before every traveller, who has seen it, the picturesque city in which the armorial insignia of this order have for him a more living interest than any antiquities of the Grecian Rose; the island fortress at the gate of the Levant owes all the interest we feel in it to the Knights of Malta; and even the city of David and of the Messiah has an added lustre as the birthplace of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, they are the chief figures who in that whirlwind of war contested the possession of the Levant with the Saracens and the Turks. In the forefront of every battle was seen their burnished mail, in the gloomy rear of every retreat were heard their voices of constancy and of courage; wherever there were crowns to be cracked, or wounds to be bound up, or broken hearts to be ministered to, there were the Knights of St. John, soldiers, priests, servants, laying aside the gown for the coat of mail if need be, or exchanging the cuirass for the white cross on the breast. Originally a charitable order, dwelling in the Hospital of St. John to minister to the pilgrims to Jerusalem, and composed of young soldiers of Godfrey, who took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they resumed their arms upon the pressure of infidel hostility, and subsequently divided the order into three classes: soldiers, priests, and servants. They speedily acquired great power and wealth; their palaces, their fortifications, their churches, are even in their ruins the admiration and wonder of our age. The purity of the order: was in time somewhat sullied by luxury, but their valor never suffered the slightest eclipse; whether the field they contested was lost or won, their bravery always got new honor from it.
Nearly opposite the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the green field of Muristan, the site of the palace, church, and hospital of the Knights of St. John. The field was, on an average, twenty-five feet above the surrounding streets, and a portion of it was known to rest upon vaults. This plot of ground was given to the Prussian government, and its agents have been making excavations there; these were going on at the time of our visit. The disclosures are of great architectural and historical interest. The entrance through a peculiar Gothic gateway leads into a court. Here the first excavations were made several years ago, and disclosed some splendid remains: the apse of the costly church, cloisters, fine windows and arches of the best Gothic style. Beyond, the diggings have brought to light some of the features of the palace and hospital; an excavation of twenty-five feet reaches down to the arches of the substructure, which rest upon pillars from forty to fifty feet high. This gives us some notion of the magnificent group of buildings that once occupied this square, and also of the industry of nature as an entomber, since some four centuries have sufficed her to bury these ruins so far beneath the soil, that peasants ploughed over the palaces of the knights without a suspicion of what lay beneath.
In one corner of this field stands a slender minaret, marking the spot where the great Omar once said his prayers; four centuries after this, Saladin is said to have made his military headquarters in the then deserted palace of the Knights of St. John. There is no spot in Jerusalem where one touches more springs of romance than in this field of Muristan.
Perhaps the most interesting and doleful walk one can take near Jerusalem is that into the Valley of Kidron and through Aceldama, round to the Jaffa Gate, traversing “the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes,” in the cheerful words of Jeremiah.
We picked our way through the filthy streets and on the slippery cobble-stones,—over which it seems dangerous to ride and is nearly impossible to walk,—out through St. Stephen's Gate. Near the gate, inside, we turned into an alley and climbed a heap of rubbish to see a pool, which the guide insisted upon calling Bethesda, although it is Birket Israil. Having seen many of these pools, I did not expect much, but I was still disappointed. We saw merely a hole in the ground, which is void of all appearance of ever having been even damp. The fact is, we have come to Jerusalem too late; we ought to have been here about two thousand years ago.
The slope of the hill outside the gate is covered with the turbaned tombs of Moslems; we passed under the walls and through this cemetery into the deep valley below, crossing the bed of the brook near the tombs of Absalom, Jehoshaphat, St. James, and Zacharias. These all seem to be of Roman construction; but that called Absalom's is so firmly believed to be his that for centuries every Jew who has passed it has cast a stone at it, and these pebbles of hate partially cover it. We also added to the heap, but I do not know why, for it is nearly impossible to hate any one who has been dead so long.
The most interesting phenomenon in the valley is the Fountain of the Virgin, or the Fountain of Accused Women, as it used to be called. The Moslem tradition is that it was a test of the unfaithfulness of women; those who drank of it and were guilty, died; those who were innocent received no harm. The Virgin Mary herself, being accused, accepted this test, drank of the water, and proved her chastity. Since then the fountain has borne her name. The fountain, or well, is in the side-hill, under the rocks of Ophel, and the water springs up in an artificial cave. We descended some sixteen steps to a long chamber, arched with ancient masonry; we passed through that and descended fourteen steps more into a grotto, where we saw the water flowing in and escaping by a subterranean passage. About this fountain were lounging groups of Moslem idlers, mostly women and children. Not far off a Moslem was saying his prayers, prostrating himself before a prayer-niche. We had difficulty in making our way down the steps, so encumbered were they with women. Several of them sat upon the lowest steps in the damp cavern, gossiping, filling their water-skins, or paddling about with naked feet.
