IS- GASTON-LEARY 
 
Division X)SlO? 
 
 Section *3 * Lf 38 
 
 
 
 
i 
 
THE REAL 
 PALESTINE 
 OF TO-DAY 
 

 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/realpalestineoftOOIear 
 
Looking eastward over Jerusalem to the Russian view-tower on the Mount of Olives 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY 
 McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 
 
 First Edition 
 Published October, 1911 
 
TO THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME, 
 WHOSE LOYAL AFFECTION NEVER 
 WAVERED DURING ALL THE WAN¬ 
 DER YEARS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I N writing this little book, I have tried to do just 
 one thing—to draw in rapid outline a picture 
 of Palestine, as it appears to those who look long 
 enough to appreciate something of the true values 
 of a land which differs in so many respects from 
 our own that a mere hurried glance is apt to 
 see only those things which are strange and 
 incongruous. 
 
 I have, therefore, kept out-of-doors as much as 
 possible; for the most solemn and lasting memory 
 of the Holy Land is not the incoherent jumble of 
 doubtful shrines, but the beauty of the everlasting 
 
 hills. 
 
 And because, in painting a landscape, each detail 
 must have some definite position and coloring, it 
 has seemed better not to go into the discussion of 
 conflicting opinions, but, in every instance, without 
 qualification or defense, to fit some one conclusion 
 into its proper place in the picture. Ordinarily 
 this has been the most commonly accepted belief. 
 In a few cases I personally hold to a different 
 opinion from that which is here quoted; but to 
 have justified my own position would have neces¬ 
 sitated close argument and cumbersome footnotes, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 and would have added nothing to the clearness or 
 essential truthfulness of the picture. 
 
 Like the old Hebrew prophets and poets, I have 
 not hesitated to go beyond the strict limits of the 
 Land of Israel, whenever I could draw a better illus¬ 
 tration for my theme from the land of Hermon 
 and Lebanon. 
 
 The plans and outline maps were all made espe¬ 
 cially for this work, and it is hoped that they will aid 
 to a clearer understanding of the text. 
 
 It may be of interest to add that the last chapter 
 was the first in point of composition, and was 
 really written under the circumstances there 
 described. 
 
 Six of the chapters were recently published in 
 serial form in Travel. Acknowledgments are also 
 due to The World To-day , Scribner's Magazine , 
 The Christian Endeavor World , Forward , and The 
 Christian Herald for permission to include material 
 which first appeared in these periodicals. 
 
 Lewis Gaston Leary 
 
 Pelham Manor, N. Y., October 1, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. TINY PALESTINE . 1 
 
 II. THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD. 16 
 
 III. RACES AND RELIGIONS. 30 
 
 IV. THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD. . 39 
 
 V. THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH. 51 
 
 VI. THE DOME OF THE ROCK. 65 
 
 VII. THE WALL OF TEARS. 74 
 
 VIII. THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM . 79 
 
 IX. THE HOLY FIRE. 91 
 
 X. VALLEYS AND TOMBS . 100 
 
 XI. THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 115 
 
 XII. THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN. 122 
 
 XIII. THE SEA OF DEATH. 132 
 
 XIV. THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE. 142 
 
 XV. THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES. 157 
 
 XVI. GREETINGS BY THE WAY. 166 
 
 XVII. THE RING OF THE GENTILES. 173 
 
 XVIII. THE LAKE OF GOd’s DELIGHT . . . .... 184 
 
 XIX. THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS. 188 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE . 204 
 
 THE BEST BOOKS ON PALESTINE. 205 
 
 INDEX . 207 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 A Turkish Local Passport . xiv 
 
 The Plain of Dothan. 1 
 
 J AFFA FROM THE SeA . 4 
 
 The Jaffa Gate . 5 
 
 Lepers of Jerusalem . 16 
 
 The Southern End of Jerusalem . IT 
 
 Solomon’s Pools . 24 
 
 An Ancient Well of Beer-sheba. 25 
 
 Kadesh-barnea . 28 
 
 Mount Sinai . 29 
 
 A Bedouin Tent. 36 
 
 A Bethlehem Family . 37 
 
 Bethlehem . 48 
 
 Choir of the Church of the Nativity. 49 
 
 Hebron . 54 
 
 Stairway Leading to the Hebron Ilaram . 55 
 
 Interior of the Mosque of Machpelah . 62 
 
 Moslems of Palestine . 63 
 
 The Mosque of Omar . 66 
 
 The Koran. 67 
 
 Interior of the Mosque of Omar. 72 
 
 The Sacred Rock. 73 
 
 Jews of Jerusalem. 76 
 
 The Wailing Place . 77 
 
 The Church of the LIoly Sepulchre . 82 
 
 Roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre . 83 
 
 The Chapel of the Sepulchre . 98 
 
 Crowds Going to the Holy Fire . 99 
 
 (xi) 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 • * 
 
 XU 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Gordon’s Calvary . 102 
 
 The Valley of Kidron . 103 
 
 The Pools of Siloam . 110 
 
 The Tomb of Absalom . Ill 
 
 The Mount of Olives. 118 
 
 Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives . 119 
 
 Source of the Jordan at Tell el-Kadi . 126 
 
 The Marshes of the Htileh, . 127 
 
 Valley of the Jordan near Jericho . 130 
 
 The Jordan River ... 131 
 
 Inhabitants of Modern Jericho . 136 
 
 Russian Pilgrims at the Jordan . 137 
 
 The Dead Sea. 140 
 
 The Wilderness of Judea. 141 
 
 Shechem and Mount Ebal . 146 
 
 The Samaritan High Priest. 147 
 
 Jacob’s Well . 150 
 
 The Hill of Samaria . 151 
 
 The Kishon River. 158 
 
 The Plain of Esdraelon. 159 
 
 The Village of Nain . 166 
 
 Syrian Villagers . 167 
 
 Nazareth . 174 
 
 The Spring of the Lady Mary. 175 
 
 A Street in Cana. 178 
 
 The Horns of Hattin . 179 
 
 Fisherman by the Sea of Galilee. 184 
 
 The City of Tiberias. 185 
 
 The Bay of Acre . 188 
 
 View from the Horns of Hattin . 189 
 
 Olives and Wheat. 194 
 
 Wild Flowers in an Orchard. 195 
 
 A Rose Garden . 198 
 
 A Cedar of Lebanon . 199 
 
LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jerusalem and New York City . 2 
 
 Palestine and New Jersey. 4 
 
 The Road from Jerusalem to Hebron . 25 
 
 The Hebron Haram . 60 
 
 The Environs of Jerusalem. 103 
 
 The Jordan Valley . 123 
 
 Cross-section of Southern Palestine . 136 
 
 Palestine . 203 
 
 (xiii) 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • < « - • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 , • » 
 
 . . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Tezkereh., or Turkish local passport, which the author used 
 
 in Palestine 
 
The Real Palestine of To-day 
 
 i 
 
 Tiny Palestine 
 
 N O matter how much you may read about Pales¬ 
 tine, you will never quite realize how small it is, 
 until some day you stand on the summit of one 
 of its hundred mountains and see spread out before 
 you in a single panorama practically all of the fam¬ 
 ous land which is “Holy” to Jew and Christian and 
 Moslem. But before we climb the mountains, let us 
 go to the roof of one of the hotels by the Jaffa Gate 
 and look down on Jerusalem. You can recognize 
 comparatively minute details of architecture in the 
 farthest comer of the city, for the distance from the 
 Jaffa Gate at the west to the Mosque of Omar at the 
 east is only half a mile. The entire length of the city, 
 from the Damascus Gate at the north to the Zion 
 Gate at the south, is barely two-thirds of a mile, and, 
 in spite of the fact that the streets are narrow, wind¬ 
 ing and crowded, you can walk from one end of 
 Jerusalem to the other in eight or ten minutes. 
 
 Of late years the city has been spreading outside 
 of the gates, especially to the northwest, where there 
 are numerous colonies of American and European 
 
 [ l 1 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 Jews, besides buildings belonging to various Catholic 
 and Protestant missionary establishments; but the 
 total population of Jerusalem is probably still under 
 100,000, and the area of the real, historic city within 
 
 the ancient walls is only 210 acres, or less than a 
 third of a square mile. That is, it is a little larger 
 than the Elevated “Loop” district of Chicago. If 
 the Holy City were laid over lower New York, it 
 would extend northward from the Battery hardly as 
 far as Fulton Street. For a still more startling com- 
 
 E 2 ] 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 parison, the whole walled city of Jerusalem is exactly, 
 to an acre, one quarter as big as Central Park . 
 
 It is a little city, and it is a little country. From 
 the same Jaffa Gate you can see the mountains of 
 Moab, away beyond Jordan. The boundaries of the 
 Holy Land have always been somewhat indefinite, 
 however, and there is to-day no political unit corres¬ 
 ponding to what we commonly mean by “Palestine.”* 
 Its vilayets, interlock on the north with the vilayets 
 of Syria, a district so closely allied to the Holy Land 
 in climate and customs that we must frequently look 
 thither for the best modern illustrations of Biblical 
 history. Indeed, the two lands are often considered 
 together under the common designation of Syria, and 
 their present inhabitants are properly known as 
 Syrians. 
 
 The region most closely identified with the sacred 
 narratives may roughly be said to extend from the 
 Mediterranean on the west to the Jordan Valley on 
 the east, and from Mt. Hermon and the Leontes 
 River on the north to the Arabian Desert on the 
 south. This seems to have been the original “Prom¬ 
 ised Land” (see Numbers 34:6-12). The Hebrews 
 occasionally controlled part of the country east of 
 Jordan; but, on the other hand, they did not occupy 
 the coastal plain. These boundaries include an area of 
 
 ^Palestine proper includes the southern portions of the 
 vilayets of Damascus and Beirut, and the independent mutesar- 
 rifiyet (sub-province) of Jerusalem. 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
There is no real harbor at Jaffa. Steamers must anchor some 
 distance out, and passengers are landed by rowboats 
 
The Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem, the busiest part of the 
 
 Holy City 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 about 6,000 square miles, which is somewhat smaller 
 than that of the State of New Jersey. The entire 
 length of the country, “from Dan to Beer-sheba,” is 
 about the distance from New York to Albany; and 
 so narrow is Palestine that if Chicago were placed 
 across it with one end at the Sea of Galilee, the 
 other end of the city would be washed by the waters 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Let us imagine Jerusalem to be situated at the 
 lower end of Central Park, which it would fill almost 
 as far up as the lake. Then Bethlehem would be at 
 Bowling Green, Hebron would lie among the central 
 hills of Staten Island, and the Dead Sea would begin 
 at Jamaica Bay. Going northward, we should find 
 Bethel in Van Cortlandt Park, the city of Samaria 
 at Haverstraw, Nazareth at Poughkeepsie, Mt. Her- 
 mon at the heart of the Catskills, and Damascus, the 
 arch-enemy of Jerusalem, would lie just this side 
 of Albany.* 
 
 There is no other country in the world whose 
 geographical features can so easily be taken in by 
 the naked eye. As has been said, Palestine is about 
 the size of New Jersey. Now I was bom in New 
 Jersey and have traveled over almost the entire state; 
 but I know of no spot from which one can get even an 
 
 *The reader understands that, while the above comparisons 
 are exact so far as distances are concerned, the directions are 
 only approximate. The Palestinian towns do not lie so nearly 
 in a straight line as do the cities along the Hudson. 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 approximate idea of the general configuration, and 
 principal physical features of the State of New Jer¬ 
 sey. In Palestine there are countless summits from 
 which even the untrained observer can understand 
 the whole lay of the land. As you ride up-country 
 from Jerusalem, you are hardly ever out of sight of 
 the Mediterranean on the left or the mountains 
 “beyond Jordan” on the right; and often you can see 
 both the western and the eastern boundaries at once. 
 To a person who has wearily traced his way through 
 other countries whose mountains and rivers and lakes 
 did not appear at all as he expected them to, one of 
 the most startling things about the Holy Land is 
 that it look's just like the map. 
 
 Stand, for instance, on the rounded summit of Mt. 
 Tabor. You are only 2,000 feet above the Plain of 
 Esdraelon; but you can see the whole northern half 
 of Palestine. To the west is Mt. Carmel, jutting 
 into the blue Mediterranean like a huge, blunt cigar. 
 To the east is the valley of the Jordan; and while 
 the river itself is so low as to be out of sight, the 
 mountains of Gilead beyond it are clearly visible. 
 To the south is the flat Plain of Esdraelon, broken 
 into by “Little Hermon,” upon whose slopes lie tiny 
 hamlets which still bear the familiar names of Endor, 
 Nain and Shunem. Beyond Little Hermon is the 
 hill of Jezreel, and still farther to the south are 
 seen Mt. Gilboa and the highlands of Samaria. To 
 the north is Nazareth, whose highest houses can be 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 clearly seen, shining white against the dark hills of 
 Galilee; and the saddle-shaped Horns of Hattin; 
 and the deep valley sloping down to where we know 
 the Sea of Galilee lies, behind the intervening hiHs; 
 while, back of the northern mountains, with its coni¬ 
 cal summit dominating all the landscape, great Her- 
 mon towers over 9,000 feet into the sky. 
 
 Or stand on Mt. Ebal, which rises 3,000 feet above 
 the sea, just north of the city of Shechem; and you 
 can see virtually all Palestine. You look westward 
 over the rolling foothills to the coastal plain and the 
 Mediterranean. To the east the long, level line of 
 the mountains on the other side of the Jordan is bro¬ 
 ken only by the deep gorges of the Yarmuk and 
 Jabbok rivers. To the south you can see over Mt. 
 Gerizim and far across Samaria to the tower at 
 Mizpeh in Judea, which is only five miles from 
 Jerusalem. To the north the view reaches past the 
 hills of Samaria to Mt. Carmel; over the hollow where 
 lies the Plain of Esdraelon; and then up again be¬ 
 yond the mountains of Galilee, until the eye rests 
 upon far-distant Hermon, still imperial in its gran¬ 
 deur, though it is now seventy-five miles away. With 
 the exception of the desert wanderings and the jour¬ 
 neys of St. Paul, nearly all Bible history is com¬ 
 prehended within the panorama from Ebal’s summit. 
 
 It is a tiny country; yet in all our own enormous 
 land, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, 
 and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you will not 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 find a larger variety of scenery, climate and pro¬ 
 ducts than exists within the narrow confines of 
 Palestine. 
 
 It is essentially a mountainous country. Plains, 
 or even broad valleys, are the exception. It is quite 
 impossible to arrive at an adequate understanding of 
 the religion or politics or social customs or economic 
 problems of Palestine, unless it is constantly borne 
 in mind that from Beer-sheba to Dan, and then north¬ 
 ward through Syria as far as Aleppo, there runs a 
 backbone of rugged highlands, interspersed here and 
 there with lofty mountain peaks. The Biblical writ¬ 
 ers were nearly all highlanders. In all the Holy Land 
 to-day only two towns of any importance are 
 situated in valleys; and these two, Shechem and He¬ 
 bron, are in high, narrow valleys which run at right 
 angles to the trend of the central range, and are 
 therefore easy of defense. The altitude of Nazareth 
 is over 1,000 feet; the city of Samaria lies 1,540 
 feet above the sea; and Jerusalem is at an elevation 
 of 2,500 feet. The summit of Mt. Hermon is 9,380 
 feet above the surface of the Mediterranean. The 
 lower end of the Jordan Valley by the Dead Sea is 
 1,292 feet below the Mediterranean—the lowest spot 
 on the surface of the earth! 
 
 On account of this extraordinary range of alti¬ 
 tude, there is no other country of like size which fur¬ 
 nishes such a variety of food products. The vegeta¬ 
 tion of the Jordan Valley is tropical; that of the 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 Mediterranean shores is sub-tropical; the trees on 
 the mountain slopes are those of our temperate zone; 
 while the summits of Hermon and Lebanon are al¬ 
 most entirely bare of vegetable life, and so cold that 
 snow lies all the year round in the sheltered gorges. 
 
 At the end of one summer trip in the mountains 
 of Syria, I slept under four blankets, breakfasted 
 in my heaviest winter clothing, with a rug wrapped 
 around me for added warmth, and that same evening 
 I took dinner in a coast town where the thinnest of 
 duck suits was none too cool. I once watched the 
 thermometer at Jericho rise until it registered 135 
 degrees. A few days later I rode past a Lebanon 
 snow-drift eighty feet high, and swam in a mountain 
 stream whose temperature was onty ten degrees 
 above the freezing point. And all this was in the 
 month of August! 
 
 So it is difficult to give a satisfactory answer to the 
 frequent inquiry as to the climate of the Holy Land. 
 Which climate? Palestine has all climates—from the 
 climate of Egypt to the climate of Labrador. 
 
 But, taking an average locality among the central 
 highlands, the winter is raw and showery, like a rather 
 cold New England April. Now and then there will 
 be a bright, clear day of warm, gorgeous splendor. 
 But when it does rain, it rains furiously, with crash¬ 
 ing thunder and vivid lightning. I once counted 
 twenty-two flashes in a minute. Often there will be 
 heavy hail—my window was once broken by it—and 
 
 L y J 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 great winds which blow down the vines and tear the 
 tiles off the roofs. It is not uncommon to see water¬ 
 spouts at sea. Sometimes a dozen of them will be 
 in sight at the same time, whirling and twisting 
 between the storm clouds above and the angry 
 waves beneath. 
 
 Down by the coast, it hardly ever freezes. Ice may 
 be seen once in ten or fifteen years. Up at Jerusa¬ 
 lem, however, snow storms are not infrequent, and 
 the drifts have lain knee-deep by the Jaffa Gate. 
 The usual painting of the Nativity clothes the by¬ 
 standers far too lightly for a Judean December; for 
 the traveler who visits Palestine in mid-winter finds 
 that his heaviest overcoat is none too warm. 
 
 In the summer time the temperature is high (76 
 degrees is the average for a Jerusalem August), and 
 it stays high month after month, which is very wear¬ 
 ing on the nerves. But there are seldom any such 
 terrific hot spells as occur every year in New York 
 and Chicago. In mid-summer I have ridden through 
 Judea ten and twelve hours a day without suffering 
 anything worse than the natural discomfort from 
 perspiration and dust. The direct rays of the sun, 
 however, are almost inconceivably hot, and it is dan¬ 
 gerous to neglect to protect properly the head and 
 neck. On the other hand, “the shadow of a great 
 rock” will be from thirty to fifty degrees cooler than 
 the sunshine’s glare, not ten feet away. The houses 
 are built with thick stone walls and high ceilings and 
 
 [10] 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 shaded windows, so that indoors the temperature sel¬ 
 dom rises above eighty or eighty-five degrees. Even 
 during a sirocco—the occasional dry desert wind 
 which is the one real discomfort of the Syrian sum¬ 
 mer—I never remember that my own room was as hot 
 as ninety degrees, and the dark, stone churches and 
 monasteries are apt to be dangerously cold and damp. 
 
