I write these words on the housetop of a bishop’s residence on the summit of Mount Zion and in the centre of the Holy City. My typewriter stands within thirty feet of the great square Tower of David the base of which was undoubtedly built before the time of Christ. At my left, surrounded by the yellow stone walls of the houses, is the dark green pool Hezekiah made to supply Jerusalem with water in case of siege, and beyond it, out of the jumble of buildings, shines the huge bronze dome erected over the spot where Christ was crucified. Not half a mile away on a plateau covering thirty-five acres is a big octagonal tower with a bulbous bronze dome. That is the Mosque of Omar which rises on the very site of Solomon’s temple. At its left is the church built over the Roman mosaic floor of the house of Pontius Pilate.

Jerusalem lies in a nest of mountains. It is built on an irregular plateau with valleys all about it and steep hills rising straight up from these to the city and to the higher hills on the opposite sides. The site of the city runs over height and hollow, and was probably chosen for the capital of Judea on account of the great gorges about it, by which it could be the more easily defended against attack.

Around the edge of the plateau is a wall about thirty feet high enclosing the Jerusalem of to-day. The wall runs along the rims of the valleys, climbing up hill and down, making its way around the Holy City until it comes again to the Jaffa Gate which is just below me.

The Holy City now covers twice as much space as it did when I was first here a good many years ago. It has doubled in size and has some sixty thousand people. At that time most of the inhabitants were crowded together inside the walls. They are crowded still, but to the north, south, and west large Jewish settlements have sprung up, and among and beyond them have been built great hospices, hospitals, convents, cathedrals, and hotels, so that the population outside the walls almost equals that within. The new buildings have extended to the Mount of Olives, and are working their way toward the east along the road to Jaffa.

Seated here upon the site of King David’s palace, I see the whole city spread out beneath me. What a curious place it is! In my tours of the world I have found no spot so full of strange sights and picturesque characters, so different in most particulars from every other town of the world. Aside from its wonderfully interesting historical associations, Jerusalem has a character of its own. It looks more like a great honeycomb than a city. The houses are piled one above the other in all sorts of irregularities. If you would take a half-section of land and scatter over it gigantic packing boxes just as you find them in a down-town alley, you might get some idea of Jerusalem as it looks to me from Mount Zion. These houses have no chimneys and their stone roofs are almost flat. Many of the roofs have in the centre little domes that remind me of beehives. If the town were on a level these domes would look like the haycocks in a meadow at harvest time.

The wood used in the construction of Jerusalem would not last an American family a winter. Yellow limestone is the sole building material. The roofs, walls, and floors of these thousands of houses are of this cold, yellowish-white rock. Even in the Bishop’s mansion, which is one of the finest in the city, I step out of my bed on to a stone floor and walk to my breakfast down stone steps and through stone halls.

Now look at the streets with me. They are narrow and winding and some are built over, so that going through them is like passing through tunnels or subterranean caves.

Indeed, Jerusalem is a city of cave dwellers. Many of the stores and houses are little more than holes in the rocks. I visited a native inn yesterday right in the heart of the town. It consisted of a series of vaulted chambers which looked much like caves. In one cave were four donkeys, two camels, and a party of Bedouins. In another were a dozen Jews from Samaria, and in a third were some men and camels who had just come from beyond the Jordan. The only sign of modern times was an English lamp burning American kerosene oil. Through my guide I chatted with the keeper of the stable, or inn, as it was called, and he told me that his charge for feeding and washing a donkey or a horse was five cents a day.

Jerusalem of to-day is founded upon the remains of the Jerusalems of the past, and the excavations have unearthed houses and temples far below the streets of the present. The original floor and court of the house in which Pontius Pilate examined the Christ is much lower than the level of the present city, and mosaics and marbles, including carvings of various kinds and Greek and Roman capitals and columns, are frequently uncovered in digging the foundations for new buildings.

There are many caves outside of Jerusalem and people live in some of them. The tombs of the kings on the edge of the city have been cut out of the solid rock, and some of them are so large that a city house could be dropped into one and not touch the walls. An excavation of the Pool of Bethesda has shown that it is eighty feet deep and covers nearly an acre. Right under the temple platform are enormous caverns known as Solomon’s Stables, and near by there is a space honeycombed with vast tanks which will hold millions of gallons of water.