The well, like many others in Syria, is intermittent and irregular in its rising and falling; sometimes it is dry, and then suddenly it bubbles up and is full again. Some scholars think this is the Pool Bethesda of the New Testament, others think that Bethesda was Siloam, which is below this well and fed by it, and would exhibit the same irregular rising and falling. This intermittent character St. John attributed to an angel who came down and troubled the water; the Moslems, with the same superstition, say that it is caused by a dragon, who sleeps therein and checks the stream when he wakes.
On our way to the Pool of Siloam, we passed the village of Si-loam, which is inhabited by about a thousand Moslems,—a nest of stone huts and caves clinging to the side-hill, and exactly the gray color of its stones. The occupation of the inhabitants appears to be begging, and hunting for old copper coins, mites, and other pieces of Jewish money. These relics they pressed upon us with the utmost urgency. It was easier to satisfy the beggars than the traders, who sallied out upon us like hungry wolves from their caves. There is a great choice of disagreeable places in the East, but I cannot now think of any that I should not prefer as a residence to Siloam.
The Pool of Siloam, magnified in my infant mind as “Siloam's shady rill,” is an unattractive sink-hole of dirty water, surrounded by modern masonry. The valley here is very stony. Just below we came to Solomon's Garden, an arid spot, with patches of stonewalls, struggling to be a vegetable-garden, and somewhat green with lettuce and Jerusalem artichokes. I have no doubt it was quite another thing when Solomon and some of his wives used to walk here in the cool of the day, and even when Shallum, the son of Colhozeh, set up “the wall of the Pool of Siloah by the king's garden.”
We continued on, down to Joab's Well, passing on the way Isaiah's Tree, a decrepit sycamore propped up by a stone pillar, where that prophet was sawn asunder. There is no end to the cheerful associations of the valley. The Well of Joab, a hundred and twenty-five feet deep, and walled and arched with fine masonry, has a great appearance of antiquity. We plucked maidenhair from its crevices, and read the Old Testament references. Near it is a square pool fed by its water. Some little distance below this, the waters of all these wells, pools, drains, sinks, or whatever they are, reappear bursting up through a basin of sand and pebbles, as clear as crystal, and run brawling off down the valley under a grove of large olive-trees,—a scene rural and inviting.
I suppose it would be possible to trace the whole system of underground water ways and cisterns, from Solomon's Pool, which send? its water into town by an aqueduct near the Jaffa Gate, to Hezekiah's Pool, to the cisterns under the Harem, and so out to the Virgin's Well, the Pool of Siloam, and the final gush of sweet water below. This valley drains, probably artificially as well as naturally, the whole city, for no sewers exist in the latter.
We turned back from this sparkling brook, which speedily sinks into the ground again, absorbed by the thirsty part of the valley called Tophet, and went up the Valley of Hinnom, passing under the dark and frowning ledges of Aceldama, honey-combed with tombs. In this “field of blood” a grim stone structure forms the front of a natural cave, which is the charnel-house where the dead were cast pell-mell, in the belief that the salts in the earth would speedily consume them. The path we travel is rugged, steep, and incredibly stony. The whole of this region is inexpressibly desolate, worn-out, pale, uncanny. The height above this rocky terrace, stuffed with the dead, is the Hill of Evil Counsel, where the Jews took counsel against Jesus; and to add the last touch of an harmonious picture, just above this Potter's Field stands the accursed tree upon which Judas hanged himself, raising its gaunt branches against the twilight sky, a very gallows-tree to the imagination. It has borne no fruit since Iscariot. Towards dusk, sometimes, as you stand on the wall by Zion Gate, you almost fancy you can see him dangling there. It is of no use to tell me that the seed that raised this tree could not have sprouted till a thousand years after Judas was crumbled into dust; one must have faith in something.