 The hottest part of the day is just after sunrise, 
 during the lull while the wind is shifting; but soon a 
 refreshing breeze springs up from the Mediterranean 
 and tempers the summer heat. At Jerusalem it is apt 
 to be cool after dark at any time of the year. Even 
 in August, the ladies used to carry wraps with them, 
 when we went up to the roof for an after-dinner chat. 
 One of the party, who neglected to put on an extra 
 garment, caught a severe cold. My own teeth have 
 never since chattered as they did one summer morn¬ 
 ing on the Mount of Olives, while I sat to the lee¬ 
 ward of a protecting rock, watching for the sunrise, 
 and shivering in the piercing wind. All in all, I have 
 suffered more from the heat in New York City than 
 I ever did in Palestine. 
 
 The best time of the year for visiting the Holy 
 Land is during the months of March and April, just 
 after the rains have stopped, while the wild flowers 
 are most gorgeous and the dust is laid and the air 
 washed clean and the climate like that of our own 
 June. But for those who cannot take a vacation 
 except in the summer, there is no reason why a trip 
 
 [11] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 to Palestine cannot be made in July or August with 
 absolute safety and with a fair degree of comfort. 
 Of course, one must exercise good judgment and com¬ 
 mon sense—qualities which some visitors to the Holy 
 Land apparently leave at home. If you will go out 
 in the sun bare-headed, or persist in getting over¬ 
 tired by walking when you could just as well ride, or 
 make your diet of cucumbers and Oriental sweet¬ 
 meats, it will not be the fault of the climate if you 
 fall sick. But with the exercise of a few simple pre¬ 
 cautions, such as are necessary at first when visiting 
 any new country, there will be less danger to health 
 than at the average American seaside resort. 
 
 Of other dangers, there are none at any season; 
 that is, none along the route of the ordinary tourist. 
 West of the Jordan, the traveler is as safe as he is 
 east of the Mississippi; and his “roughing it” con¬ 
 sists in riding a very quiet, sure-footed horse during 
 the trip up-country, halting for tea in the middle of 
 the afternoon, eating a five-course dinner at night, 
 and being served by the corps of well-trained servants 
 which is provided by every competent dragoman and 
 tourist-agency. As I lived in the country and spoke 
 Arabic, I never employed a dragoman and perhaps I 
 did rough it a bit, off the beaten track; but even so, 
 I never thought of carrying any deadlier weapon 
 than a small switch for the horse. The chief peril 
 for the daring Palestinian explorer is a midnight 
 attack by a band of predatory—fleas ! 
 
 [12] 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 If you make your first trip to Palestine during the 
 hot season, it might be wise to omit the more fatigu^ 
 ing horseback rides, such as that from Nazareth 
 to Damascus. But you can go by train from Jaffa to 
 Jerusalem, and thence by carriage to Bethany, Beth¬ 
 lehem and Hebron, all of which are as high as many 
 a Catskill hotel. Then, returning to Jaffa, it is only 
 a night trip by sea to Haifa and Mt. Carmel, and 
 an easy jaunt by railway and carriage to Mt. Tabor, 
 Nazareth, Cana and the Sea of Galilee. A second 
 night on the steamer brings you from Haifa to 
 Beirut, which is the terminus of a railway to Damas¬ 
 cus and Ba‘albek and the cool summer resorts on the 
 western slopes of the Lebanon range. 
 
 Everywhere on such a trip you will find comfort¬ 
 able hotels and English-speaking guides. You will 
 cross the Mediterranean when its waters are the calm¬ 
 est; the steamers and railways will not be over- 
 crowded; hotels will give better accommodations and 
 lower rates than during the busy season; guides and 
 shop-keepers will be more anxious to please; and the 
 points of interest can be visited in a quiet, leisurely 
 way, without the hurry and jostling and excitement 
 of the spring months, when all Palestine, and espe¬ 
 cially Jerusalem, is seething with noisy, unkempt pil¬ 
 grims and tired, nervous tourists. 
 
 For two persons traveling together, such a sum¬ 
 mer month in Palestine and Syria, beginning at Jaffa 
 and ending at Beirut, ought not to cost over $150 
 
 [131 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 apiece, including comfortable lodgings and occasional 
 carriage hire and the services of a guide when neces¬ 
 sary. If the travelers had a smattering of Arabic 
 and were willing to sleep in native khans , the trip 
 might be made for half that sum. 
 
 I hope that the ship of your imagination is already 
 riding at anchor in the harbor of Jaffa. There really 
 is not any harbor, and you will have to go ashore in 
 small rowboats which roll perilously as they thread 
 their way between the jagged rocks by the landing; 
 but this will only add further zest to your first 
 experience in Palestine. 
 
 It was in this little bay that gallant Perseus slew 
 the dragon and freed the enchained Andromeda. 
 Later on, Perseus moved eighty miles north to Beirut 
 and changed his name to St. George. On one of the 
 roofs of Jaffa, while Peter was waiting anxiously for 
 dinner, he had that vision which was to exercise such 
 a mighty influence upon the history of Christian mis¬ 
 sions. The priests have recently changed the location 
 of the house of Simon the Tanner, and have put it 
 nearer to the custom house, so that travelers will have 
 no excuse for passing it by. Back of the crowded 
 streets of the seaport are the far-famed orange groves 
 of Jaffa and the gently rolling Plain of Sharon, where 
 still bloom the Hose of Sharon and the Lily of the 
 Valley, or, as we should call them, the narcissus and 
 the blue iris. And off at the eastern horizon are the 
 
 [ 14 j 
 
TINY PALESTINE 
 
 dim foothills of Judea and the beginning of that 
 great, little country, which is so varied in its scenery, 
 so strange in its language, so heterogeneous in its 
 population, so contradictory in its spiritual aspects 
 and, above all, so different from the country from 
 which you have come, that you will have to travel fat 
 and observe closely and ponder deeply before you will 
 be able to sympathize at all with the old patriot-poets 
 who called this “the Glory of all Lands.” 
 
 Welcome, then, to Palestine! In the words of the 
 Syrian mountaineer, Marhabah! To which greet¬ 
 ing you must answer, “A double welcome”— 
 
 M arhabtam! 
 
 [151 
 
II 
 
 THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 D URING one of my visits to Jerusalem, I lived 
 for a month m a room directly opposite the 
 Jaffa Gate. As a consequence, of all the 
 sights I have seen on my travels, none is more 
 indelibly fixed in my memory than the incessant, 
 kaleidoscopic movement of the motley crowd through 
 the busiest entrance to the Holy City, and then, 
 beyond the gate, the curving line of the long white 
 road which winds up over the southern hills toward 
 Bethlehem and Hebron and the far-off Arabian 
 Desert. 
 
 Strangely enough, the most vivid word-painting of 
 the throngs by the Jaffa gate is the classic passage 
 in “Ben Hur,” which was written before General Lew 
 [Wallace ever went to Palestine. You need change 
 very few details in that description of the heterogene¬ 
 ous multitude of the first century to make it an exact 
 picture of the twentieth century scene. Here are Jews 
 and Moslems and Druses, and Christians of every 
 sect; Armenian bankers and Abyssinian monks and 
 American schoolma’ams; Jewish rabbis and Moham- 
 
 [16] 
 
Maskeen! Maskeen! ” Lepers of Jerusalem 
 
The Hebron road passing the southern end of Jerusalem 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 medan sheikhs ; Greek merchants and German doctors; 
 Levantine peddlers and English globe-trotters; dark 
 desert Arabs and pallid French nuns; Russian pil¬ 
 grims and Syrian dragomans; black-robed Jesuits 
 and white-robed Dominicans and brown-robed Fran¬ 
 ciscans ; descendants of the Prophet in green turbans, 
 and Turkish soldiers in red fezes without tassels, and 
 Eastern priests in tall stove-pipe hats without brims, 
 and Protestant missionaries in pith sun-helmets; an 
 inextricable jumble of multi-colored garments and 
 discordant languages and inimical races and rival 
 religions passing in and out, all day long, through 
 the famous portal of the ancient city. 
 
 Among the crowd—though always outside of the 
 gate, for they are not allowed within the city—you 
 6ee one or two little groups of lepers, stricken with 
 that most terrible of diseases; mysterious, revolting, 
 incurable; which eats away the body while the soul 
 still lives. The bones of the face are usually attacked 
 comparatively early in the progress of the malady, 
 and the bridge of the nose falls in, which makes the 
 lepers resemble horrible Mongolians. The vocal cords 
 are affected and the throat muscles paralyzed, so 
 that the voice sinks to a hoarse, sepulchral whisper. 
 The fingers swell up and drop off at the joints; then 
 the hands and feet are lost. Yet at least one form 
 of the disease (for there are several) is accompanied 
 by anaesthesia rather than by acute suffering; and 
 often it is a very long time before death comes. I 
 
 [17] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 talked with two men who had suffered with leprosy 
 for twenty-five years, and with a third who, according 
 to the testimony of a European physician, had been 
 a leper for thirty-one years. 
 
 It is far from certain that the modern disease is 
 the same as the “leprosy” of the Old Testament, 
 which seems, from the sanitary regulations of the 
 Pentateuch, to have been a whitish, scaly affection of 
 the skin, which did not necessarily incapacitate the 
 sufferer from pursuing his ordinary occupations, and 
 from which eventually he might completely recover. 
 Possibly, however, the Hebrew word embraced all dis¬ 
 eases which were accompanied by external disfigure¬ 
 ment, including what is now known as leprosy. 
 
 There are not many lepers in modern Palestine— 
 less than a hundred in Jerusalem; half of them living 
 in huts provided by the government near the village 
 of Siloam, south of the Mount of Olives, and the 
 other half in the Moravian hospital a mile southwest 
 of the city. In the entire country there may be a 
 few hundred lepers. The doctors in Palestine do not 
 consider that the disease is contagious. It is still 
 one of the mysteries of medical science; but it seems 
 to result from unhealthful environment and wrong 
 diet and, possibly, heredity, rather than from acci¬ 
 dental contact with those who are diseased. The 
 Moravian physician told me that he allowed his 
 family to live with him at the leper hospital, under 
 the same roof with forty patients, few of whom were 
 
 [18] 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 confined to their rooms. Some of our American 
 state health boards have recently become quite un¬ 
 necessarily panic-stricken—not to say barbarously 
 cruel—over the discovery of an isolated case within 
 their jurisdiction. 
 
 Yet leprosy is a loathsome thing—unspeakably 
 so—and it is not pleasant to have the lepers hobble 
 alongside the carriage, and try to attract your atten¬ 
 tion by putting their swollen hands upon your coat 
 sleeve: They do not cry “unclean” as in ancient 
 times; but even those who are too weak to stand, sit 
 in little circles outside the city gates and hold up 
 their poor, shapeless hands to the passers-by, and 
 cry Maskeen! Maslceen! “I am miserable! miserable!” 
 And, alas, they are. 
 
 Beyond the shadow of the gate, we come out into 
 the full glare of the Judean sunshine, where the dusty 
 highway stretches dazzlingly before us. It is a good 
 road, and it will take us hardly an hour to reach 
 Bethlehem, five miles away. At our left rise the 
 stern, gray walls of the Holy City, which in places 
 are forty feet in height, and are further strengthened 
 by thirty-four projecting towers. The present ram¬ 
 parts were erected by the Sultan Suleiman in the 
 year 1542; but materials from the ruins of earlier 
 walls were freely used in the rebuilding, and in places 
 the foundations date back to the Jewish days. Close 
 by the Jaffa Gate the fortifications are dominated by 
 the massive citadel, which is the only fortress in 
 
 [19] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 modern Jerusalem, and is commonly known as the 
 “Castle of David.” 
 
 After we pass the citadel, the road descends very 
 rapidly, and as we look up the steep, bare slope, 
 crowned by the fortifications which rise so high above 
 us that nothing is visible beyond them save a nearby 
 minaret or the roof of a house built against the wall, 
 we realize, as never before, how the little mountain 
 city has been able again and again to hold out stub¬ 
 bornly against vastly superior besieging forces. In¬ 
 deed, from this western side, Jerusalem has never 
 been taken by assault. 
 
 At the other edge of the road, on our right, is the 
 BirJcet es-Sultan, or “Pool of the Sultan,” one of the 
 series of ancient reservoirs lying in the valleys which 
 encircle Jerusalem. Within the whole city there is 
 not and never has been a single well; and during the 
 long, rainless summer, the inhabitants are still de¬ 
 pendent for practically their entire water supply 
 upon a few public reservoirs and countless private 
 cisterns, which collect the winter rains. When these 
 rains are insufficient, water is brought into the city 
 on muleback from springs in the surrounding coun¬ 
 try. The last time I was in Jerusalem, water was 
 being peddled in the streets. 
 
 The Birlcet es-Sultan , so called because it was 
 repaired by the same Sultan Suleiman who rebuilt 
 the fortifications, is the largest of the public reser¬ 
 voirs, being 550 feet long, 220 feet wide and 40 feet 
 
 [20] 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 deep. It is believed by some to be the “Lower Pool” 
 of Gihon, referred to in the Old Testament. The 
 reservoir was very easily constructed by simply build¬ 
 ing two dams across the valley, which was then fur¬ 
 ther broadened between the dams by removing the 
 loose earth as far as the rock on either side. Like 
 most public works under the Turkish government, the 
 Birket es-Sultan has unfortunately been allowed to 
 go to ruin. At the lower end of the excavation is a 
 small pool of filthy, stagnant water; part of the other 
 end is used as a market garden; and in the middle 
 are held sales of cattle and grain, especially on 
 Friday, which is the Moslem Sabbath. 
 
 On the broken rampart of the old reservoir sits a 
 man whom we can instantly recognize as a native of 
 Bethlehem, not only by the distinctive, bright-colored 
 turban which he wears set far back on his high fore¬ 
 head, but also by his long, aquiline features; for 
 although the inhabitants of modern Bethlehem are 
 nearly all Christians, their peculiar type of face 
 makes them look much more like the traditional 
 Hebrew than do the real Jews of the Holy Land. 
 
 At the foot of the Sultan’s Pool, the road to the 
 railway station branches off' to the right, past the 
 olive groves of the Jewish colony which was estab¬ 
 lished here by Sir Moses Montefiore. At our left the 
 Valley of Hinnom sinks down around the southern 
 end of Jerusalem, its steep sides still crowded with 
 the innumerable graves and rock-hewn sepulchres and 
 
 [21] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 dusty charnel houses which made the Hebrew name 
 for the valley, “Gehenna,” a synonym for hot, hope¬ 
 less desolation. Straight in front of us the highroad 
 rises to the top of the hill where, by the English 
 Ophthalmic Hospital, we pause for a last near view 
 of the Holy City. Then, turning forward again, we 
 breathe the fresher air of the open country, and look 
 upon pleasant panoramas of gently rolling hills, 
 whose summits are covered with straggling olive 
 orchards, and whose lower slopes are terraced for 
 the cultivation of the mulberry, fig and grape. As 
 we reach the end of each gradual ascent, there comes 
 a broader outlook, especially to the left, where we 
 can see beyond the farmland to the bare summits of 
 the Judean Wilderness, and then off to the level line 
 of the blue mountains beyond Jordan, which seem to 
 march with us all the way. 
 
 There probably never was a time when there was 
 not a road here, passing from north to south through 
 the center of Judea. You can still see beside it the 
 fallen Roman mile-stones. But it was already an 
 ancient highway when the Romans repaired it. 
 Herod’s chariot passed along it, and the soldiers of 
 Judas Maccabeus, and the knights of Tancred. 
 Chronological order is baffled by the rapid succession 
 of great events which are suggested at every step 
 along the historic highroad. Here marched the 
 mighty men of David, and the swift Saracen bands 
 of Saladin, and the richly caparisoned camels of 
 
 [22] 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 the Queen of Sheba, and the flocks of Abraham, and 
 the brilliant court of Solomon’s Egyptian queen, and 
 the reverent pupils of St. Jerome; here passed the 
 slow, heavily laden caravans from Arabia, in that 
 dark, mysterious period before Hebrew history, 
 when “the Canaanite dwelt in the land”; and here, 
 one bleak December evening, there trudged wearily 
 along an old man and his bride, who had come down 
 all the way from Nazareth of Galilee, that their 
 names might be enrolled in the tax-list at Bethlehem. 
 
 It is no wonder that the way is fairly cluttered 
 with legends and fanciful localizations of historic 
 incidents, ancient and modern, Moslem, Jewish and 
 Christian. Few of them have even the slightest basis 
 in fact, and these have seldom any stronger proof 
 than the self-evident proposition that the event in 
 question must have happened somewhere , and, if so, 
 why not by this particular stone or under yonder 
 tree? Many of the traditions show a child-like con¬ 
 fusion concerning historical details, as where a cer¬ 
 tain bishop Elijah is identified with the prophet of 
 that name, and the monastery which the good bishop 
 built half-way between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is 
 consequently revered as the scene of Elijah’s vision 
 under the juniper tree. Nevertheless it might be 
 said for even the most extravagant and impossible of 
 these tales that they do serve to vivify and perpetuate 
 the memory of great events gone by. So to speak, 
 these stories incarnate for the ignorant and simple- 
 
 [23] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 minded peasants of Palestine, important moral and 
 religious truths. 
 
 Concerning one spot by the roadside, tradition goes 
 so far back that, even if it is wrong, the tradition 
 itself is a part of history. For thousands of years 
 this particular place has been reverenced as the grave 
 of Rachel. “I buried her there on the way to Beth¬ 
 lehem,” said the broken-hearted husband, Jacob. The 
 Hebrew historian adds that her tombstone remains 
 “unto this day”; and even to our own day the last 
 resting-place of beautiful Rachel is shown about a 
 mile outside of Bethlehem. No other sacred site in 
 Palestine is attested by so continuous a line of his¬ 
 torians and travelers. For many centuries the grave 
 was marked only by a pyramid of stones. The 
 present structure, with its white dome, is about four 
 hundred years old. But there it stands “unto this 
 day,” revered by Christians, Jews and Moslems; and 
 the wandering Arabs bring their dead to be buried in 
 its holy shadow. 
 
 The road now forks twice. First a left-hand 
 branch leads into Bethlehem. A little further on, 
 another road goes off to the right to Beit Jala, whose 
 extensive olive orchards are seen on the other side of 
 the valley. Again, however, we keep straight ahead 
 on the central highway until, seven miles from Jeru¬ 
 salem, we reach the three famous reservoirs known as 
 “Solomon’s Pools.” 
 