All of the water for the Holy City comes down in rain, and the trees and gardens of the town can be numbered on your fingers. The surrounding hills are almost as barren as some of the rocky slopes of New England, and the only foliage visible is the dark silvery green of the orchards on the Mount of Olives and along the hills between Jaffa and Bethlehem. The only grass to be seen is an acre or so of common inside the walls of the temple plateau, and here and there a house top, which by age has gathered a coating of dirt from the dust of the city, and on which the green grass has sprouted. Occasionally I see ruined arches, too dangerous to be inhabited by the bees of this human hive, on which grow moss and grass. There is one green bushy tree at the base of Mount Calvary, and a solitary palm beside the business street named after King David looks out over the city. Jerusalem is not an attractive looking town, and the glare from its cream-white buildings lying under the rays of this tropical sun makes my eyes sore.

Jerusalem is the Mecca of millions of souls. It is to hundreds of millions the holiest spot on the face of the earth. Everywhere buildings have gone up both to accommodate pilgrims and to mark the most sacred places. On the very top of the Mount of Olives a great Russian church lifts its swelling domes toward heaven. In the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ spent that night of “agony and bloody sweat” before His crucifixion, there is a resting place for pilgrims. The Roman Catholics have fifteen hundred brothers and sisters in their monasteries and convents, while the old Armenian church can accommodate a hundred and eighty monks and two thousand pilgrims. There are Greek Christians here by the thousands and Egyptian Copts by the hundreds. There are Abyssinian priests with faces as black as your hat. Indeed, among the worshippers who gather around the Holy Sepulchre you may see every costume and hear every language. Furthermore, the Jews are fast coming back into Palestine, and Jerusalem is again becoming a city of the Children of Israel.

But let us come down from our housetop and take a walk through the crowd. We are at the Jaffa Gate, which leads to the railroad station a half mile from the walls. It is also at the end of the roads to Bethlehem, Hebron, and Jaffa, and is the main business gate of the city. It is always thronged, and the people who go in and out come from all parts of the world. They are of all colours—blacks, browns, yellows, and whites—and number a dozen different nationalities from the near-by parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Here comes a donkey led by a fat, bare-footed Turk in a yellow gown and red turban. His beast is loaded with wood which he is bringing into the city for sale. The wood is the roots of olive trees and his donkey load is worth twenty-five cents. He is stopped by the customs officer at the gate and pays a tax of three cents. Behind him comes a porter with a bag half as big as a hogshead fastened to the small of his back. Inside the bag is a basket filled with the flat cakes which form the bread of the city.

Now turn to the right and look at that Syrian Bedouin riding a gray Arabian pony. There is a gun on his back and he wears a black-and-white woollen blanket. His head is covered with a great yellow handkerchief bound about the crown with two strands of hair cord the size of your finger. Sitting as straight as a ramrod, he looks with fierce black eyes at the crowd about him. Behind him come three camels laden with the oranges of Jaffa. Each beast has a cartload of the great yellow balls in the two crates which hang over his back, and he grumbles and whines as his barefooted driver drags him along by a string tied to his nose.

As we look we see the figures of the Old and New Testaments crowding around us. There are peasants who might have been among the disciples, and gray-bearded men who would pass for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We see boys with coats of many colours, which remind us of Joseph, and shepherds driving sheep into market who probably came from the very plains near Bethlehem where similar shepherds were watching their flocks when the heavenly host appeared.

Let us take a seat with those Syrians on the porch of the coffee house outside the gate and make further sketches of those who go in. Here come two figures dressed all in white. They look like walking bed ticks bound around at the middle, or, better, like the ghosts of a sheet and pillow case party. They are Mohammedan women, and it is against their ironclad custom for them to go out unveiled. They have wrapped their bodies in sheets the folds of which they hold close together over their faces, leaving only a crack by which they may see to pick their way through the crowd.

Behind them is a girl with bare face. She wears a round cap which extends a foot above her rosy brown forehead, and she has a headdress of white cotton. Her gown is a gray chemise which falls almost to her feet, and which has a wide hem of red and blue silk embroidery. She is a Bethlehem maiden wearing the shawl made with her own hands for her wedding. Such shawls are much prized by tourists, and the best of them bring twenty-five dollars apiece in the stores.

But here are some women in long coats and high boots. They have calico gowns under their coats which reach half way down the calf. Their heads are covered with handkerchiefs, and their faces are bronzed by the sun. Each has a staff in her hand and a bag on her back, and is marching along at the rate of four miles an hour. They are dusty and dirty, and look weary and worn. Those are peasant women, pilgrims from Russia, who are making their way from shrine to shrine. They have tramped this morning out to Bethlehem, and to-morrow will probably be on their way to the Jordan.

But let us leave here and take a walk about the walls of the Holy City.