This savage gorge, for the Valley of Hinnom is little more than that in its narrowest part, has few associations that are not horrible. Here Solomon set up the images (“the groves,” or the graven images), and the temples for the lascivious rites of Ashta-roth or the human sacrifices to Moloch. Here the Jews, the kings and successors of Solomon, with a few exceptions, and save an occasional spasmodic sacrifice to Jehovah when calamity made them fear him, practised all the abominations of idolatry in use in that age. The Jews had always been more or less addicted to the worship of the god of Ammon, but Solomon first formally established it in Hinnom. Jeremiah writes of it historically, “They have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire.” This Moloch was as ingenious a piece of cruelty as ever tried the faith of heretics in later times, and, since it was purely a means of human sacrifice, and not a means of grace (as Inquisitorial tortures were supposed to be), its use is conclusive proof of the savage barbarity of the people who delighted in it. Moloch was the monstrous brass image of a man with the head of an ox. It was hollow, and the interior contained a furnace by which the statue was made red-hot. Children—the offerings to the god—were then placed in its glowing arms, and drums were beaten to drown their cries. It is painful to recall these things, but the traveller should always endeavor to obtain the historical flavor of the place he visits.
Continuing our walks among the antiquities of Jerusalem, we went out of the Damascus Gate, a noble battlemented structure, through which runs the great northern highway to Samaria and Damascus. The road, however, is a mere path over ledges and through loose stones, fit only for donkeys. If Rehoboam went this way in his chariot to visit Jeroboam in Samaria, there must have existed then a better road, or else the king endured hard pounding for the sake of the dignity of his conveyance. As soon as we left the gate we encountered hills of stones and paths of the roughest description. There are several rock tombs on this side of the city, but we entered only one, that called by some the Tombs of the Kings, and by others, with more reason, the Tomb of Helena, a heathen convert to Judaism, who built this sepulchre for herself early in the first century. The tomb, excavated entirely in the solid rock, is a spacious affair, having a large court and ornamented vestibule and many chambers, extending far into the rock, and a singular network of narrow passages and recesses for the deposit of the dead. It had one device that is worthy of the ancient Egyptians. The entrance was closed by a heavy square stone, so hung that it would yield to pressure from without, but would swing to its place by its own weight, and fitted so closely that it could not be moved from the inside. If any thief entered the tomb and left this slab unsecured, he would be instantly caught in the trap and become a permanent occupant. Large as the tomb is, its execution is mean compared with the rock tombs of Egypt; but the exterior stone of the court, from its exposure in this damp and variable climate, appears older than Egyptian work which has been uncovered three times as long.
At the tomb we encountered a dozen students from the Latin convent, fine-looking fellows in long blue-black gowns, red caps, and red sashes. They sat upon the grass, on the brink of the excavation, stringing rosaries and singing student songs, with evident enjoyment of the hour's freedom from the school; they not only made a picturesque appearance, but they impressed us also as a Jerusalem group which was neither sinful nor dirty. Beyond this tomb we noticed a handsome modern dwelling-house; you see others on various eminences outside the city, and we noted them as the most encouraging sign of prosperity about Jerusalem.
We returned over the hill and by the city wall, passing the Cave of Jeremiah and the door in the wall that opens into the stone quarries of Solomon. These quarries underlie a considerable portion of the city, and furnished the stone for its ancient buildings. I will not impose upon you a description of them; for it would be unfair to send you into disagreeable places that I did not explore myself.
The so-called Grotto of Jeremiah is a natural cavern in the rocky hill, vast in extent, I think thirty feet high and a hundred feet long by seventy broad,—as big as a church. The tradition is that Jeremiah lived and lamented here. In front of the cave are cut stones and pieces of polished columns built into walls and seats; these fragments seem to indicate the former existence here of a Roman temple. The cave is occupied by an old dervish, who has a house in a rock near by, and uses the cavern as a cool retreat and a stable for his donkey. His rocky home is shared by his wife and family. He said that it was better to live alone, apart from the world and its snares. He, however, finds the reputation of Jeremiah profitable, selling admission to the cave at a franc a head, and, judging by the women and children about him, he seemed to have family enough not to be lonely.