 Beside the highest reservoir, nearest the road, is 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
Solomon’s Pools and the KaVat el-Burak 
 
One of the ancient wells of Beer-sheba 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 the KaVat el-Burak, or “Castle of the Pools,” a 
 large, square enclosure, guarded by tall stone walls, 
 with castellated towers at the corners. It was evi¬ 
 dently one of the fortified khans of the Middle Ages, 
 placed here to protect the important road to the 
 reservoirs against 
 forays by no¬ 
 madic robber 
 bands. 
 
 The pools, 
 which lie below 
 the “castle” at 
 the left of the 
 road, are partly 
 built-up of ma¬ 
 sonry, but chiefly 
 excavated out of 
 the solid rock- 
 bed of the nar¬ 
 row, rapidly 
 sloping ravine. 
 
 For the supply 
 of water they de¬ 
 pended upon the winter rains, several nearby springs, 
 and a pipe which drew from the water-shed in the 
 higher hills to the west. 
 
 The lowest and largest pool is about the size of 
 the Birket es-Sultan by the Jaffa Gate; that is, its 
 length is a little short of six hundred feet and its 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 greatest depth fifty feet. From it, a conduit takes 
 an extremely circuitous course around the intervening 
 hills to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The last time I 
 visited these pools, they were in a bad state of dis¬ 
 repair and almost dry; but they have recently been 
 restored, and now again the ancient reservoirs send 
 their precious water to the Holy City. 
 
 It is not known who originally constructed this 
 extensive system of water-works. We know that they 
 were repaired under Herod, but at that time the 
 reservoirs were apparently very old. The statement 
 in Ecclesiastes, “I made me pools of water,” is a very 
 slender justification for the belief that Solomon built 
 these particular pools. But, at any rate, such is the 
 popular tradition; and consequently many passages 
 in Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs which refer to 
 pools and springs and gardens and orchards are 
 localized in the adjacent valleys. 
 
 The road continues good all the way to Hebron, 
 and we drive rapidly along the eastern slope of the 
 central ridge, winding around the heads of ravines 
 which drop away to our left. About twenty miles 
 from Jerusalem we pass the village of Halhul, under 
 whose mosque is buried the prophet Jonah. At least, 
 so say the Moslem villagers. But, as is fitting in the 
 case of so famous a traveler, the grave of Jonah is 
 pointed out in several widely separated localities, its 
 ubiquity being rivalled only by that of the sepulchre 
 of John the Baptist. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 A mile or so beyond Halhul are the ruins of a 
 strange structure known locally as the “Shrine of 
 Abraham.” The building must have been a massive 
 and imposing one, for some of its stones are as much 
 as sixteen feet in length; but just when or why it was 
 erected is quite unknown. Nearby, however, are the 
 remains of a church which we know was built 1,600 
 years ago by the Emperor Constantine; for we are 
 now in the Abraham country, and this particular 
 locality was believed by the Jews and early Christians 
 to be the site of the Grove of Mamre, where the 
 patriarch’s tent was pitched and where he had those 
 wonderful visions. 
 
 Present tradition, however, places Mamre a little 
 farther on, and half a mile to the right of the main 
 road. Here there is a Russian hospice, with vine¬ 
 yards which remind us that the famous grapes of 
 Eshcol grew somewhere not far away, and an ancient 
 tree which, since the sixteenth century at least, has 
 been known as the “Oak of Mamre” or “Abraham’s 
 Oak.” Its short, gnarled trunk is over thirty feet 
 in circumference, its twisted limbs are almost en¬ 
 tirely bare of leaves and so weak that they have 
 to be propped up by heavy beams; while around 
 the old oak is a stout iron fence, designed to keep 
 goats and tourists from carrying off the whole tree 
 piecemeal. 
 
 We are already at the edge of Hebron, with its 
 venerable traditions, its tanneries and glass-works, its 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 filth and fanaticism, and the fascinating mystery of 
 its forbidden sepulchre. But the visit to this ancient 
 city must be postponed until another chapter. 
 
 Here the modern carriage road ends; but the 
 primitive highway leads on southward to the border 
 of Palestine, where one can to this day see the water- 
 pits which gave to the locality the name Beer-sheba, 
 “Seven Wells.” After 3,000 years, the wandering 
 Bedouins continue to bring their sheep and goats to 
 be watered at three or four of the wells which remain 
 in serviceable condition. 
 
 From Beer-sheba, the trail winds across the steppe- 
 land where the Arab descendants of Abraham still 
 find a scanty pasturage for their flocks. Then 
 comes the real desert, surveyed only by the mys¬ 
 terious pathways which thread across the wilder¬ 
 ness from oasis to oasis. One route—though it 
 is hard to find—brings the traveler to the famous 
 rivulet at Kadesh-barnea, now called ‘Ain Kadis , the 
 “Holy Spring,” where the tribes of Israel encamped 
 while the twelve spies were searching out the land of 
 Canaan. 
 
 From here, if one be wise and brave and hardy, 
 the track can be followed far southward through 
 the maze of dry, beaten earth and dazzling sand 
 and occasional sheltered pasture-land and bare, 
 stony mountains and sudden, spring-fed groves to 
 where, in the heart of the wilderness, two hundred 
 and fifty miles below Jerusalem, great Sinai raises 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
Kadesh-barnea 
 
Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa ) and the plain where the Children of 
 
 Israel encamped 
 
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD 
 
 its many-colored, rock-hewn shoulders above the 
 plain where the wandering Children of Israel pitched 
 their tents while Moses tarried among the awful 
 storm-clouds which shrouded the summit of the Holy 
 Mountain. 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
Ill 
 
 RACES AND RELIGIONS 
 
 I T should be understood that the mass of the settled 
 inhabitants of Palestine are not Arabs, though, 
 by a loose use of words, they are usually called 
 such by Western travelers and writers. These Pales¬ 
 tinian folk do indeed speak the Arabic language; but 
 so do all of the readers of this book speak the English 
 language, although only a very small proportion of 
 them are of the English race. 
 
 Nor are the people of Palestine Turks, although 
 their country is included in the Turkish Empire, 
 along with Armenia, Albania, Kurdistan and, nom¬ 
 inally, Cyprus and Egypt. You occasionally see a 
 government official who is a Turk; but the bulk of 
 the inhabitants of the Holy Land are as different 
 from the Turks in blood and speech as we are. They 
 do not even belong to the same group of races and, 
 except that the Turkish has borrowed a large number 
 of words from the richer Arabic, their languages are 
 no more alike than English and Russian. In fact, 
 taking the Empire as a whole, hardly a third of the 
 inhabitants are Ottoman Turks; and the remaining 
 two-thirds, whether they are Christian or Moslem, 
 
 [ 30 ] 
 
RACES AND RELIGIONS 
 
 are quite unanimous in despising the Turk and hating 
 his government. 
 
 The Arabic-speaking Turkish subjects of Pales¬ 
 tine are properly called Syrians. They are a 
 Semitic race, cousins of the Arabs and the Jews, and 
 are the descendants of the various peoples who 
 spoke Aramaic at the beginning of our era, espe¬ 
 cially the “Syrians” of Biblical days. They are not 
 all of pure descent, however; for this land has been 
 so over-run by conquerors and traders that there is 
 found in Syrian veins an admixture of strangely dif¬ 
 fering blood. You see natives whose features remind 
 you of the Greek, Abyssinian, Egyptian, Pole, 
 Italian, German, Persian, Turk and Englishman. 
 Florid complexions, and even red hair, are not un¬ 
 common ; for the Crusaders left more than ruined 
 castles behind them when they were finally driven 
 out of Palestine, and Salibi, “Crusader,” is fre¬ 
 quently met with as a family name. 
 
 The typical Syrian, however, is dark-haired, with 
 large, lustrous eyes (when not afflicted with the very 
 prevalent ophthalmia), regular features, full lips, 
 and a clean brown complexion which any American 
 or English girl might envy. He is quick and imita¬ 
 tive, and an eager, capable student when opportunity 
 offers. Like almost all Asiatics, he is wonderfully 
 apt at learning foreign languages, and is an adept 
 at reading the character of those with whom he 
 comes into even casual contact. As a merchant, he 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 is a true descendant of his Phoenician ancestors, 
 thrifty yet keen and daring; and in his business rela¬ 
 tions he is not guilty of the petty niggardliness of 
 some other Oriental races. If he is given the slight¬ 
 est chance, he has an astounding capacity for rising 
 in life. My own Syrian acquaintances include stu¬ 
 dents in several American universities, ministers of 
 American congregations, doctors and engineers and 
 merchants and editors in New York, Buenos Ayres 
 and Rio de Janeiro. The proprietor of the largest 
 restaurant in lower Manhattan is a Syrian; so is 
 one of the foremost philosophical writers of the 
 world, at least one officer in the United States army, 
 and the editor of the best magazine in Egypt. Com¬ 
 ing back to Palestine—if the tourist who alternately 
 abuses and patronizes his “Arab” dragoman would 
 combine with a business-like firmness something of 
 Oriental friendliness and sympathy, he would find 
 that, whatever the Syrian’s faults, he is courteous, 
 kind-hearted, hospitable and lovable. 
 
 As to religious beliefs, the population of Palestine 
 is not divided into Turks and Christians, but (dis¬ 
 regarding minor faiths) Syrian Moslems and Syrian 
 Christians. The former are descendants of the 
 natives who embraced Islam at the time of the great 
 Moslem conquest in the seventh century. The latter 
 have held tenaciously to their ancient faith, which 
 antedates the creeds of western Christendom. As 
 we shall see later, there are practically no native 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
RACES AND RELIGIONS 
 
 Jews. It is difficult to give statistics, because of the 
 absence of any reliable census, and also because, as 
 has been said, there is no political unit or group of 
 units corresponding to what we know as “Palestine.” 
 The population is probably slightly under a million, 
 of whom about half are nominal Christians. 
 
 In the Turkish Empire, however, the word “Chris¬ 
 tian” does not necessarily connote any particular 
 moral qualities or warmth of faith; for the reason 
 that every one has some religion. In many respects 
 the government is administered, not according to 
 geographical units, but through the various 
 hierarchies; and a person outside of any church 
 would be literally an outlaw. If a man is not a Jew 
 or a Moslem, he of course is a Christian. He may 
 be a thief and a liar: he may be a paragon of all the 
 virtues. But he is a “Christian” simply because he 
 was born into a Christian family. That is all. A 
 zealous but poorly informed American evangelist 
 was once preaching to a Syrian audience, when he 
 asked all those who were Christians to stand up. 
 Every single person in the room rose to his feet. Of 
 course! Did the man think that he was preaching 
 to Moslems or Jews ? I do not mean for a moment 
 to imply that these Syrians are hypocritical in the 
 matter. Not at all. It is simply that the word 
 “Christian” has among them a clearly understood 
 meaning which is different from that which we in the 
 West associate with the name. And I imagine that, 
 
 3 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 under similar circumstances, if some great, terrible 
 non-Christian power were threatening not only our 
 faith but our civilization, every American, whatever 
 his state of personal morality or the fervency of his 
 own religious belief, would feel called upon to enroll 
 himself among those who were fighting the forces of 
 heathendom, for the preservation of a Christian 
 civilization. 
 
 These Christians of Palestine are divided among 
 twelve or fourteen sects, of which the most important 
 are the Greek Orthodox, which our Catholics know 
 as the “Greek Schismatic,” and the Greek Catholic, 
 which is affiliated with the Roman (“Latin”) 
 Church, although it retains some ancient Oriental 
 privileges, such as the use of Arabic in the ritual, 
 the administration of the sacrament in both kinds, 
 and a married priesthood. Among the weaker sects 
 are the Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian and Nestorian, 
 each of which is divided into two antagonistic 
 branches, affiliated respectively with Western and 
 Eastern Catholicism. The most powerful church 
 is the Greek Orthodox; and throughout this book, 
 when the word “Greek” is used, it will be understood 
 to refer, not to Greeks by birth, but to the adherents 
 of this sect, most of whom in Palestine are Syrians, 
 although many of the clergy, especially among the 
 higher ecclesiastics, are of the Greek race. 
 
 Besides the members of these ancient native 
 churches, and the “Orthodox” Russian monks and 
 
 [ 34 ] 
 
RACES AND RELIGIONS 
 
 pilgrims, there are a few thousand native Protestants 
 connected with various mission stations, and a mul¬ 
 titude of monks and nuns belonging to the great 
 Latin orders. 
 
 The saddest thing which attracts the notice of the 
 visitor to Palestine is the rivalry and hatred mani¬ 
 fested between the adherents, and especially between 
 the clergy, of the different Christian bodies, and 
 the frequent exhibitions of petty jealousy or open 
 strife which take place before the contemptuous gaze 
 of their common Moslem oppressors. Yet the 
 sympathetic visitor from the West can find exten¬ 
 uating circumstances which may cause him to 
 be less bitter, though not less sad, as he contemplates 
 the fierce, fanatical religious animosities of “Chris- 
 tian” Palestine. Everybody in western Asia is proud 
 of his religion; poor fellow, it is usually the only 
 thing of which he can be proud. There is no national 
 spirit; no possible feeling of patriotism.* The 
 Syrian knows the government only as an implacable 
 power which taxes and cheats and robs and murders. 
 Nobody loves the Ottoman Empire, not even the non- 
 Turkish Moslems. And so the spirit of patriotism 
 which in us finds an outlet in devotion to our nation, 
 in Syria finds expression in loyalty to the sect. The 
 Syrian loves his church as we love our country. He 
 
 * Since the revolution of 1909, this statement happily needs 
 some modification; but even yet there is no such united loyalty 
 to race and nation as is felt in nearly every Christian land. 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 loves his church and hates all others. If he is a 
 Catholic, he hates the Moslems and the Protestants; 
 but most of all, he hates the other Catholic com¬ 
 munions. He gives to his own church a blind, unrea¬ 
 soning, faithful loyalty, and will fight for it with 
 the exalted devotion of a holy Crusade. 
 
 Properly speaking, the Arabs are the Bedouins 
 whose fatherland is the peninsula of Arabia; the 
 nomadic tribes of the desert and steppe-land who, 
 like Abraham of old, scorn to live in houses made 
 with hands.* Their long, low tents of black goat- 
 hair cloth are pitched outside the towns, some¬ 
 what as summer camps of Gipsies are set 
 up on the edge of our American cities. The 
 tribes which are seen in Palestine are as a 
 rule small ones, with from four to twenty tents. 
 If a sheikh is very rich, his home will be divided by 
 hangings of goat-hair cloth into three compartments ; 
 for the men, women and animals. More often, how¬ 
 ever, there will be only two rooms; one for the men, 
 and the other for the women and the animals, who 
 lodge together! The Bedouin’s wealth is in the herds 
 of cattle, sheep, goats and camels which constituted 
 
 * I am speaking now only of the Arabs of Palestine; for 
 the great Arabic world stretches from the Strait of Gibraltar 
 (which, by the way, is an Arabic name meaning the “Moun¬ 
 tain of Tarik”) across northern Africa to Egypt, Sinai, 
 Arabia, and up into Mesopotamia; and in many places there 
 are villages and even cities of settled Arabs, who are always 
 looked down upon, however, by their Bedouin cousins. 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
One of the long, low, black goat-hair tents of the Bedouin Arabs 
 
A Bethlehem Family 
 
RACES AND RELIGIONS 
 
 the possessions of Job. One tribe will quarrel with 
 another over pasture-lands or wells, just as in the 
 days when Isaac’s herdsmen fought with the herds¬ 
 men of Abimelech over the possession of the wells in 
 the valley of Gerar. And any of them will cheerfully 
 rob the luckless traveler whom gracious Allah deliv¬ 
 ers unprotected into his clutches. 
 
 Their vices and their virtues (for they have both) 
 are drawn from the desert. They are the handsomest 
 men in the world, these Arabs; but they are not the 
 cleanest. In reverend demeanor and tactful cour¬ 
 tesy they surpass the most cultured gentlemen of 
 Europe; but they are notorious thieves. Their hos¬ 
 pitality is proverbial. For three days the Arab host 
 will protect one who has eaten bread and salt in his 
 tent, even to dying in defense of his guest. When 
 the time-limit of the salt-brotherhood has expired, 
 the host will feel quite free to rob the former guest 
 on his own account. Ordinarily the Arab lives on 
 bread and milk, or bread and cheese. If a guest ar¬ 
 rives, he will insist upon slaughtering the choicest 
 animal in his flock. If there is no food at all, as 
 frequently happens, the Arab starves for a while. 
 
 Indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of Arabs, 
 especially in the Arabian Peninsula, who never to 
 their dying day know what it is to have a regular 
 supply of food. Yet these lean, half-starved warriors 
 need only to have their petty inter-tribal rivalries 
 submerged in the fervor of a Holy War to become 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 one of the most formidable armies in the world. 
 They do not have a very clear idea of just what 
 Mohammedanism is; but they will fight for it to the 
 death. To-day, when the Turkish race is decaying, 
 the Arab blood is the best in all Islam. Shefket 
 Pasha, who led the army of the Young Turks into 
 Constantinople and dethroned the infamous tyrant 
 Abdul Hamid II, is a pure Arab from Bagdad. No¬ 
 body has ever really conquered this proud, free, wan¬ 
 dering people, from the days when their flying cav¬ 
 alry harassed the well-trained Roman legions, to 
 this very year, when the desert hordes are capturing 
 the border fortresses of Turkey on the eastern edge 
 of Palestine, beyond the Jordan Valley. And some 
 of us are wondering what would happen to the Otto¬ 
 man Empire—and perhaps to the regions beyond 
 that—if these wild, independent, unconquerable tribes 
 of Arabia were to find another leader like Mohammed 
 or Khaled or Saladin, who could hurl them as a dis¬ 
 ciplined army against the hated and despised forces 
 of the degenerate Turk. 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
IV 
 
 The oldest church in the worl® 
 
 O NE of my friends, who is an expert agricul¬ 
 turist, was examining a large photograph 
 of the hills immediately surrounding Beth¬ 
 lehem. “What a bare, treeless country!” he ex¬ 
 claimed. 
 
 “Look at it again,” I said. “There are no tall 
 elm trees or chestnut woods like those on your own 
 estate. But look again.” 
 
 So he did; and before I let him lay down the 
 photograph, he confessed that in that one picture of 
 the “treeless” landscape there must be shown at least 
 20,000 fruit trees! 
 
 A great deal depends upon one’s standard of com¬ 
 parison. I imagine that to ninety-nine travelers out 
 of a hundred, Bethlehem is just one more ill-paved, 
 unkempt, unsanitary Oriental city, noisy with the 
 shouts of an unintelligible jargon and crowded with 
 strangely garbed, fierce-looking “Arabs.” But after 
 you have become somewhat acquainted with modern 
 Palestine, that same Bethlehem appears noteworthy 
 for its tone of prosperous self-respect; its inhabit¬ 
 ants possess unusual dignity; the men are sturdy 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 and handsome and the women are graceful and attrac¬ 
 tive; while the surrounding country, for all its lack 
 of shade trees, reveals considerable fertility and quiet 
 beauty. 
 