The sojourner in Jerusalem who does not care for antiquities can always entertain himself by a study of the pilgrims who throng the city at this season. We hear more of the pilgrimage to Mecca than of that to Jerusalem; but I think the latter is the more remarkable phenomenon of our modern life; I believe it equals the former, which is usually overrated, in numbers, and it certainly equals it in zeal and surpasses it in the variety of nationalities represented. The pilgrims of the cross increase yearly; to supply their wants, to minister to their credulity, to traffic on their faith, is the great business of the Holy City. Few, I imagine, who are not in Palestine in the spring, have any idea of the extent of this vast yearly movement of Christian people upon the Holy Land, or of the simple zeal which characterizes it. If it were in any way obstructed or hindered, we should have a repetition of the Crusades, on a vaster scale and gathered from a broader area than the wildest pilgrimage of the holy war. The driblets of travel from America and from Western Europe are as nothing in the crowds thronging to Jerusalem from Ethiopia to Siberia, from the Baltic to the Ural Mountains. Already for a year before the Easter season have they been on foot, slowly pushing their way across great steppes, through snows and over rivers, crossing deserts and traversing unfriendly countries; the old, the infirm, women as well as men, their faces set towards Jerusalem. No common curiosity moves this mass, from Ethiopia, from Egypt, from Russia, from European Turkey, from Asia Minor, from the banks of the Tagus and the Araxes; it is a true pilgrimage of faith, the one event in a life of dull monotony and sordid cares, the one ecstasy of poetry in an existence of poverty and ignorance.
We spent a morning in the Russian Hospice, which occupies the hill to the northwest of the city. It is a fine pile of buildings, the most conspicuous of which, on account of its dome, is the church, a large edifice with a showy exterior, but of no great merit or interest. We were shown some holy pictures which are set in frames incrusted with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other precious gems, the offerings of rich devotees, and displaying their wealth rather than their taste.
The establishment has one building for the accommodation of rich pilgrims, and a larger one set apart for peasants. The hospice lodges, free of charge, all the Russian pilgrims. The exterior court was full of them. They were sunning themselves, but not inclined to lay aside their hot furs and heavy woollens. We passed into the interior, entering room after room occupied by the pilgrims, who regarded our intrusion with good-natured indifference, or frankly returned our curiosity. Some of the rooms were large, furnished with broad divans about the sides, which served for beds and lounging-places, and were occupied by both sexes. The women, rosy-cheeked, light-haired, broad, honest-looking creatures, were mending their clothes; the men were snoozing on the divans, flat on their backs, presenting to the spectator the bottoms of their monstrous shoes, which had soles eight inches broad; a side of leather would be needed for a pair. In these not very savory rooms they cook, eat, and sleep. Here stood their stoves; here hung their pilgrim knapsacks; here were their kits of shoemaker's tools, for mending their foot-gear, which they had tugged thousands of miles; here were household effects that made their march appear more like an emigration than a pilgrimage; here were the staring pictures of St. George and the Dragon, and of other saints, the beads and the other relics, which they had bought in Jerusalem.
Although all these pilgrims owed allegiance to the Czar, they represented a considerable variety of races. They came from Archangel, from Tobolsk, from the banks of the Ural, from Kurland; they had found their way along the Danube, the Dnieper, the Don. I spoke with a group of men and women who had walked over two thousand miles before they reached Odessa and took ship for Jaffa. There were among them Cossacks, wild and untidy, light-haired barbarians from the Caucasus, dark-skinned men and women from Moscow, representatives from the remotest provinces of great Russia; for the most part simple, rude, clumsy, honest boors. In an interior court we found men and women seated on the sunny flagging, busily occupied in arranging and packing the souvenirs of their visit. There was rosemary spread out to dry; there were little round cakes of blessed bread stamped with the image of the Saviour; there were branches of palm, crowns of thorns, and stalks of cane cut at the Jordan; there were tin cases of Jordan water; there were long strips of cotton cloth stamped in black with various insignia of death, to serve at home for coffin-covers; there were skull-caps in red, yellow, and white, also stamped with holy images, to be put on the heads of the dead. I could not but in mind follow these people to their distant homes, and think of the pride with which they would show these trophies of their pilgrimage; how the rude neighbors would handle with awe a stick cut on the banks of the Jordan, or eat with faith a bit of the holy bread. How sacred, in those homes of frost and snow, will not these mementos of a land of sun, of a land so sacred, become! I can see the wooden chest in the cabin where the rosemary will be treasured, keeping sweet, against the day of need, the caps and the shrouds.
These people will need to make a good many more pilgrimages, and perhaps to quit their morose land altogether, before they can fairly rank among the civilized of the earth. They were thickset, padded-legged, short-bodied, unintelligent. The faces of many of them were worn, as if storm-beaten, and some kept their eyes half closed, as if they were long used to face the sleet and blasts of winter; and I noticed that it gave their faces a very different expression from that produced by the habit the Egyptians have of drawing the eyelids close together on account of the glare of the sun.