 So they called the place Bethlehem, the “House of 
 Bread.” The present Arabic name is essentially the 
 same, Beit Lahm; but the meaning has curiously 
 changed, so that now it signifies the “House of 
 Meat” Bread or meat, the name is still a well 
 chosen one for the largest, best-built and wealthiest 
 Christian town in southern Palestine. Its present 
 population is about 8,000, practically all of whom 
 are Christians. Only a few are Moslems, and there 
 are said to be no Jewish residents at all. 
 
 The town lies along the summit of a ridge which is 
 exactly as high (2,500 feet) as the highest part of 
 Jerusalem; but, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem is sur¬ 
 rounded by slightly loftier hills, so that you do not 
 often see it from any great distance. As you turn 
 in from the main road near Rachel’s Tomb, however, 
 and climb up the slope of Bethlehem’s hill, the whole 
 length of the town is spread out before you; its white, 
 block-like houses, with flat or domed roofs, forming 
 a fairly level sky-line, broken at the left by the cum¬ 
 bersome buildings of the Church of the Nativity, 
 and at the right by the slender white spire of the 
 German Mission. 
 
 The heart of the town is what we might call the 
 Cathedral Square, in front of the Church of the 
 
 r 40 ] 
 
THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD 
 
 Nativity. Even in the summer-time this is crowded 
 with a ‘ bright-colored and talkative assembly of 
 hucksters, beggars, soldiers, monks of half a dozen 
 orders, groups of busy gossips, housewives doing 
 their marketing, loquacious and unreliable guides 
 hoping against hope that some out-of-season tourists 
 will drive down from Jerusalem to the City of David, 
 and innumerable half-naked urchins, ready for any 
 mischief which may present itself. 
 
 The dominant color-note in the scene is given by 
 the singular costume of the women, who invariably 
 wear a long, white, nun-like headdress, which falls 
 over the shoulders and almost to the feet—as though 
 all Bethlehem women belonged to some Sisterhood of 
 the Virgin. And, at least when I was there, the most 
 insistent sound was the chip, chip, chip of the stone¬ 
 masons’ chisels; for new buildings seemed to be in 
 process of erection on nearly every street. Indeed, 
 some of the narrower alleys were almost impassable 
 on account of the piles of clean white limestone 
 blocks. 
 
 On the streets opening from the central square are 
 curio shops and little factories with their double 
 doors wide open, so that you can watch the workmen 
 as they carve trinkets out of olive wood, all of which 
 is supposed to come from the Mount of Olives, or 
 turn vases and saucers out of the black, bituminous 
 “Moses-stone” from the shores of the Dead Sea, or 
 cut elaborate bas-reliefs of sacred scenes on the 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
I 
 
 THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 * 4 
 
 inner, mother-of-pearl surface of large shells which 
 are brought from the Red Sea. Bethlehem is the 
 chief center for the manufacture of such souvenirs, 
 which are carried home each year by a hundred thou¬ 
 sand tourists and pilgrims, and which are also 
 expprted in large quantities to Europe and America. 
 
 At the extreme southeastern end of the town, with 
 its main entrance from the public square and its 
 further walls looking down over an almost precipitous 
 hillside, is the heavy, confused mass of the Church 
 of the Nativity. The original structure is now sur¬ 
 rounded by other churches and chapels and monas¬ 
 teries and religious schools; but our chief interest is, 
 of course, in the central sanctuary, properly called 
 the Church of St. Mary. 
 
 Tradition says that this was built in the year 326 
 by St. Helena, who had discovered in the cave beneath 
 it the birthplace of Christ. At least, it is practically 
 certain that the building was erected some time dur¬ 
 ing the reign of Helena’s son, the Emperor Constan¬ 
 tine the Great, probably about 330 A. D. During the 
 sixteen centuries since then, there have of necessity 
 been frequent alterations and repairs; but so much 
 of the original structure still remains that this must 
 be accounted the most ancient of all existing church 
 edifices, the oldest Christian house of worship in the 
 world. 
 
 Everyone is familiar with the Biblical references 
 to Bethlehem, and its place in the stories of Ruth and 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD 
 
 David and Jesus. It is perhaps not so well known, 
 however, that since then there have been dramatic 
 incidents in connection with the history of the City 
 of David, and that from it there came the most 
 important and influential work of Christian scholar¬ 
 ship. 
 
 I have already referred to the building of the 
 church by the Empress Helena, after which the town 
 became a very famous resort for pilgrims and devotees 
 of all sorts. Fifty years later, the name of another 
 saintly widow was linked with the history of Bethle¬ 
 hem; for here, close by the Church of the Nativity, 
 the rich and noble Roman matron, the Lady Paula, 
 established the most renowned convent of all the early 
 Christian centuries. In connection with the convent, 
 she also maintained a hospice where were entertained 
 travelers who came hither from the outmost confines 
 of the Roman Empire, and where, more than once, 
 poverty-stricken refugees from the troublous districts 
 in Asia Minor and Syria found a welcome shelter. 
 
 The greatest thing which Paula did, however, was 
 to care for the learned and somewhat unpractical 
 Jerome, who came with her to Bethlehem in 386 and 
 dwelt here for the last thirty-five years of his life. 
 His study, so they say, was in a cave adjoining the 
 Grotto of the Nativity. During these thirty-five 
 years, Jerome became known as the greatest living 
 scholar, and the town of his adoption was conse¬ 
 quently the literary center of the world, so that 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 students from all over Christendom came to sit at the 
 feet of the wise and saintly old man. 
 
 Jerome’s literary activity was enormous. From his 
 humble cell at Bethlehem went forth commentaries, 
 translations of the Greek Fathers, controversial ar¬ 
 ticles, and a widely-circulated correspondence which 
 exerted a far-reaching influence upon the religious 
 world of that day. But from the viewpoint of later 
 centuries, all his other work is relatively insignificant 
 in comparison with his revision of the Latin Bible, 
 which has since been known as the “Vulgate.” It 
 was in Bethlehem that there was born the most famous 
 of all translations of Scriptures, and it was under the 
 affectionate care of a woman; for it is hard to believe 
 that Jerome could have lived so long and studied so 
 indefatigably without the wise and tender oversight 
 of the Lady Paula. 
 
 During the centuries of Moslem rule, the city of 
 Bethlehem suffered from fire and pillage, but the 
 church never received serious damage, though it was 
 so often in imminent danger that a whole series of 
 legends have sprung up to explain its miraculous 
 escapes. When the Crusading armies conquered 
 the Holy Land, it was in this ancient church, at the 
 birthplace of the Saviour, on Christmas Day of the 
 year 1101, that Count Baldwin of Flanders was 
 crowned the first Christian king of Palestine. Taking 
 into account the place, the day, the congregation of 
 noble warriors, and the significance of the fact that 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD 
 
 now at last the Holy Sepulchre was wrested from 
 Moslem hands and the Crusading banners waved over 
 the sacred hills, this Christmas coronation must have 
 been one of the most solemn and dramatic events in 
 all history.* 
 
 There are armed soldiers in the church to-day; 
 but alas, they are Turkish soldiers, garrisoned here 
 to keep peace among the antagonistic Christian sects, 
 each of which is very jealous that it may have its full 
 share of the honor of caring for the birthplace of the 
 Prince of Peace. Indeed, the spark which started 
 the Crimean War was one of the frequent conflicts 
 between the Greek and Latin monks in the Church 
 of the Nativity. 
 
 Entering the single central doorway, which was 
 made very low and small in the days when the Chris¬ 
 tian defenders had to stand frequent sieges by Moslem 
 mobs, we see the plain, sombre interior. Double rows 
 of columns on each side separate the nave from the 
 aisles; but all alike are bare of furniture or decora¬ 
 tion, except that underneath the high, small windows 
 can still be seen some badly mutilated mosaics placed 
 there by the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenos 
 in the twelfth century. Across the farther end of the 
 nave and aisles is a strong stone wall, about twenty 
 feet high, which was intended to serve as an inner 
 fortification, in case an attacking party should force 
 
 * See further the author’s “The Christmas City: Bethlehem 
 Across the Ages.” 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 its way through the little entrance door into the 
 church itself. 
 
 The partition wall is pierced by three doors giving 
 access to the transepts and choir, which, in startling 
 contrast to the nave, are brilliantly lighted and are 
 profusely adorned with holy pictures and ornamental 
 lamps and gaudy tapestries. On each side of the 
 altar a narrow flight of steps leads down to the sacred 
 caves beneath the church. 
 
 There are six of these underground chambers, con¬ 
 nected one with the other by narrow passageways. 
 The first and holiest, the Chapel of the Nativity, is a 
 fairly regular oblong chamber, forty feet long, twelve 
 feet wide and about ten feet high. At the eastern 
 end, between the two stairways, is a recess in the wall, 
 richly decorated with marbles and mosaics and heavy 
 altar-cloths and hung around with fifteen lamps of 
 precious metal. Here is the Altar of the Nativity, 
 the heart of the caves, the reason for the ancient 
 church above, and for sixteen centuries the object of 
 the reverent adoration of the whole Christian world. 
 Under the altar there is let into the floor of the recess 
 a silver star with the inscription Hie de Virgine 
 Maria Jesus Christus natus est —“Here Jesus Christ 
 was born of the Virgin Mary.” 
 
 As we face down the cave from the Altar of the 
 Nativity, just at our left is a somewhat larger recess 
 called the Chapel of the Manger, which contains a 
 marble shelf with a wax doll laid on it, and also the 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD ] 
 
 Altar of the Adoration of the Magi. At the other 
 end of the cave there is pointed out a round hole in 
 the wall, from which water is said to have miracu¬ 
 lously burst forth for the use of the Holy Family. 
 
 Here a narrow passage leads abruptly to the right 
 to the second cave, where the angel is said to have 
 appeared to Joseph, commanding him to flee into 
 Egypt. The third cave is the Chapel of the Inno¬ 
 cents where, according to a late tradition, Herod’s 
 soldiers slew several babies whose mothers had hid 
 them here for safety. A recess in the next passage¬ 
 way contains the altar and reputed tomb of Eusebius 
 of Cremona, who was one of the pupils of Jerome. 
 In the wall of the neighboring cave is shown the 
 sepulchre of the saint himself, as well as the tombs 
 of his pupils and protectors, Paula and her daughter 
 Eustochium; but the supposed locations of these last 
 three burial-places have been changed more than once 
 during comparatively recent years. 
 
 The last cave, and the largest except the Chapel 
 of the Nativity, is believed to have been the study of 
 St. Jerome. It may really have been. It is the best 
 finished of the caves, the rock walls are covered with 
 a layer of stone, and there is a little window looking 
 towards the cloisters of the adjoining monastery, 
 which was once reached by a stairway (now closed) 
 directly from the cell. It seems that such an intensely 
 devout student as Jerome would have been very likely 
 to choose to pursue his Biblical studies, and especially 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 to prosecute his great work of translating the Scrip¬ 
 tures, in some such place as this, long hallowed by 
 sacred associations and so close to the scene of 
 the Nativity. 
 
 But is it true—the inscription that runs around 
 the Silver Star yonder? The Moslem guard who 
 stands beside the altar would answer, Allah bya'rif — 
 “God knows !” People have certainly thought it true 
 for a very long while. And indeed, among the rocky 
 hills of Palestine, natural caverns are still not infre¬ 
 quently used as stables. Remember that this par¬ 
 ticular church has marked the spot since the early 
 part of the fourth century. In the third century, 
 Origen speaks of the location of the cavern and the 
 manger as if it were a matter of common knowledge. 
 And even in the second century, Justin Martyr 
 states that Christ was born in a cave. No line of 
 Christian evidence runs much further back than that, 
 except in the New Testament itself. 
 
 It may be so. Yet the air is so heavy with incense 
 and the walls of the cave so overlaid with rich, taste¬ 
 less ornamentation that it is hard to realize here the 
 beautiful simplicity of the Gospel story; and yonder 
 by the Silver Star stands the Turkish soldier with 
 loaded rifle and fixed bayonet, a grim reminder of the 
 smouldering fires of sectarian jealousy which, but for 
 him, would burst forth still more frequently into 
 murderous strife over the very memorials of the 
 Saviour’s birth. 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity is at the extreme left 
 
The choir of the Church of the Nativity, showing the entrance to the sacred caves 
 
THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD 
 
 It may indeed be so. But as many a reverent 
 visitor climbs up the little stairs from the heavy dusk 
 of the holy cave into the dazzling glare of the gaudy 
 church, he sighs, “That may be the place where 
 Christ was born. But I hope not!” 
 
 One summer evening we went from the Church of 
 the Nativity to the beautiful white chapel of the 
 German Mission. There are many Germans in Pales¬ 
 tine to-day.. Their five or six little groups of farms 
 represent the nearest approach to any kind of suc¬ 
 cessful colonization of the Holy Land. The German 
 hotels are to the tired traveler as the shadow of a 
 great rock in a weary land; and the German peasant 
 homes, German missions, German hospitals and 
 placid, saintly German “sisters” are about the most 
 clean, cool, wholesome, godly things to be found 
 amid all the feverish rivalry and crass idolatry of 
 modern Palestine. Since I have been in the land of 
 the Bible, I have more sympathy with those quaint 
 mediaeval paintings which represent the Madonna with 
 pronounced Teutonic features. 
 
 So we left the clamor and nervous bustle of the 
 Bethlehem bazaars, and the thickly scented air of the 
 ancient cathedral, and went at sunset to the cool, 
 quiet little German church—the “Christmas church,” 
 they call it—and there we sat and watched the night 
 shadows lengthen between the clean white columns 
 while, just for us, the sweet-faced sister played on 
 
 [ 49 ] 
 
 4 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the organ the tender melody of “Stille Nacht, Heilige 
 Nacht.” 
 
 No matter in which particular cavern-stable the 
 Christ Child may have been laid! Here, in the midst 
 of peace and love and self-devotion, we found the real 
 heart of the Christmas City. 
 
 [ 50 ] 
 
V 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 W HILE I do not retract what was said in an 
 earlier chapter about the safety of travel in 
 Palestine, it should be added that, when 
 visiting the city of Hebron, the tourist should be 
 accompanied by a dragoman (courier), and should 
 exercise more than usual care to avoid offending the 
 sensibilities of the Moslem inhabitants, who are 
 notorious for their fanaticism and insolence. My 
 friend and I had some extra seats in our carriage, so 
 we invited two young Jerusalem acquaintances to 
 accompany us on our trip to Hebron; and we were 
 surprised to find that these boys, though born in 
 Palestine and speaking fluent Arabic, did not want 
 to walk through the city streets until they had found 
 a friendly Moslem to accompany our party. Even 
 then we met with black looks and muttered curses. 
 
 No traveler should think for a moment of omitting 
 this ancient city from his itinerary: even ladies jour¬ 
 neying without male escorts must surely go to 
 Hebron. But the stranger must walk somewhat cir¬ 
 cumspectly, and must avoid any appearance of irrev¬ 
 erence or levity, when visiting the holy places. 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 Indeed, it would be a very light-minded person who 
 could be guilty of irreverence in face of the vast 
 antiquity and sacred history of Hebron. Both Jews 
 and Moslems count it as one of the four sacred cities 
 of the world, which, according to the Jews, are Safed, 
 Tiberias, Jerusalem, Hebron; according to the Mos¬ 
 lems, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Hebron. It is 
 probably the oldest city in Palestine; for it is said 
 (Numbers 13:22) to have been built seven years 
 before ancient Zoan (Tanis) in Egypt. Josephus, 
 writing over 1,800 years ago, reckoned the age of 
 Hebron then to be 2,300 years; and for once the 
 enthusiastic Jewish historian may have made his 
 figures too small. An old tradition says that Adam 
 died here, and many mediaeval travelers speak of 
 having seen his tomb. His footprint is still shown in 
 a slab preserved within the sacred enclosure. Some 
 say, however, that the footprint is that of Mohammed. 
 
 Coming from legends to facts, it is certain that 
 there was a heathen sanctuary at Hebron long before 
 the Hebrews entered Canaan. Outside of the city 
 were pitched the tents of the great Bedouin sheikh 
 Abraham. Here Isaac was born, and Sarah died, 
 and the patriarchs were buried. Here dwelt the 
 gigantic Sons of Anak, whose prowess struck such 
 terror to the hearts of the timorous Hebrew tribes 
 encamped at Kadesh-barnea. Hither Samson brought 
 the gates of the Philistine city of Gaza. Here David 
 reigned over Judah seven and a half years, until he 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 was here anointed king over all Israel; and here the 
 traitor Absalom plotted rebellion against his royal 
 father. 
 
 During the troublous years just before and after 
 the beginning of our era, civil war often raged 
 around the city, and the stronghold was captured and 
 recaptured by Edomite raiders and Jewish patriots 
 and Roman legions. From the seventh to the eleventh 
 centuries, Hebron was under Moslem rule. Then the 
 Crusaders held it for almost a hundred years, until 
 in 1187 it fell into the hands of the great Saladin, 
 since when it has remained in undisputed possession 
 of the Moslems. 
 
 The name of the city has changed, too, with its 
 changing masters. First it was called Kiriath-arba, 
 or “Four-town” (compare Tripoli, which means 
 “Three-town”). The Hebrews knew it as Hebron, 
 which signifies “Association” or “Confederation.” 
 The Crusaders referred to it as “The Castle of St. 
 Abraham.” The Moslems, who speak of Abraham as 
 “the Friend of God” (compare James £:23), have 
 named after the patriarch this city of his adoption, 
 which is usually called simply el-Khalil —“the 
 Friend.” 
 
 The valley of Hebron, which runs from northwest 
 to southeast, is fertile and well cultivated. The city 
 itself lies in the neck of the valley, at an elevation of 
 over 3,000 feet above the sea. The houses string 
 along the north side of the highroad for about a mile 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 and, at the lower end of town, cluster thickly together 
 in the neighborhood of the great mosque and the 
 public reservoir. This last, like the largest pool at 
 Jerusalem, is called the Birket es-Sultdn. It is prob¬ 
 ably the same “pool in Hebron” beside which David 
 caused to be hanged the hands and feet of the mur¬ 
 derers of Ish-bosheth; for the gruesome warnings 
 would naturally be posted in the most frequented 
 part of the city, which, in Palestine, is always the 
 square by the public reservoir or fountain. 
 
 As has been ’intimated, the eighteen or twenty 
 thousand inhabitants of Hebron are nearly all Mos¬ 
 lems, and of a very fanatical type. Some fifteen 
 hundred poverty-stricken Jews live across the road 
 from the main town, and cultivate their little vine¬ 
 yards, and step very softly in the presence of their 
 Moslem rulers. Of native Christians, there are none 
 at all. 
 