We took donkeys one lovely morning, and rode from the Jaffa Gate around the walls on our way to the Mount of Olives. The Jerusalem donkey is a good enough donkey, but he won't go. He is ridden with a halter, and never so elegantly caparisoned as his more genteel brother in Cairo. In order to get him along at all, it needs one man to pull the halter and another to follow behind with a stick; the donkey then moves by inches,—if he is in the humor. The animal that I rode stopped at once, when he perceived that his driver was absent. No persuasions of mine, such as kicks and whacks of a heavy stick, could move him on; he would turn out of the road, put his head against the wall, and pretend to go to sleep. You would not suppose it possible for a beast to exhibit so much contempt for a man.
On the high ground outside the wall were pitched the tents of travellers, making a very pretty effect amid the olive-trees and the gray rocks. Now and then an Arab horseman came charging down the road, or a Turkish official cantered by; women, veiled, clad in white balloon robes that covered them from head to foot, flitted along in the sunshine, mere white appearances of women, to whom it was impossible to attribute any such errand as going to market; they seemed always to be going to or returning from the cemetery.
Our way lay down the rough path and the winding road to the bottom of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Leaving the Garden of Gethsemane on our right, we climbed up the rugged, stony, steep path to the summit of the hill. There are a few olive-trees on the way, enough to hinder the view where the stone-walls would permit us to see anything; importunate begging Moslems beset us; all along the route we encountered shabbiness and squalor. The rural sweetness and peace that we associate with this dear mount appear to have been worn away centuries ago. We did not expect too much, but we were not prepared for such a shabby show-place. If we could sweep away all the filthy habitations and hideous buildings on the hill, and leave it to nature, or, indeed, convert the surface into a well-ordered garden, the spot would be one of the most attractive in the world.
We hoped that when we reached the summit we should come into an open, green, and shady place, free from the disagreeable presence of human greed and all the artificiality that interposed itself between us and the sentiment of the place. But the traveller need not expect that in Palestine. Everything is staked out and made a show of. Arrived at the summit, we could see little or nothing; it is crowned with the dilapidated Chapel of the Ascension. We entered a dirty court, where the custodian and his family and his animals live, and from thence were admitted to the church. In the pavement is shown the footprint of our ascending Lord, although the Ascension was made at Bethany. We paid the custodian for permission to see this manufactured scene of the Ascension. The best point of view to be had here is the old tower of the deserted convent, or the narrow passage to it on the wall, or the top of the minaret near the church. There is no place on wall or tower where one can sit; there is no place anywhere here to sit down, and in peace and quiet enjoy the magnificent prospect, and meditate on the most momentous event in human history. We snatched the view in the midst of annoyances. The most minute features of it are known to every one who reads. The portion of it I did not seem to have been long familiar with is that to the east, comprising the Jordan valley, the mountains of Moab, and the Dead Sea.
Although this mount is consecrated by the frequent presence of Christ, who so often crossed it in going to and from Bethany, and retired here to meditate and to commune with his loved followers, everything that the traveller at present encounters on its summit is out of sympathy with his memory. We escaped from the beggars and the showmen, climbed some stone-walls, and in a rough field near the brow of the hill, in a position neither comfortable nor private, but the best that we found, read the chief events in the life of Christ connected with this mount, the triumphal entry, and the last scenes transacted on yonder hill. And we endeavored to make the divine man live again, who so often and so sorrowfully regarded the then shining city of Zion from this height.
To the south of the church and a little down the hill is the so-called site of the giving of the Lord's Prayer. I do not know on what authority it is thus named. A chapel is built to mark the spot, and a considerable space is enclosed before it, in which are other objects of interest, and these were shown to us by a pleasant-spoken lady, who is connected with the convent, and has faith equal to the demands of her position. We first entered a subterranean vaulted room, with twelve rough half-pillars on each side, called the room where the Apostles composed the creed. We then passed into the chapel. Upon the four walls of its arcade is written, in great characters, the Lord's Prayer in thirty-two languages; among them the “Canadian.”
In a little side chapel is the tomb of Aurelia de Bossa, Princesse de la Tour d'.uvergne, Duchesse de Bouillon, the lady whose munificence established this chapel and executed the prayer in so many tongues. Upon the side of the tomb this fact of her benevolence is announced, and the expectation is also expressed, in French, that “God will overwhelm her with blessing for ever and ever for her good deed.” Stretched upon the sarcophagus is a beautiful marble effigy of the princess; the figure is lovely, the face is sweet and seraphic, and it is a perfect likeness of her ladyship.