 Hebron is the largest city south of Jerusalem and, 
 in spite of its great age, it is a busy, modern manu¬ 
 facturing town—that is, for Palestine. The houses 
 are mostly well-built and two stories in height, which 
 is not usual in this part of the country. Almost 
 every house—indeed, almost every room—is sur¬ 
 mounted by a dome. Even the flat roofs, and the 
 floors of the second stories, are levelled over domed 
 ceilings beneath; because wood for building purposes 
 is very rare and expensive. There are few places in 
 Palestine where there are trees large enough and 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
Hebron, showing the ancient pool and the Haram with its two minarets 
 
The stairway leading to the Hebron Haram 
 
 ■ 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 straight enough to cut into heavy timbers, and a con¬ 
 siderable proportion of the imports, therefore, con¬ 
 sists of lumber and, latterly, iron girders. 
 
 The manufactures and trade of Hebron have long 
 been famous. Glass-making has been an important 
 industry here ever since the Middle Ages; and there 
 are large tanneries which manufacture water-bottles 
 made out of the whole hides of goats. The mer¬ 
 chants of the place are very enterprising. They not 
 only carry on a large business all over southern Pal¬ 
 estine, but travel eastward far across the Jordan, 
 and have warehouses on the edge of the desert, from 
 which they supply the wandering Arab tribes. 
 
 Long centuries ago, while one of the friendly tribes 
 of Bedouin shepherds from Mesopotamia was winter¬ 
 ing on the edge of Hebron, the sheikh’s wife died, 
 and the bereaved chief bought from one of the towns¬ 
 men a small field, with trees in it and with a natural 
 cavern, which he could use as a sepulchre for his 
 dead. “So Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the 
 cave of the field of Machpelah, east of Mamre (the 
 same is Hebron). And the field, and the cave that is 
 therein, were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites for 
 a burying place.” 
 
 To-day that cave is not only one of the most an¬ 
 cient and sacred of sepulchres; it presents one of the 
 most baffling problems which confront the Biblical 
 archaeologist. 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 The genuineness of the traditional burial-place of 
 the patriarchs at Hebron is better attested than that 
 of any other holy place in Palestine of commensurate 
 importance, and thousands of American tourists have 
 stood almost within arm’s length of Abraham’s tomb; 
 but, so far as we know, no man now living has ever 
 stepped within that cavern sepulchre. The Moslems 
 guard it, but no Moslem dares enter it; not even 
 the governor of Jerusalem. Perhaps no spot on earth 
 possesses such a combination of hoary antiquity, re¬ 
 ligious interest and fascinating mystery. 
 
 The massive, fortress-like structure which com¬ 
 pletely encloses the rock of the cave is by far the 
 most prominent object in Hebron; yet history is 
 strangely silent as to when or by whom these great 
 stone walls were erected. Architecturally, they seem 
 to belong to the period of Herod. They may, how¬ 
 ever, be much older than that. According to one 
 tradition, the jinns (demons) built them. The an¬ 
 cient ramparts of hard, gray limestone are 197 feet 
 long, 111 feet wide and in places 40 feet high. Some 
 of the stones are very large; one measures over 
 twenty-four feet in length. Above this imposing and 
 well-built structure rises another, comparatively mod¬ 
 em wall, which is plastered, whitewashed and ugly. 
 At diagonally opposite comers of the quadrangle are 
 lofty minarets, and along the short sides flights of 
 stone steps lead to a long open gallery between the 
 inner and outer walls, and thence to the interior plat- 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 form, which is about eighteen feet above the lowest 
 ground immediately adjoining the structure. 
 
 But when you visit Hebron, you will not go up 
 either of these stairways; for no “infidel” may as¬ 
 cend them. Near the bottom of one flight is a hole 
 in the wall, about the size of a man’s arm, which is 
 said to lead into the sepulchre itself. Here the poor 
 Jews of Hebron gather on Friday evenings, at the 
 beginning of their Sabbath, and weep and lament, 
 as they do at the Wailing Place in Jerusalem. 
 Often they write letters to “Father Abraham,” which 
 they drop through this opening into his sepulchre. 
 Christians are allowed to ascend as far as the seventh 
 step on the southeast stairway; but to attempt to go 
 farther than this would result in being beaten, and 
 possibly killed, by the fanatical custodians of the 
 mosque. When I even rested my foot on the eighth 
 step, the crowd around me began to scowl and mutter, 
 and the Moslem friend who was with me seemed very 
 anxious to hurry me away. I have never felt more 
 baffled and tantalized than when I stood there, so 
 close to the inviting steps and the massive, mysterious 
 walls, which, alas, have been for more than seven 
 hundred years hardm —sacred—forbidden—to me 
 and to all the Western world! 
 
 There have, however, been a few extraordinary ex¬ 
 ceptions to the rule excluding non-Moslems. The 
 first of modern Christians to enter the sacred en¬ 
 closure was Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, who 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 visited the Hebron Haram in the year 1862, accom¬ 
 panied by a small retinue, which included Dean Stan¬ 
 ley, to whom we owe the first clear description of the 
 interior. It was exceedingly difficult for even the 
 heir to the British throne to obtain the coveted per¬ 
 mission, which was finally granted only after lengthy 
 negotiations, in the course of which the tremendous 
 influence of Great Britain was brought to bear upon 
 the Turkish officials. The governor of Jerusalem 
 seems to have been sincerely concerned for the safety 
 of the young prince; and his route to Hebron was 
 guarded by thousands of Turkish soldiers, who at 
 places stood literally elbow to elbow, for fear some 
 fanatical Moslem might attempt to kill the sacrile¬ 
 gious “infidel.” As a further precaution, the towns¬ 
 folk were apparently forbidden to leave their houses 
 or even to stand by the windows, for the prince’s 
 party rode through dead, deserted streets to the holy 
 enclosure. When Albert Edward entered the shrine 
 of Abraham, the chief custodian of the mosque ex¬ 
 claimed, “The prince of any other nation should have 
 passed over my dead body sooner than enter here!” 
 
 Since 1862, on a few other occasions, about half a 
 dozen in all, very distinguished Franks have been 
 allowed to visit the Haram. In 1882, the princes 
 Albert Victor and George (now King George) fol¬ 
 lowed in their father’s footsteps; and among Ameri¬ 
 cans to be thus favored were our ministers to Turkey, 
 Terrill and Lew Wallace, accompanied respectively 
 
 [ 58 ] 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 bj my friends, Dr. Henry Otis Dwight, then of Con¬ 
 stantinople,* and the late Consul-general Merrill, of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 The southeast end of the quadrangle is entirely 
 taken up by a mosque, whose gabled roof can be 
 seen rising above the exterior wall of the Haram. 
 In front of the mosque a four-arched porch opens 
 into a small court, which is the only unroofed part 
 of the sacred enclosure. Beyond this court are a 
 number of small, irregular rooms. 
 
 The mosque, like so many others in Palestine, was 
 originally a Christian church, built by the Crusa¬ 
 ders in the twelfth century. It is about seventy feet 
 long by ninety wide, and is Gothic in architecture. 
 Four large clustered columns support the groined 
 roof and separate the nave from the low, broad 
 aisles. The floor of the mosque is covered with Turk¬ 
 ish rugs. The walls are overlaid with marble to a 
 height of six feet, above which runs an ornamental 
 band of intricately interwoven Arabic inscriptions. 
 The columns are whitewashed and their capitals are 
 painted yellow; so that, as in almost every Moslem 
 sanctuary, the general effect is of tawdry and care¬ 
 less disrepair, with all the beauty of the structure 
 concentrated on a few of the most holy spots. 
 
 In the center of the southeast wall, toward the 
 
 * I am indebted to Dr. Dwight for permission to reproduce 
 his rare photograph of the interior of the Hebron mosque. 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 r 
 
 ) 
 
 R00M3 
 
 OPEN COURT 
 
 ip<t 
 
 Pr*y«rR«e*»a 
 
 holy city of Mecca, is the highly decorated mihrab y 
 or prayer-recess, to the right of which rises the tall 
 pulpit, with its domed canopy. Near the center of 
 
 the building (at 
 the extreme left 
 of the photo- 
 g r a ph ) is the 
 large platform 
 from which the 
 Koran is publicly 
 read; and at the 
 sides of the nave 
 are the shrines of 
 Isaac and Re¬ 
 becca, with their 
 walls of striped 
 brown and red 
 stone, their win¬ 
 dows barred with 
 metal grill-work, 
 and their slant¬ 
 ing roofs covered 
 with heavy cloths. 
 
 Not counting the 
 so-called Tomb of 
 
 Joseph, which lies outside the Haram proper, six cen¬ 
 otaphs, or formal tombs, of the patriarchs and their 
 wives are arranged in pairs, about equidistantly along 
 the length of the quadrangle, and are believed by the 
 
 RniTAncc 
 
 M U E 
 
 ' Petdinf Platform 
 
 ♦/ 
 
 I I 3hrinao 
 
 MINAKBT 
 
 The Hebron Mosque. The broken lines 
 show the portion included in the photo¬ 
 graph of the interior 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 Moslems to be placed each exactly over the real 
 tomb in the cave beneath. The cenotaphs of Jacob 
 and Leah are in two of the small chambers at the 
 northwest end. It will be remembered that Rachel was 
 buried on the way to Bethlehem. The monuments to 
 Abraham and Sarah are in octagonal chapels in the 
 porch. Only the shrines of Isaac and Rebecca are 
 within the mosque proper. 
 
 It seems strange to us that Isaac should be thus 
 honored above his great father; but the Moslems ex¬ 
 plain that, while Abraham was kindly and forgiving, 
 as was shown by his intercessions on behalf of wicked 
 Sodom, his son Isaac was of a very hot-tempered and 
 jealous disposition, and would cause trouble if he 
 were not given the best place—which is in peculiar 
 contradiction to the Biblical description of the gentle, 
 thoughtful shepherd prince. 
 
 Because of this irascible disposition of Isaac, it is 
 thought better for even Moslems to avoid entering his 
 shrine; and it is related that when Ibrahim Pasha, 
 the Egyptian conqueror of Palestine, attempted to 
 go into the holy place, he was driven out by the en¬ 
 raged patriarch. Christian visitors have been allowed 
 to inspect the shrines of Abraham and Jacob (after 
 a fervent prayer by the custodians that the great 
 men would pardon the intrusion), but it was not con¬ 
 sidered proper for men to enter the sanctuaries of 
 the women. 
 
 The interiors of all the shrines can be seen, how- 
 
 [ 61 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 ever, through the barred windows. The inside walls 
 are cased with marble and ornamented with gilt in¬ 
 scriptions in Arabic script. Lamps hang here and 
 there. Copies of the Koran lie on low supports. 
 Banners rest against some of the cenotaphs, which 
 are coffin-shaped and covered with richly embroid¬ 
 ered cloths, green (the Moslem holy color) for the 
 men and crimson for the women. 
 
 But all that has thus far been described is above 
 ground; for the Moslems hold the burial-place of the 
 patriarchs in such awe that even they do not dare 
 enter the real sepulchre which presumably lies be¬ 
 neath the mosque. They say that 2,500 years ago a 
 servant of a great king ventured within the awful 
 precincts. He went in, a perfectly healthy man and 
 of unusual corpulence: he came out shortly after¬ 
 wards blind, deaf, emaciated and crippled. Thus do 
 the patriarchs punish impertinent intruders upon 
 their chosen seclusion! 
 
 There are probably several small openings from the 
 mosque to the cave, though those in the floor are now 
 hidden by rugs. But near the front wail of the build¬ 
 ing (at c in the plan) is a stone like a well-curb, with 
 a circular opening a foot in diameter, below which a 
 somewhat larger shaft leads down into a lower room, 
 about twelve feet square.* The floor of this room, 
 
 * Dr. Dwight informs me, however, that when his party visited 
 the Haram, they were not shown the opening at c at all; but 
 were allowed to look through a hole in the floor (6) at the 
 
 [ 62 ] 
 
Interior of the Mosque of Machpelah. (See the plan on page 60) 
 
Moslems of Palestine 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MACHPELAH 
 
 which is at about a level with the ground outside the 
 enclosure, is strewn with sheets of paper containing 
 petitions to the patriarchs, and shows evidences of 
 being periodically cleaned by the keepers of the 
 mosque. It is apparently an antechamber to the 
 cave; for in one of its whitewashed walls is a little 
 doorway. 
 
 What lies beyond that door will doubtless remain 
 a mystery as long as the Moslems govern Palestine. 
 The custodians say that there is a cavern consisting 
 of two chambers; and we are reminded that the name 
 Machpelah apparently means “double.” But what 
 will the travelers of some future generation see when 
 they finally penetrate the gloom of that ancient tomb P 
 Is it true, as old Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela wrote 
 seven hundred years ago, that six tombs are there, 
 arranged in pairs, and that one of these bears the 
 inscription, “This is the sepulchre of our father 
 Abraham, upon whom be peace”? Would it be pos¬ 
 sible for the mummy of Jacob, which was embalmed 
 in Egypt before it was carried hither for burial, to 
 withstand the ravages of time in the damper climate 
 of Palestine, until at last ipen shall look upon the 
 very countenance of the “Prince of God,” as they 
 
 other end of the mosque, alongside the pulpit. This was said 
 to lead directly into the cave; but nothing could be distin¬ 
 guished below, on account of the dazzling light of a lamp which 
 hung in the shaft. The patriarchs, according to the custodians 
 of the mosque, do not like to be left in darkness. 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 have already looked upon the Pharaoh who oppressed 
 the Children of Israel? These are some of the jeal¬ 
 ously guarded secrets of the forbidden tomb of Mach- 
 pelah. 
 
 * 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
VI 
 
 The dome of the rock 
 
 I N any panorama of the Holy City, the most prom¬ 
 inent feature is the large, level, open space to 
 the southeast, in the center of which rises the 
 symmetrical Mosque of Omar, the only beautiful 
 building in Jerusalem. 
 
 The surrounding area, which is about sixteen hun¬ 
 dred feet long from north to south and a thousand 
 feet wide, is called by the Moslems the Haram esli- 
 Sherif or “Noble Sanctuary,” and is considered by 
 them the most sacred place on earth, save only the 
 Great Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. On the 
 west and north is the unkempt jumble of crowded, 
 dirty-white buildings, above whose myriad domes 
 rises an occasional minaret or belfry; at the south 
 the hillside descends very rapidly to the hollow of 
 Gehenna; at the east is an almost perpendicular drop 
 of a hundred feet to the bottom of the Kidron Valley, 
 beyond which rises the Mount of Olives. The greater 
 part of Jerusalem, as well as the Mount of Olives, is 
 considerably higher than the Haram e sh-Slier if; and 
 yet it would be hard to conceive of a more striking 
 situation for a sanctuary than this huge shelf at the 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
 5 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 edge of the city, overlooking the valley. Even if 
 there were no historical indications, we should be sure 
 that this must be the site which was chosen for the 
 ancient Temple. 
 
 It is only from a distance, however, that the Haram 
 appears level. It is really gently rolling, except in 
 the center, where there is a platform ten feet higher, 
 paved with stone and marble. This inner platform 
 is 550 feet long. It is entered through eight orna¬ 
 mental arcades, which are known as the “Scales,” 
 because upon them at the Judgment Day will be bal¬ 
 anced the scales in which the good and evil deeds of 
 men will be weighed. 
 
 No one may enter here except with shoeless feet, 
 or, in the case of Frank.<,* with the shoes covered by 
 great yellow slippers, which are provided for the pur¬ 
 pose. Indeed the whole Haram area is considered so 
 sacred that it would be unsafe for Christians to visit 
 it without the protection of the soldiers provided by 
 the Turkish governor. I have been cursed for merely 
 looking too intently at one of the outer gates. 
 
 There are a number of other holy structures 
 around the central building. The Dome of the Chain 
 is a kind of miniature copy of the Mosque of Omar. 
 It receives its name from the Moslem tradition that 
 
 * The word “Frank” (Arabic Franji, i. e., originally, a 
 Frenchman), as now employed in Palestine, denotes either a 
 European or American. It is not an invidious term; that is, as 
 ordinarily used, it does not imply either superiority or inferior¬ 
 ity on the part of the foreigner. 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
The Mosque of Omar from the south 
 
The Koran, open at the first chapter, on the right-hand page 
 
THE DOME OF THE ROCK 
 
 Solomon stretched across its entrance a chain which 
 was endowed with miraculous powers, so that, if it 
 was touched by a false witness, a link fell off. A 
 second domed sanctuary commemorates Mohammed’s 
 famous journey to Heaven; and still another “dome” 
 is dedicated to St. George.* 
 
 There is also an ablution fountain and an elaborate 
 marble pulpit, where sermons are preached on Fri¬ 
 days in the fast-month of Ramadan. At the extreme 
 southern end of the Haram is el-Aksa , the “Farth¬ 
 est” Mosque ( i . e. from Mecca), which was erected 
 in the sixth century as a Christian church by the 
 Emperor Justinian (the same who built St. Sophia 
 in Constantinople) ; but which Mohammed said had 
 been a shrine of Islam long before he received his 
 divine revelation. 
 
 But surpassing all else in beauty and interest is the 
 Mosque of Omar, named after the third caliph, who 
 conquered Palestine in the year 636. According to 
 all the Arabian historians, however, this building was 
 erected fifty years later by the Caliph Abd el-Melek. 
 
 * The saint is said to have been a Christian military officer, 
 of a noble Cappadocian family, who suffered martyrdom in 
 303 A. D. at Lydda, where a famous pilgrimage church was 
 erected over his tomb. The story of his killing the dragon is, 
 of course, a transference of Perseus’ exploit at Jaffa, which, in 
 turn, is derived from the widespread Semitic myth about the 
 destruction of the primeval chaos-monster. Strangely enough, 
 this Christian martyr is a favorite hero of the Moslems, who 
 call him el-Khudr, “the Ever-green” ( i . e., the undying), and 
 frequently confuse him with Elijah. He was adopted as the 
 patron saint of England by the crusading king, Richard I. 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 The mosque is not very large. In shape it is of 
 an octagon whose sides measure only sixty-seven feet, 
 and the top of the crescent over the dome is but one 
 hundred and fifteen feet above the ground. The ex¬ 
 terior is coated with marble as high as the sills of the 
 fifty-six windows which encircle the building, above 
 which are porcelain tiles in the favorite Moslem 
 colors of green, white and blue. The lines are so 
 simple, the coloring so warm and the arabesque orna¬ 
 mentation at once so elaborate and so tasteful that 
 this mosque, which was built only two generations 
 after the wild Arab tribes began to rally under the 
 banner of Mohammed, remains to this day one of the 
 most perfect of all religious edifices. There is noth¬ 
 ing in Jerusalem to be compared with it architec¬ 
 turally ; and as a house of worship it is so rich and 
 clean and quiet that, with the exception of a few 
 Latin monasteries and Protestant missions, it is by far 
 the most sacred-seeming place in all the Holy City. 
 
 It is no wonder that the illiterate Crusaders took 
 this splendid building for the Temple of Solomon 
 itself. But they re-dedicated it with acts worthy 
 of infamous Herod; for here, according to their own 
 reports, they massacred more than ten thousand 
 Moslems who had fled to the Haram for refuge. 
 
 We pass within the mosque through a doorway 
 which is magnificently decorated with complicated 
 geometrical designs and interwoven Arabic texts. I 
 have lived long enough in the Turkish Empire to 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
THE DOME OF THE ROCK 
 
 know something of the horrors of Moslem rule; and 
 yet I feel that no one should enter this wonderful 
 sanctuary, which marks a spot reverenced for thir¬ 
 teen centuries by sincere believers in the religion of 
 Islam, and before that for twice thirteen centuries 
 the scene of solemn worship, who does not first read 
 the Arabic inscription above the portal—the invoca¬ 
 tion with which every chapter of the Koran begins— 
 Bismillah , er-Rahrridn, er-Rahim , 
 
 “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compas¬ 
 sionate !” 
 
 The interior is open and spacious. It is about 
 one hundred and seventy-five feet in diameter, and is 
 divided by marble columns into three parts: a central 
 enclosure and two concentric circular aisles. As is so 
 often the case in Moslem houses of worship, the stones 
 were many of them taken from earlier buildings; so 
 that a close inspection shows differences in size, form 
 and color. Doubtless some of these materials were 
 taken from the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, which 
 was erected on this spot by the heathen emperor 
 Hadrian. The accompanying illustration shows how 
 some of the columns have marble blocks placed above 
 the capitals, so that the cornice may be level.* 
 
 * Speaking of the photograph, I do not know how it hap¬ 
 pened, but in this very sanctum sanctorum of fanaticism, I 
 was allowed to gather together a number of rugs, pile them 
 breast-high near the outer wall as a support for my camera, 
 and then take a time exposure, without being interfered with 
 even to the extent of being importuned for bakhsheesh. 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 The upper part of the walls is adorned by bright- 
 colored mosaics, above which runs a broad blue band, 
 bearing in golden Cufic letters verses from the Koran 
 which refer to Christ, denying His divinity, but hon¬ 
 oring Him as the greatest of all prophets. Indeed, 
 so highly do the Moslems revere ‘/sd, as they call 
 Him, that a person daring to curse Christ in the 
 Moslem city of Damascus would be torn to pieces by 
 the infuriated Moslem mob. 
 
 Around the central section of the mosque is a 
 wrought-iron screen placed there by the Crusaders. 
 Within it is a second, smaller screen of wood, and 
 then, in the very heart of the mosque there is—a 
 rock! A limestone rock about fifty feet in diameter, 
 and rising six or seven feet above the floor. That is 
 all. Yet so famous is the stone that the Arabic name 
 for the mosque is Kubbet es-Sakhra , “The Dome of 
 the Rock.” So sacred is it that in Moslem eyes it 
 has no rival on earth, except that other stone, the 
 Black Stone in the Kctaba at Mecca. 
 
 Around this holy rock cluster numberless legends. 
 According to Jewish tradition, it was here that Abra¬ 
 ham and Melchizedek sacrificed together to the Most 
 High God; and here also that Abraham would have 
 offered up his son Isaac; and here that Jacob 
 poured out his libation to Jehovah. This was the 
 central point of the world, where the Ark of the 
 Covenant rested. Indeed, the ark still lies buried 
 beneath it. On this rock was written the mysterious, 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
THE DOME OF THE ROCK 
 
 unspeakable name of God, which Jesus succeeded in 
 deciphering, and consequently was enabled by its aid 
 to work His miracles. More probable is the suppo¬ 
 sition that the altar of the Temple stood here; for 
 traces of a channel for carrying off the blood of the 
 sacrifices can still be seen. 
 
 The Moslems believe that at the Last Day the 
 Ka'aba of Mecca will be miraculously transported to 
 the Mosque of Omar, and then upon this rock will be 
 set the judgment throne of God. 
 
 Underneath the rock is quite a large cavern, in 
 which the custodians show the places where Abra¬ 
 ham, David, Solomon and Elijah used to come to 
 pray. Mohammed prayed here also, and declared 
 that one prayer here was worth a thousand anywhere 
 else. The prophet seems to have been unusually tall, 
 for when he rose from prayer he left the impression 
 of his head upon the ceiling. When he went on that 
 wonderful night journey to the celestial regions, his 
 steed el-Burak flew with him right through the roof 
 of the cavern. The hole is still shown! The rock 
 • tried to follow Mohammed, and you can see the print 
 which Gabriel’s thumb made when he held it down; 
 also the “tongue” of stone which praised the Prophet 
 of Allah, and presumably besought the archangel not 
 to restrain the rock’s impetuous flight. 
 
 The great stone is suspended over empty space, or 
 (a more popular view) it covers the entrance to hell. 
 In the center of the cave is a loose slab of stone, and 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the floor does indeed sound hollow when you knock it. 
 The slab is comparatively new. It is said that until 
 quite recent years, people used to come here and con¬ 
 verse intimately with the souls of the departed. But 
 a certain widow, who was more than usually talkative, 
 carried so much gossip back and forth that she caused 
 trouble in Jerusalem and also in—the other place. 
 Finally the uproar below became so outrageous that 
 the opening had to be closed in order to prevent fur¬ 
 ther mischief making. 
 
 The level surface of the Hararn esh-Slierif is 
 largely built-up artificially. The Moslems say that 
 the mysterious substructures were constructed by 
 the aid of demons. These are massive and spacious 
 beyond description, and probably were begun thou¬ 
 sands of years ago. Here are the great, vaulted 
 “Stables of Solomon,” where at least the Crusaders 
 did keep their horses. And here are cisterns innumer¬ 
 able. Some of them could not be surveyed without a 
 boat. One is so large that it is called in Arabic a 
 “sea.” It has a capacity of upwards of two million 
 gallons. 
 
 Coming out again into the daylight, we climb the 
 eastern wall of the Haram for a view of the city, 
 which rises like an amphitheatre above us, and a 
 splendid prospect past the Mount of Olives to the 
 hills of the Judean Wilderness, and one dizzying 
 glance down the outside of the wall—seventy feet 
 straight down—to the steep slope of the Valley of 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
Interior of the Mosque of Omar. The Rock lies within the 
 central enclosure, at the right of the picture 
 
The sacred Rock at the center of the Mosque of Omar, 
 which has been reverenced from time immemorial 
 
 
THE DOME OF THE ROCK 
 
 Kidron. And then we notice a horizontal column 
 sticking out of the wall near the top, in a most pecu¬ 
 liar and apparently unnecessary position. 
 
 According to the Moslems, when the end of the 
 world comes, Jesus will sit on the wall above the 
 column and Mohammed on the Mount of Olives, and 
 between them a rope will be stretched, over which all 
 men must attempt to pass. The righteous will suc¬ 
 ceed, but the wicked will fall and be annihilated in 
 the valley far below. 
 
 According to another form of the tradition, only 
 a spider’s thread will bridge the chasm. Christians 
 and Jews will strive to cross on it and will all be 
 destroyed. Then the Moslems will be filled with ter¬ 
 ror and will beseech Mohammed to help them; where¬ 
 upon the complacent prophet will transform himself 
 into a ram; the faithful will be turned into fleas and, 
 jumping into the fleece of the ram, will be carried 
 safely over. » 
 
 Thus—not only in Jerusalem, but all over Pales¬ 
 tine—are the sublime and the ridiculous inextricably 
 tangled together, and the most impressive localities 
 and holy associations marred by foolish nursery tales. 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
VII 
 
 THE WALL OF TEARS 
 
 A CHAPTER on the Jews of Jerusalem should 
 be very short, though that cannot keep it 
 from being very sad. They number fifty 
 thousand or more—two-thirds of the entire popula¬ 
 tion—and have over seventy synagogues, besides 
 hospitals and schools and other well-equipped benevo¬ 
 lent institutions. But they do not belong in Jerusa¬ 
 lem. I mean, they are not Palestinian Jews. They 
 are German Jews or Spanish Jews or Russian Jews 
 or Dutch Jews. With negligible exceptions, this is 
 true of their few other settlements throughout the 
 Land of Israel. There are ten times as many Jews 
 in New York City as in all Palestine, and those in 
 New York feel ten times more at home. 
 
 The Jews in Jerusalem are strangers and aliens; 
 and they look it. Large numbers of them cannot 
 even talk the language of the country (Arabic), and 
 among themselves there are in use several widely 
 differing dialects of Yiddish. They are unfamiliar 
 and ill at ease in the land of their fathers. The old 
 people seem very careworn and sorrowful. Even the 
 young men look listless and woe-begone. But there 
 
 [ 74 ] 
 
THE WALL OF TEARS 
 
 are not many young men. The typical Jerusalem 
 Jew is one who has come here to die and be buried 
 in sacred soil. 
 
 Some are American citizens—of the type of a 
 certain Aaron Lowenstein whom I met one day at our 
 consulate, where he was pleading for the protection 
 of the Stars and Stripes against some act of Turkish 
 oppression; pleading through an interpreter, because 
 Aaron himself could not speak a word of English! 
 I think, however, that he had really been in the 
 United States. But in many cases the New York 
 Jew practises Zionism, so to speak, by proxy. He 
 becomes naturalized—after a year or two in America. 
 Then he secures a passport, which he mails to his 
 father or uncle in Russia. Whereupon the old man 
 makes his way straight to Jerusalem, where his pov¬ 
 erty and helplessness cause endless trouble to the 
 patient officials of “his” consulate. 
 
 Zionism is one of the great idealistic movements of 
 this materialistic generation, and too high praise 
 cannot be given for the unselfishness and optimism 
 and loyalty of the wealthy Jews in Europe and 
 America, who have contributed so generously to the 
 support of their co-religionists in the immigrant 
 colonies in Palestine. But, as I have often told in¬ 
 quiring Jewish friends, the whole question of the 
 Zionist movement can be summed up in one sentence. 
 Palestine is essentially an agricultural country, and 
 the modern Jew will not farm. The German colo- 
 
 [751 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 nists will farm; and their little settlements in the 
 Holy Land are quite successful. But if the flood of 
 benefactions from the West should cease, the kind of 
 Jew who will live in Palestine would rather starve 
 than work the piece of land which has been given 
 him. Of course, that is a generalization to which 
 there are striking individual exceptions. But as a 
 broad statement, it is sufficiently exact. 
 
 “Would you go back?” I ask my Jewish friends in 
 New York—fine, manly, ambitious young lawyers 
 and teachers and merchants, who are succeeding so 
 well in this new Land of Promise—“Would you leave 
 America for Palestine?” They throw back their 
 heads and laugh at the mere suggestion. 
 
 The platform where their ancient temple used to 
 stand is closed to the Jews. It would probably mean 
 death for them to enter its jealously guarded pre¬ 
 cincts. They would be in as great danger if curiosity 
 should draw them to the Church of the Holy Sepul¬ 
 chre. Once while I was in Jerusalem, a young Italian 
 who w r as strolling about the building was mistaken 
 for a Jew, and was beaten nearly to death by the 
 infuriated Christians before their mistake was dis¬ 
 covered. Even if the Jews were granted permission 
 to visit the Haram esh-Sherif, they would not dare 
 avail themselves of it, for fear of committing the 
 deadly sin of treading unwittingly upon the Holy of 
 Holies. 
 
 But there is an alley within the city, which runs 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
Jews of Jerusalem 
 
The famous Wailing Place, showing the massive stones of the 
 ancient wall, before which the Jews of Jerusalem mourn 
 over the vanished glory of Israel 
 
THE WALL OF TEARS 
 
 for a hundred and fifty feet along the outside of the 
 foundations of the Haram. The wall here is unusu¬ 
 ally high and strongly constructed, and the lower 
 courses, which are built up of huge blocks of stone, 
 may have been a part of the original substructures 
 of the platform on which stood the royal palace and 
 the Temple. 
 
 This alley by the old gray wall is the far-famed 
 “Wailing Place.” Here the poor Jews, exiles in their 
 own land, can at least press their lips to the cold 
 stones and weep over the desolation of Jerusalem. 
 Pilgrims from the distant countries of their adoption 
 come here to worship, and to make solemn vows, in 
 commemoration of which they stick long nails be¬ 
 tween the stones. Some carve their names in Hebrew 
 letters upon the wall, or with candles smoke pious 
 prayers for the peace of Jerusalem on the weather¬ 
 beaten surface. Some wail and shriek and tear their 
 garments and their hair. But the old, old men just 
 sit here all day long, and nod over their prayer books, 
 and dream of the departed glory of Israel. 
 
 The place is seldom empty of these melancholy 
 worshippers; but the largest crowds are seen on 
 Friday evenings, at the beginning of the Jewish 
 Sabbath, when they gather in their holy-day gar¬ 
 ments and chant responsively their mournful litany— 
 
 “For the palace that is destroyed; 
 
 We sit in solitude and mourn. 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 For the walls that are overthrown; 
 
 We sit in solitude and mourn. 
 
 For the majesty that is departed; 
 
 We sit in solitude and mourn. 
 
 May the kingdom soon return to Zion; 
 
 Comfort those who mourn over Jerusalem.” 
 
 “Is it true,” a bright young American Jew asked 
 me the other day, “Is it true, as my grandfather says, 
 that on the anniversary of the destruction of Jeru¬ 
 salem, the stones of the ancient wall also weep?” 
 
 Far be it from me to add another perplexity to the 
 heart of the sad old grandfather. I answered, “I 
 have never noticed it myself; but if stones ever did 
 shed tears, surely these would.” 
 
 [781 
 
VIII 
 
 The heart of Christendom 
 
 I N a photograph of Jerusalem, it is not easy to 
 distinguish the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 Indeed, when you actually stand on a housetop 
 and look out over the city, the most famous of Chris¬ 
 tian sanctuaries appears, not as a single prominent 
 structure, but rather as a greater thickening and 
 massing of the always confused and crowded build¬ 
 ings. For the church is not a single edifice, but a 
 group of some thirty cathedrals and chapels and 
 shrines and monasteries which during sixteen cen¬ 
 turies have been, as it were, roughly piled together 
 upon this holy spot. 
 
 Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, “the father of church 
 history,” who was a contemporary of Constantine the 
 Great and an eye-witness of many of the events which 
 he records, tells us that, after the conversion of the 
 emperor, his mother Helena, although a woman of 
 nearly eighty, set out from Constantinople on a 
 grateful pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she 
 caused beautiful churches to be erected upon the 
 Mount of Olives and at Bethlehem. This was in 326 
 A. D. Shortly afterwards, Constantine cleansed the 
 
 [79] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 sepulchre of the Lord from all traces of the impure 
 Venus worship which had been celebrated there under 
 the heathen emperors, and built over it a magnificent 
 church, which was formally dedicated in the year 
 335. Eusebius himself assisted at the ceremonies, 
 and there can be no doubt that he correctly relates 
 the story of the building of the first Christian sanc¬ 
 tuary here. 
 
 But before many years had passed, the church had 
 come to be universally ascribed to Helena, who had 
 become a kind of patron saint of Palestinian archi¬ 
 tecture—by the fourteenth century no less than 
 thirty churches were reputed to have been built by 
 her—and pious historians tell the story of the foun¬ 
 dation of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre with 
 great detail. St. Helena, they say, received divine 
 information concerning the exact location of Calvary 
 and, removing the filth and debris with which the 
 heathen had covered the mount, she discovered there 
 the Saviour’s tomb, and beside it three crosses. 
 But the tablet written by Pilate had fallen from its 
 place, so that there was apparently no way to deter¬ 
 mine which of the three was the cross of Christ. 
 Finally it was suggested to test the miraculous power 
 of the crosses; so they were each in turn placed 
 before a woman who was suffering from a fatal dis¬ 
 ease. The first and second produced no effect what¬ 
 ever ; but when the third was brought, she was imme¬ 
 diately cured and rose up from her bed. Now that 
 
 [ 80 ] 
 
THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 
 the identity of the True Cross was discovered, Helena 
 built over Calvary and the Sepulchre a church of 
 wondrous richness and beauty. 
 
 Whether built by Constantine or Helena, the pres¬ 
 ent structure is not the one erected in the fourth 
 century, however; for the Church of the Holy Sepul¬ 
 chre has been again and again destroyed; by the 
 Persians, Turks and Arabs, and by disastrous fires, 
 the last of which, in 1808 , reduced almost the entire 
 building to ruins. 
 
 In Arabic and Greek the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre is more appropriately named “the Church 
 of the Resurrection.” It has already been noted that 
 the edifice is supposed to enclose both Calvary and 
 the Garden Tomb. During the centuries since its 
 foundation, as many other sacred localities as pos¬ 
 sible have been conveniently localized under the same 
 roof. Here is a partial list of the holy places, in 
 the approximate order in which one meets them in 
 traveling around the church. 
 
 The altar where Melchizedek and Abraham sacri¬ 
 ficed—the place where Christ was nailed to the cross 
 —where Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac— 
 where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene—the 
 stone where His body was anointed for burial—- 
 where the women stood while they witnessed the 
 anointing—the stone which the angel rolled away 
 from the Sepulchre—the tomb of Christ—the tombs 
 of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus—the site of 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
 6 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the house of Joseph of Arimathea—another place 
 where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene—where 
 He appeared to His mother after the resurrection— 
 the column by which He was scourged—the garden of 
 Joseph of Arimathea—the center of the world—the 
 stocks where Christ’s feet were fastened—the prison 
 where He was kept—the place where His raiment was 
 parted—where the Empress Helena sat while the 
 cross was being sought—the place where it was dis¬ 
 covered—where Christ was crowned with thorns—the 
 holes in which the three crosses were set up—a cleft 
 in the rock which reaches down to the center of the 
 earth—the tomb of Melchizedek—where Christ was 
 nailed to the cross—the burial-place of Adam. 
 
 All of these are not, of course, in the central struc¬ 
 ture, but are scattered through the maze of adjoin¬ 
 ing buildings. They are all under one roof, that is, 
 you can pass from one to the other without going 
 out-of-doors; but they open out at different angles, 
 are on four or five different levels, and are so com¬ 
 plicated in their interrelations that a detailed descrip¬ 
 tion would only heap confusion on confusion. An 
 actual visit to the church leaves most travelers with 
 a very indefinite idea of the relative location of the 
 shrines. You go in and out, upstairs and downstairs, 
 along winding underground galleries to subterranean 
 chapels, and high up to archways of the domes and 
 towers. Now there will be an open space reaching 
 right up to the roof. Alongside of it there will be 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 
f 
 
 On the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a street 
 wider than many in the city below 
 
THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 two or three chapels placed irregularly one above the 
 other, so that you quite lose your sense of direction 
 as you wind along dark passageways and narrow, 
 crooked flights of stairs from one to the other. Even 
 with the assistance of a plan, only a person with 
 some knowledge of architecture can get an adequate 
 understanding of the structure as a whole. 
 