I do not speak at random. I happen to know that it is a perfect likeness, for a few minutes after I saw it, I met her in the corridor, in a semi-nunlike costume, with a heavy cross hanging by a long gold chain at her side. About her forehead was bound a barbarous frontlet composed of some two hundred gold coins, and ornaments not unlike those worn by the ladies of the ancient Egyptians. This incongruity of costume made me hesitate whether to recognize in this dazzling vision of womanhood a priestess of Astarte or of Christ. At the farther door, Aurelia de Bossa, Princesse de la Tour d'.uvergne, Duchesse de Bouillon, stopped and blew shrilly a silver whistle which hung at her girdle, to call her straying poodle, or to summon a servant. In the rear of the chapel this lady lives in a very pretty house, and near it she was building a convent for Carmelite nuns. I cannot but regard her as the most fortunate of her sex. She enjoys not only this life, but, at the same time, all the posthumous reputation that a lovely tomb and a record of her munificence engraved thereon can give. We sometimes hear of, but we seldom see, a person, in these degenerate days, living in this world as if already in the other.
We went on over the hill to Bethany; we had climbed up by the path on which David fled from Absalom, and we were to return by the road of the Triumphal Entry. All along the ridge we enjoyed a magnificent panorama: a blue piece of the Dead Sea, the Jordan plain extending far up towards Herraon with the green ribbon of the river winding through it, and the long, even range of the Moab hills, blue in the distance. The prospect was almost Swiss in its character, but it is a mass of bare hills, with scarcely a tree except in the immediate foreground, and so naked and desolate as to make the heart ache; it would be entirely desolate but for the deep blue of the sky and an atmosphere that bathes all the great sweep of peaks and plains in color.
Bethany is a squalid hamlet clinging to the rocky hillside, with only one redeeming feature about it,—the prospect. A few wretched one-story huts of stone, and a miserable handful of Moslems, occupy this favorite home and resting-place of our Lord. Close at hand, by the roadside, cut in the rock and reached by a steep descent of twenty-six steps, is the damp and doubtful tomb of Lazarus, down into which any one may go for half a franc paid to the Moslem guardian. The house of Mary and Martha is exhibited among the big rocks and fragments of walls; upon older foundations loose walls are laid, rudely and recently patched up with cut stones in fragments, and pieces of Roman columns. The house of Simon the leper, overlooking the whole, is a mere heap of ruins. It does not matter, however, that all these dwellings are modern; this is Bethany, and when we get away from its present wretchedness we remember only that we have seen the very place that Christ loved.
We returned along the highway of the Entry slowly, pausing to identify the points of that memorable progress, up to the crest where Jerusalem broke upon the sight of the Lord, and whence the procession, coming round the curve of the hill, would have the full view of the city. He who rides that way to-day has a grand prospect. One finds Jerusalem most poetic when seen from Olivet, and Olivet most lovely when seen from the distance of the city walls.
At the foot of the descent we turned and entered the enclosure of the Garden of Gethsemane. Three stone-wall enclosures here claim to be the real garden; one is owned by the Greeks, another by the Armenians, the third by the Latins. We chose the last, as it is the largest and pleasantest; perhaps the garden, which was certainly in this vicinity, once included them all. After some delay we were admitted by a small door in the wall, and taken charge of by a Latin monk, whose young and sweet face was not out of sympathy with the place. The garden contains a few aged olive-trees, and some small plots of earth, fenced about and secured by locked gates, in which flowers grow. The guardian gave us some falling roses, and did what he could to relieve the scene of its artificial appearance; around the wall, inside, are the twelve stations of the Passion, in the usual tawdry style.
But the birds sang sweetly in the garden, the flowers of spring were blooming, and, hemmed in by the high wall, we had some moments of solemn peace, broken only by the sound of a Moslem darabooka drum throbbing near at hand. Desecrated as this spot is, and made cheap by the petty creations of superstition, one cannot but feel the awful significance of the place, and the weight of history crowding upon him, where battles raged for a thousand years, and where the greatest victory of all was won when Christ commanded Peter to put up his sword. Near here Titus formed his columns which stormed the walls and captured the heroic city after its houses, and all this valley itself, were filled with Jewish dead; but all this is as nothing to the event of that awful night when the servants of the high-priest led away the unresisting Lord.