 It is a veritable Brobdingnagian ant hill—a mys¬ 
 terious labyrinth—a vast, mountainous pile honey¬ 
 combed with numberless unintelligible excavations, 
 rather than what we usually think of as a church. 
 In the rock beneath it are cisterns large enough to 
 provide all Jerusalem with water during an extended 
 siege. Upon one part of the roof is a whole village 
 of Abyssinian monks, with the doors of the houses 
 opening out on a street which is wider than many in 
 the city beneath. 
 
 The principal entrance to the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre is from a low, small square, which is always 
 crowded with beggars and venders of souvenirs. It 
 is impossible to get a near view of the entire building. 
 Just inside of the portal are a number of very lazy 
 looking Moslem soldiers, like those whom we saw in 
 the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and sta¬ 
 tioned here for the same humiliating reason. Beyond 
 the guard, we reach the first important altar, at the 
 “Stone of Anointing,” upon which the body of 
 Christ is said to have been laid while it was being 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 3 
 
 prepared for burial by Nicodemus. The present slab 
 was placed here after the fire of 1808. Some say, 
 however, that the real stone lies underneath. Above 
 the stone hang a number of precious lamps, whose 
 Ownership is divided among the Greek, Armenian, 
 Roman Catholic and Coptic monks. In fact, all 
 through the building, the honor of caring for the 
 various chapels is divided among these four churches, 
 while minor sects like the Abyssinians, Nestorians, 
 etc., have less important shrines; and all alike very 
 jealously resent any infringement of their rights. 
 
 Back of the Stone of Anointing, at the very cen¬ 
 ter of the general mass of buildings, is the cathe¬ 
 dral of the Orthodox Greeks, erected in the twelfth 
 century by the Crusaders as a separate edifice, but 
 now a church within a church. Architecturally this 
 is the finest of the whole group of buildings, although 
 the great fire of 1808 destroyed practically all of 
 the work of the Crusaders. The cathedral is 120 
 feet long, richly decorated with lamps and paintings 
 and gold-work, and furnished with no less than three 
 enormous and elaborately carved patriarchal thrones. 
 This is supposed to be the site of the garden of 
 Joseph of Arimathea. In the middle of the nave is 
 a small monument, shaped something like an urn for 
 growing flowers, which is said to mark the center of 
 the world. 
 
 “Mount Calvary” is located just to the south of 
 the Greek Cathedral, upon an eminence whose summit 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
-*► 
 
 THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 is fourteen or fifteen feet above the main floor. Here 
 
 * 
 
 there are three small, dark chapels. The first, the 
 Chapel of the Raising of the Cross, belongs to the 
 Greeks. In the floor is a small opening, lined with 
 silver, in which the cross of Christ is said to have 
 been set up. Near this is a cleft in the rock (see 
 Matt. £7: 51, “the rocks were rent”), which seems to 
 be only a few inches in depth, but which is said to 
 reach to the center of the earth. The tradition 
 recognizing the spherical shape of the earth is, of 
 course, much later than the one which places the 
 center of the world on the surface, in the garden of 
 Joseph of Arimathea. 
 
 The second chapel on Calvary marks the spot 
 where Mary received the body of Christ. This 
 belongs to the Latins, as does also the tiny adjoining 
 Chapel of the Agony. These two are much simpler 
 and more dignified in their fittings than the chapel of 
 the Greeks; and, indeed, all over the church the 
 Roman Catholics show a more becoming restraint in 
 the ornamentation of their shrines and a more im¬ 
 pressive dignity in their worship than do the Oriental 
 sects. 
 
 The Chapel of St. Helena, where the empress sat 
 while the excavations were being conducted under her 
 supervision, lies sixteen feet below the level of the 
 main buildings, and may be a part of the ancient 
 moat of Jerusalem. It was probably here that the 
 first Church of the Holy Sepulchre was erected. Of 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 course all remains of Constantine’s basilica have long 
 since disappeared; but the ceiling which the Cru¬ 
 saders built escaped the great fire which destroyed 
 the upper portions of the church. 
 
 This chapel now belongs to the Armenians, who 
 show the very seat where St. Helena rested. Two 
 hundred years ago, the Armenian patriarch of Jeru¬ 
 salem naively lamented the fact that he had to renew 
 the seat so frequently, on account of the vandalism 
 of pilgrims, who chipped off pieces from it to carry 
 away as relics. 
 
 Still lower down, and partly cut out of the rock, 
 is the cave-like Chapel of the Finding of the Cross, 
 which contains Greek and Latin altars, and a life- 
 size bronze statue of St. Helena holding in her arms 
 the newly discovered cross. 
 
 When St. Louis returned to France from the Sixth 
 Crusade, he carried back with him a piece of the True 
 Cross, as well as one of the nails used in the Cruci¬ 
 fixion, and the Crown of Thorns; and the king 
 erected the exquisite Sainte Chapelle of Paris in 
 order to enshrine fittingly these precious relics, 
 which, however, are now kept in the treasury of 
 Notre Dame. The principal fragment of the cross, 
 after having been carried away by the Persian Chos- 
 roes II and then returned, finally disappeared when 
 Omar captured Jerusalem; but smaller pieces are 
 shown in many churches throughout Europe. The 
 “Inscription on the Cross” is now in the Church of 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Santa Croce in Rome, which is said to have been 
 built by St. Helena to commemorate her discoveries 
 in Jerusalem. 
 
 The heart of all this immense aggregation of 
 buildings is, of course, the Chapel of the Sepul¬ 
 chre, which stands under the great dome. It is 
 only twenty-six feet long and twenty feet high; 
 but the little building is painted and decorated and 
 adorned and overlaid with a lavish extravagance 
 of inharmonious gorgeousness. In front (to the 
 east) are two stone benches, on which Oriental pil¬ 
 grims sit while they remove their shoes before enter¬ 
 ing the sacred structure. Around these benches 
 are gigantic candlesticks as high as a man’s head, 
 surmounted by enormous candles, which are gilded, 
 or painted with bright-colored, elaborate representa¬ 
 tions of incidents connected with the Crucifixion. 
 A multitude of smaller candles line the cornice and 
 rise, forest-like, along the edge of the roof, while 
 the roof itself is hung with the inevitable lamps, 
 whose ownership is divided among the more power¬ 
 ful sects. The marble walls of the chapel show only 
 here and there between the gaudy paintings, which 
 cover the fagade so closely that they often overlap 
 one another. 
 
 The interior of the building consists of two small, 
 cell-like rooms. In the center of the first, hung round 
 of course with lamps, is a pedestal bearing a stone 
 (of quite impossible shape) which is said to be that 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 3 
 
 which the angel rolled away from the door of the 
 tomb. 
 
 Through the rear wall of this vestibule, a very low 
 doorway leads to the Sepulchre itself. This is only 
 about six feet square, and is crowded and heavy and 
 hot. Forty-three lamps hang from the ceiling, into 
 which is cut a kind of chimney, which provides 
 a very imperfect outlet for the incense-laden smoke. 
 On the walls are marble bas-reliefs. At the right of 
 the entrance is a marble shelf five feet long. 
 
 Such is the reputed burial place of Christ, the 
 scene of the resurrection. 
 
 The entire surroundings of the Sepulchre are now 
 so overlaid with marble that it is quite impossible to 
 determine whether this was originally “a tomb that 
 was hewn in stone” (Luke 23:53). But at least 
 there is no other locality which offers itself as a 
 serious rival. The garden tomb by “Gordon’s 
 Calvary” has hardly anything to connect it with 
 the Gospel narratives except a sentimental feel¬ 
 ing that this would be an appropriate setting. Since 
 the early part of the third century, the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre has been recognized as marking 
 the location of the tomb of Christ. So far back there 
 is an unbroken chain of testimony; and the identifi¬ 
 cation is accepted by an increasing number of Prot¬ 
 estant scholars, and, of course, is officially recognized 
 by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches. On 
 the other hand, there is that long gap of three cen- 
 
 [ 88 ] 
 
THE HEART OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 turies before the erection of the Church of Constan¬ 
 tine, which is bridged only by the easy credulity of 
 an age which knew nothing of historical criticism. 
 
 But whether this is the Sepulchre or not, the 
 church around it is one of the most impressive and 
 sacred buildings—I am tempted to say, the most 
 sacred building—on earth. It may mark the spot 
 where Christianity had its birth that first Easter 
 Day. It certainly does perpetuate and vivify the 
 memory of the incidents connected with Christ’s 
 passion and resurrection, and preaches to millions 
 upon millions of His followers sermons in marble and 
 mosaic which are no less convincing to them because 
 the forms under which these great truths are pre¬ 
 sented seem to some of us to be crude and childish. 
 
 More even than that; this church is the great his¬ 
 toric memorial of the Faith. Its story is the story 
 of Christianity. Kings and queens have journeyed 
 hither from far distant lands, that they might bow 
 in humble adoration before the sepulchre of the King 
 of Kings. Some of the most powerful fraternal 
 orders, both lay and clerical, have, in fact or in ideal, 
 been founded within these walls. Around this sanc¬ 
 tuary was built the history of the Middle Ages, when, 
 century after century, Crusaders fought with Sara¬ 
 cens to win or to retain possession of the Holy Sepul¬ 
 chre, while Europe hung breathless on the result. 
 History, romance, poetry, art: all have interwoven 
 through them the pattern of the longing and daring 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 —and the sinning—which marked the quest of this 
 most sacred shrine. The list of those who have 
 worshipped or labored or warred here includes such 
 varied names as the Empress Helena, the historian 
 Eusebius, St. Jerome, Justinian the Great, St. Willi¬ 
 bald the English missionary, Robert of Normandy 
 (the father of William the Conqueror), Peter the 
 Hermit, Godfrey de Bouillon, Louis VII of France, 
 Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Chinese Gordon, Lew 
 Wallace, Edward VII of England, William II of 
 Germany, besides an innumerable and unbroken suc¬ 
 cession of indomitable pilgrims who, even during the 
 crudest years of the Saracen oppression, toiled 
 slowly eastward that they might see the Saviour’s 
 tomb or die on the holy errand. 
 
 Within the great church there are indeed orna¬ 
 mentations which offend a refined taste, traditions 
 which await scholarly investigation, ceremonies which 
 sadly lack the simplicity and brotherly kindness of 
 the Founder of the faith. Yet, when all that is said, 
 the solemn fact remains that here, for sixteen cen¬ 
 turies at least, has centered the love and devotion and 
 hope of the Christian world. 
 
 [ 90 ] 
 
IX 
 
 THE HOLY FIRE 
 
 I T was rrom a rocky summit near Bethel, just at 
 sunset, that I caught my first view of Jerusalem. 
 We had been curtly refused accommodations at 
 the monastery where we had expected to spend the 
 night (the only such refusal that I remember), and 
 the nearby khan was too unspeakably filthy for even 
 hardened travelers. My only companion was a gentle¬ 
 man from South Africa, who did not know a word of 
 Arabic ; I had never been over this route before; and 
 in half an hour it would be quite dark. It is no 
 wonder that we were weary and worried; so that the 
 very horses caught our dejection, and trudged heavily 
 with lowered heads towards the next village, where, 
 inshallah (God willing), there might be a stable for 
 them and a bed for us. 
 
 Then, suddenly, a turn in the road revealed a tri¬ 
 angular cleft in the mountains, through the very 
 center of which we could see the Holy City, ten miles 
 away. We were in the shadow, and the evening chill 
 had come on. Most of the hills around Jerusalem 
 were in the shadow, too; but a ray of the setting sun 
 had slipped through some western valley and touched 
 
 [ 91 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the domes and minarets of the city with a dazzling 
 glory. It shone in the dusk like a jewel of gold and 
 diamonds, lying on a bed of purple plush. Yes, it 
 seemed like the New Jerusalem come down from 
 heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. 
 
 I have seen Jerusalem many times since then, and 
 I have observed therein many things which are far 
 from heavenly. But somehow none of the intimate 
 details of life and worship and historic interest in 
 that ancient city has fixed itself so vividly in my 
 memory as that first distant vision from the rocks 
 by Bethel, of Jerusalem purified and glorified by the 
 sunset glow. 
 
 We stumbled through the unpaved, unlighted 
 streets of the next village to the compound of a 
 Quaker mission, where we found a cordial welcome; 
 and the next morning—a perfect April morning, like 
 the most beautiful day of our own June—we rode 
 through the Jaffa Gate into the Holy City. 
 
 It was the day before Easter—the Greek Easter, 
 which that year was a week later than that observed 
 by the Latins and Protestants—and Jerusalem was 
 thronged with pilgrims. All the roads leading to the 
 city were filled with eager, hurrying crowds; and the 
 square within the Jaffa Gate was so choked with the 
 excited multitude that it was almost impassable. 
 Besides the usual cosmopolitan gathering which is 
 
 [ 92 ] 
 
THE HOLY FIRE 
 
 seen at every season of the year, two classes of 
 visitors were especially prominent: the handsome 
 officers and trim, manly sailors from the Greek bat¬ 
 tleship at Jaffa, and the vast number of Russian 
 peasants, who had come thousands of weary miles, 
 over muddy roads and in filthy steerages, at (to them) 
 enormous expense and even at risk of life, that they 
 might worship at the Saviour’s tomb. These Rus¬ 
 sians are stolid and solemn, simple and sincere, as 
 ignorant and trustful as dumb beasts; and when you 
 see the big, bearded farmers and weary, sad-faced 
 peasant women slowly and reverently counting their 
 beads before some patently impossible shrinelet, their 
 credulity is infectious. For the moment you believe 
 with them, and also worship. 
 
 An hour after reaching Jerusalem, we were seated 
 with the consular party under a little archway in the 
 gallery of the rotunda of the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre, looking down upon one of the strangest 
 sights of the modern world. For it was the hour 
 when fire from heaven descends each year upon the 
 tomb of Christ! 
 
 Beneath us, under the center of the dome, was the 
 Chapel of the Sepulchre, around which a narrow lane 
 was kept open by a regiment of Turkish soldiers. 
 The privates locked arms all along both sides of this 
 pathway, through which the officers walked back and 
 forth, and preserved order by an unsparing use of 
 rawhide whips. With the exception of this aisle, the 
 
 [ 93 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 whole building was crowded to suffocation, not only 
 in the central rotunda, but out in every direction, in 
 corridors and chapels, as far as we could see. I 
 should say that the crowd numbered at least ten 
 thousand persons. 
 
 And such a crowd as it was! Men and women 
 were pressed together so that they could not even 
 raise their arms. The front ranks were driven back 
 by the strength of hundreds of soldiers and the cruel 
 blows of whips; the rear ranks were simply crushed 
 until they could be crushed no more. It was a shout¬ 
 ing, roaring, screaming, cursing, malodorous mob, as 
 if a hundred football games and bar-room fights and 
 election night celebrations were all rolled in together 
 and all going on at once. There were many quarrels; 
 fierce ones, too; not like the good-natured jostling of 
 an American crowd. 
 
 Most of the people had been waiting there, holding 
 their places, since the night before, standing perhaps 
 twenty hours in that heat and stench. No wonder 
 their tempers were uncertain! Now two big Syrians 
 would enter into a bitter struggle for some place of 
 vantage. Now a man would try to push his way into 
 a better position, or break through the cordon of 
 soldiers in order to perform the holy act of running 
 around the Sepulchre, and would be pulled back by 
 the heels, while the officers plied their whips upon him 
 and the crowd jeered at his discomfiture. Now a 
 little group of favored foreigners like ourselves would 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
THE HOLY FIRE 
 
 follow a gorgeously uniformed consular kawass , 
 whose tall staff of office seemed to part miraculously 
 through the seething mass of humanity a pathway, 
 which closed again immediately behind his charges. 
 Now a company of priests would quarrel with the 
 soldiers. Now some poor fellow who had been pa¬ 
 tiently holding his place for hours would be roughly 
 hustled out of the way, in order to make room for a 
 latecomer who had bribed the guards. Among the 
 crowd, the Bethlehemites were especially noticeable 
 for their vigor and turbulence. The scene was strained, 
 crushed, filthy, earnest, cruel. Sometimes the ladies 
 in our party covered their faces. We heard after¬ 
 wards that several Russian pilgrims were trampled 
 to death. It was probably so. Such things happen 
 nearly every Easter time. Not many years ago, over 
 three hundred persons lost their lives in a panic 
 which seized the already nearly insane mob. 
 
 It is a quarter past one. The miracle is not 
 scheduled to take place until two o’clock; but the 
 temper of the crowd is so threatening that already 
 the ceremony is beginning. The Greek patriarch, in 
 garments heavy with gold and jewels, marches 
 through the open lane around the Chapel of the 
 Sepulchre, followed by bishops and deacons, only less 
 gorgeously apparelled than himself. 
 
 And now the crowd takes up a chant, fierce and 
 loud and monotonous. Like the angry roll of thun¬ 
 der, or like the beating of storm waves on the coast, 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 comes the hoarse shout from ten thousand hysterical 
 worshippers who are at the consummation of their 
 pilgrimage— 
 
 “God has come to earth to-day; 
 
 We are saved by His blood. 
 
 We are glad; 
 
 But the Jews are sad.” 
 
 After encircling the chapel three times, the Greek 
 pontiff is joined by the Armenian patriarch, and both 
 together enter the shrine. What happens there? The 
 Oriental priests say that a sacred flame descends 
 from heaven upon the Sepulchre of Christ. An 
 American Catholic priest whispered in my ear—no, 
 shouted above the deafening chant—that the Roman 
 Church refused to be a party to this heathenish farce. 
 It would be interesting to enter with the two patri¬ 
 archs and see how they act in the presence oj this 
 greatest of mysteries—or most blasphemous of im¬ 
 postures. But to the expectant multitude outside, 
 it is all intensely true. 
 
 The moment has come! The fire is to be handed 
 out through a little hole in the side of the chapel. 
 Near this are stationed a score of large, muscular 
 men, stripped to their underclothing. They are the 
 picked runners, strong men from the different sects, 
 who will take the fire and carry it to the chapels 
 belonging to the Coptic, Armenian, Greek, Abyssinian 
 
 [ 96 ] 
 
THE HOLY FIRE 
 
 and Syriac churches, which are scattered throughout 
 the great building. 
 
 Everyone is silent now. And, after the long, deaf¬ 
 ening uproar, the silence seems stunning. Then 
 suddenly a great bell begins clanging, as if for an 
 alarm of fire; and again the vast multitude takes up 
 its weird, thunderous chant. A flame appears at the 
 opening in the side of the chapel. One of the run¬ 
 ners lights his torch and shelters it under his bent 
 body, while two other strong men hurry him through 
 the crowd and out of the church. In a moment he 
 will mount a waiting horse and gallop at breakneck 
 speed to Bethlehem, where the Holy Fire will light 
 the lamps in the Church of the Nativity. Others of 
 the runners kindle their torches and, forming wedges 
 like football teams, they push through the struggling 
 crowd and bring the fire to the various shrines. In 
 spite of the frantic efforts of the Abyssinian team, 
 their torch is extinguished again and again, and it is 
 only at the fifth attempt that they succeed in rushing 
 the fire to their chapel. Greeks and Russians will bear 
 the sacred flame to Jaffa, and then candle after 
 candle will be kindled on shipboard, until at last the 
 fire shall burn in the cathedrals of Athens and Mos¬ 
 cow and St. Petersburg. 
 
 The soldiers no longer attempt to hold back the 
 wild crowd. Here and there through the church, 
 clusters of lights spring up. Each pilgrim bears 
 a torch made of a dozen or two tapers tied together ; 
 
 7 [97] 
 
 t 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 so the flame is rapidly passed from one to another. 
 Bunches of tow are let down by ropes and, 
 when lighted, are pulled up again to the gal¬ 
 leries of the rotunda. Priests come out through 
 trap-doors onto the roof of the Chapel of the 
 Sepulchre, and light the lamps there. But my 
 friend the American priest calls my attention to the 
 fact that the lamps of the Roman Catholics are 
 significantly left unlit. Away off in the dark laby¬ 
 rinth of the tremendous building scattered lights 
 appear; and soon the whole Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre is one lurid mass of fire and smoke. A 
 quarter of a million candles are burning with the 
 Holy Fire. The already vitiated air is hot and 
 stifling. Below us is a veritable pandemonium, a red 
 inferno, through whose shifting mists we can see only 
 faintly the struggling forms which fill every corner 
 and niche of the ancient church. And all the while 
 the great bell keeps up its harsh, monotonous clang¬ 
 ing, and ten thousand throats are roaring out a chant 
 which is half a praise to God and half a curse upon 
 their fellow men. 
 
 Poor, happy pilgrims! They rub the sacred soot 
 upon their bodies and let the flame play around their 
 faces and their naked breasts. It will not bum them, 
 they say. They will save these candles, and in far¬ 
 away Russia and Greece and Abyssinia and Egypt 
 they will light them for a little while on great festal 
 occasions, while the untraveled neighbors sit around 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
The Chapel of the Sepulchre 
 
Going to the ceremony of the Holy Fire. Notice the Turkish soldiers 
 
 at the right 
 
THE HOLY FIRE 
 
 in trembling admiration. The very caps with which 
 the light is snuffed out are henceforth holy, and some 
 time will be worn on ten thousand death-beds, as a 
 . sure passport to paradise. Poor pilgrims ! They are 
 so happy now. You can see it on their homely, care¬ 
 worn faces. For they have journeyed far to see the 
 Holy City, and they have lighted their candles at the 
 very flame of God! 
 
 All night long, companies of worshippers were 
 passing before my window, shouting jubilantly and 
 singing their hoarse, minor chants. All night, too, 
 the city shook with the clanging of the great bell. It 
 was still ringing at sunrise the next morning, when I 
 left Jerusalem to catch my steamer at Jaffa. 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
X 
 
 VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 T HE topography of Jerusalem will be most 
 easily understood if, without trying to be too 
 exact, we think of the city as occupying a 
 square, fairly level platform, whose sides face the 
 points of the compass. The northern edge of the 
 square is about on a level with the adjacent country. 
 When Jerusalem has been captured, it has always 
 been from this side. On the east is the Valley of 
 Kidron, which descends very rapidly as it goes 
 southward. On the west, the Valley of Hinnom fol¬ 
 lows the line of the fortifications to the southwest 
 corner and then bends eastward to join the Valley of 
 Kidron. Thus from three sides Jerusalem is seen 
 as “a city set on a hill,” surrounded by moat-like 
 valleys which are deepest at the southeast corner, 
 where the junction of Hinnom and Kidron is more 
 than four hundred feet below the level of the Haram 
 esh-Sherif . 
 
 The only part of the Jerusalem hill which lies out¬ 
 side of the present walls is the “Zion” suburb at the 
 extreme south, where there are modern cemeteries of 
 the Greeks, Armenians, Latins and Protestants, 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
 0 F r 
 
 l 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 the English mission school, and the group of build¬ 
 ings which contain the “upper room” of the Last 
 Supper and the “Tomb of David.” This last is held 
 in such reverence by its Moslem owners that it is 
 practically impossible for a Christian to gain 
 admission. 
 
 Beyond the encircling valleys, the “mountains 
 round about Jerusalem” rise a few hundred feet 
 above the city, like an outer series of ramparts. The 
 highest of these surrounding hills is the Mount of 
 Olives, which runs parallel to the eastern wall. 
 
 In the center of the northern wall is the Damas¬ 
 cus Gate, which in Arabic is called Bab el-Amud , or 
 the “Gate of the Columns,” from the slender columns 
 on the inside of the portal. This is by far the 
 largest and most imposing of all the entrances to 
 the Holy City, with heavy towers flanking it on 
 either side, and elaborately castellated battlements, 
 and the ruins of a room over the gate, like that where 
 David sat while the watchman on the tower above 
 looked for the herald with the news of the battle with 
 Absalom. 
 
 From the top of the gate you get one of the finest 
 views of Jerusalem. The city is one sea of domes, 
 ranging in size from the myriad little domes over 
 single rooms and dwelling-houses up to the large 
 domes of the Jewish synagogues at the far southern 
 end of the city and the great “Dome of the Rock,” 
 whose splendid silhouette stands out above all the 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 rest against the background of blue sky. Almost 
 every roof has its low parapet of tiles, with the orna¬ 
 mental clusters of triangular openings which form 
 a distinctive feature of Jerusalem architecture. 
 
 The street below us, Damascus Street, or more 
 properly “the Street of the Gate of the Columns,” 
 is one of the longest, straightest and broadest in the 
 city. Just inside the gate it is twenty or twenty- 
 five feet wide; but it soon grows narrower, and is 
 lost to view beneath the awnings which stretch 
 across it from house to house. 
 
 Every once in a while some enterprising American 
 newspaper publishes a story about the proposed con¬ 
 struction of a trolley S3^stem in Jerusalem—which 
 is quite absurd, because there is no street wide 
 enough to accommodate even a single track. 
 Indeed, except at the square by the Jaffa Gate, 
 there are no carriages found inside of the walls. 
 The streets are narrow, winding, hilly and slippery. 
 They go up and down flights of rough stone stairs. 
 They often cut right through buildings; so that a 
 tall man has to bow his head as he walks through 
 the low, arched passageway. Even horseback riding 
 is unsafe; and until the hills are leveled, the houses 
 torn down and the entire city rebuilt, the only 
 method of locomotion through Jerusalem will be on 
 foot, or on the back of a sure-footed donkey who is 
 not disconcerted when the narrow road turns 
 abruptly down a steep stairway whose slanting steps 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
Gordon’s Calvary ” and the Grotto of Jeremiah (at the right) 
 
Looking up the Valley of Kidron toward the southeastern 
 corner of Jerusalem and (on the right) the village of Siloam 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 The Immediate Environs of Jerusalem—i, The Sultan’s Pool; 
 2, The “Coenaculum,” containing the reputed Tomb of David, 
 and the Chamber of the Last Supper; 3, The Fountain of the 
 Virgin; 4, The Tomb of Zacharias; 5, The Tomb of Absalom; 
 6, The Latin Gethsemane; 7, The Tomb of the Virgin; 8, The 
 Church of the Holy Sepulchre; 9, The Citadel 
 
 [ 103 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 are covered with a thin sheet of running water and 
 sewage. 
 
 A little way to the east of the Damascus Gate, out¬ 
 side of the city wall, is the entrance to the Ma- 
 ghdret el-Kettdn or “Cotton Grotto” (“cotton” is an 
 Arabic word), one of the quarries from which build¬ 
 ing-stone was taken for ancient Jerusalem. This is 
 apparently the cave in which, after Titus had cap¬ 
 tured the city, two thousand Jews took refuge with 
 their treasures, only to perish miserably from 
 hunger. 
 
 The excavation, which is also known as “Sol¬ 
 omon’s Quarries,” extends over six hundred feet to 
 the southward, straight under the center of Jeru¬ 
 salem. It must contain a mile or more of subterra¬ 
 nean galleries, which open now and then into high 
 rooms, some of which are as large as a church, and 
 have their roofs supported by huge pillars. In these 
 quarries can still be seen the niches for the lamps 
 of the workmen, and holes made in the rock for the 
 wooden wedges, which were driven in tightly and 
 then wetted, so that their swelling might break off 
 the blocks of stone. 
 
 Across the road, in the cliff opposite the entrance 
 to the Cotton Grotto, is the “Grotto of Jeremiah.” 
 This is now a Moslem sanctuary. The excavation in 
 the hillside is walled-in and partly plastered, and 
 contains a number of small buildings and tombs, 
 while several large cisterns lie in the rock beneath. 
 
 [ 104 ] 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 According to local tradition, one of these cisterns is 
 that in which Jeremiah was imprisoned. The 
 prophet is said to have written his Lamentations in 
 this quarry, and his sepulchre is also pointed out 
 here by the Moslem custodians. 
 
 According to some travelers, the excavations in 
 this hill resemble the eye-sockets of a great skull, 
 and therefore a few authorities, chiefly English and 
 American, regard the summit above the Grotto of 
 Jeremiah as Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull.” 
 General Gordon was very much interested in the 
 proposed identification, and the place is consequently 
 often referred to as “Gordon’s Calvary.” 
 
 Under the brow of the hill is a small rock-hewn 
 sepulchre, with two tomb-niches, only one of which 
 has been finished (see Luke 23:53), and in front of 
 the low doorway is a groove in which was rolled the 
 stone (now missing) which sealed the entrance. This 
 tomb is so like the description of the burial-place of 
 Christ that it recalls the Gospel story very much 
 more vividly than does the built-up and marble-cov¬ 
 ered “Sepulchre” in the church within the city. The 
 surroundings, too, are more quiet and attractive. 
 The grounds are well kept up by English Protes¬ 
 tants, who have laid out around the tomb a little 
 garden; and altogether, though this is probably not 
 the Holy Sepulchre, there is no spot in or around 
 Jerusalem where the Resurrection seems so real as 
 it does here in the quiet garden on the hillside. 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 A half-mile north of the Damascus Gate there is 
 an extensive series of catacombs known popularly 
 as the “Tombs of the Kings” (i. e. of Judah). Prob¬ 
 ably, however, this was the family sepulchre of 
 Queen Helena (not St. Helena) of Adiabene in 
 Assyria, who became converted to Judaism about 
 the middle of the first century, and took up her 
 residence in Jerusalem, where she bestowed numerous 
 benefactions upon the inhabitants. 
 
 We approach the sepulchre by a stairway, thirty 
 feet wide, which descends to an open court, about 
 a hundred feet square. This is cut in the solid rock, 
 so that its floor is twenty feet below the surface of 
 the surrounding hillside. At one side of the court 
 there is a huge portal, fifteen feet high and nearly 
 forty feet wide, which must have once been the most 
 beautiful piece of sculpture in the neighborhood of 
 Jerusalem. Around the great doorway can still be 
 seen some of the elaborate and intricate carvings of 
 fruits and flowers, in the ornate style of the later 
 Roman period. 
 
 From the vestibule we enter the sepulchre itself 
 through a small door, beside which is the stone which 
 closed the opening. Within is an extensive labyrinth 
 of chambers, on two different levels, whose sides are 
 lined with the square openings of shaft-tombs sit¬ 
 uated so that the body lay perpendicularly to the 
 walls. One of the rooms near the entrance contained 
 no such shafts, but only a very richly decorated 
 
 [ 106 ] 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 sarcophagus (now in the Louvre at Paris), which 
 may have been that of Queen Helena herself. 
 
 A little farther to the north are the catacombs 
 known as the “Tombs of the Judges.” But we shall 
 not have time to visit all of the sepulchres which sur¬ 
 round the city. There is an underground Jerusalem 
 which in many respects is more wonderful than that 
 on which the sun shines. In every hillside are rock- 
 hewn burial-places, some of them with labyrinthine 
 passages leading to an intricate series of tomb 
 chambers. Besides the hundreds of private cisterns, 
 there are beneath the houses of the city scores of 
 dark, low reservoirs, some of them so large that their 
 farther end cannot be seen by the light of a torch. 
 There are natural caves and ancient quarries and 
 subterranean store-houses. In fact, the rock on 
 which the Holy City stands is fairly honeycombed 
 with mysterious caverns. New and unexpected dis¬ 
 coveries are continually being made by foreign resi¬ 
 dents and archaeologists; yet this underground Jeru- 
 salem has yet to be thoroughly explored. 
 
 On account of the peculiar configuration of the 
 surrounding valleys, Jerusalem can grow only to the 
 north, and the very different areas of the city at 
 different centuries have been formed by moving 
 back and forth the northern wall. At the present 
 time the suburbs to the northwest are larger in 
 extent, though not in population, than the city 
 within the fortifications. Here are half a dozen or 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 more Jewish colonies, and most of the foreign 
 consulates, and a number of monasteries, of 
 which the Russian is the largest. In fact there is 
 here a kind of Slavic walled city, with a cathedral, 
 consulate, several hospices for pilgrims and a public 
 garden. 
 
 But this new and foreign suburb has little to 
 attract our attention; so we ride rapidly along the 
 western wall of the city, past the Jaffa Gate and the 
 citadel and the Pool of the Sultan, which have 
 already been visited. 
 
 Just below the great reservoir, the Valley of 
 Hinnom turns sharply to the east, and descends 
 rapidly between steep hillsides which shut off the 
 breeze, so that this is the hottest part of the imme¬ 
 diate environs of Jerusalem. The hill at the south 
 is variously called the “Hill of Tombs,” the “Hill 
 of the Field of Blood” and the “Mount of Evil 
 Counsel.” The depression in front of us is known 
 as the “Valley of Fire.” The ancient name was 
 Tophet , the “Place of Burning.” The names are 
 all significant of the unattractive appearance and 
 iniquitous history of the locality. Here in the Val¬ 
 ley of Hinnom, which in Hebrew was called Gehenna, 
 children used to be sacrificed to the god Moloch. 
 From time immemorial Gehenna has been one great 
 sepulchre, so hot and dead and dusty and desolate 
 that Jews, Christians and Moslems alike have come 
 to use its name as a synonym for hell. So Milton— 
 
 [ 108 ] 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 “Tophet thence 
 
 And black Gehenna call’d the type of hell.” 
 
 On the hill to our left is a Jewish burying ground; 
 the hill to the right is one mass of tombs. This must 
 have been the ancient necropolis of Jerusalem. Some 
 of the sepulchres have richly carved portals, with 
 flights of steps leading to them. Some are mere 
 holes in the rock. Some consist of several chambers 
 with burial-shafts opening from their sides. Some 
 are catacombs of considerable size. Some are clut¬ 
 tered and dirty. Some have been “cleansed” and 
 decorated with mediaeval religious frescoes. Some 
 are now used as chapels. Some bear half-legible 
 inscriptions in Hebrew. One is known by the Greeks 
 as “the cave of the giant saint Onophrius.” One was 
 apparently the burial-place of Roman pilgrims. One 
 is the tomb of a girl named Thekla. But the most 
 impressive thing about them is just their mere num¬ 
 ber, and the pathetic futility of the individual 
 achievements they were designed to perpetuate. 
 
 Near the bottom of the valley is the Aceldama , or 
 Building of the Field of Blood, which the natives 
 strangely call “Paradise.” This is a charnel house, 
 with its back in the hillside. During the Middle 
 Ages it was a favorite spot for the burial of pil¬ 
 grims. Its soil was believed to possess the miracu¬ 
 lous power of decomposing bodies in one day; and 
 ship-loads of the wonderful earth were carried from 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 here in the year 1218 to cover the Campo Santo of 
 Pisa. The Aceldama consists of a large square 
 room with an arched roof and badly damaged walls, 
 in which are two niches filled with bones. Under¬ 
 neath the rubbish at the bottom of the building 
 lie more bones, an incredible number of them, 
 packed closely together for a depth of at least six 
 feet. 
 
 We now leave Gehenna and turn northward to 
 ride up the Valley of Kidron. At our right, on the 
 steep slope of the Mount of Olives, is the miserable 
 village of Siloam. From a distance it can hardly 
 be distinguished against the hillside; for the houses 
 are built up of native rock, and indeed, are often 
 nothing more or less than ancient Jewish tombs, with 
 a few rough stones piled up across the opening. 
 These were once the habitations of the dead; later 
 on they were the cells of hermits. Now they shelter 
 a squalid and filthy population of Moslems, who are 
 notorious as thieves. 
 
 At the left of the road are the Pools of Siloam; 
 for there are two of them. The lower and larger 
 reservoir is now dry, or rather is filled with a moist 
 mass of unspeakable filth and ordure. The Syrians 
 call it the “Red Pool.” Our road passes along the 
 top of the lower dam, which is over forty feet thick 
 and once formed part of the outer fortifications of 
 the city. On this dam is shown a very old mulberry 
 tree, now buttressed by stones, underneath which 
 
 [ 110 ] 
 
In the foreground is the upper Pool of Siloam, back of which is 
 seen the “ Red Pool ” and the tree of Isaiah’s martyrdom 4 
 
The Tomb of Absalom and the Russian Church on the 
 
 Mount of Olives 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 tradition says that the prophet Isaiah was sawn 
 asunder in the presence of the wicked king Manasseh. 
 
 The upper Pool of Siloam, which is still called by 
 its ancient name, is the smallest of the circle of outer 
 reservoirs of Jerusalem, yet the one with the most 
 interesting and authentic history; and on account 
 of its connection with Old Testament events, as well 
 as the New Testament miracle, this little pool has 
 long been considered sacred by Jews, Christians and 
 Moslems. All sorts of curious legends have grown 
 up about it. The water really comes through a 
 rock-tunnel from the Fountain of the Virgin which we 
 shall pass a quarter of a mile farther on; but the 
 Christains used to think that it came from Shiloh, 
 while the Moslems say that on a certain night in the 
 year the water flows from the sacred well Zem Zem at 
 Mecca. In the fifth century a church was built over 
 the pool, and in the twelfth century a monastery was 
 erected here. Recent excavations have revealed the 
 ruins of the once beautiful church; but the walls of 
 the pool are now fallen in, and the bottom is covered 
 with filth and rubbish. Yet w T e saw a number of 
 women filling their water-skins with the muddy mix¬ 
 ture that had collected at one end of the pool. 
 
 At this southeast angle of Jerusalem the fortifi¬ 
 cations reach their greatest height and massiveness. 
 Near the corner, the wall rises over seventy feet above 
 the present level of the hillside, and extends down 
 almost as far through the accumulated debris to the 
 
 [ 111 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 rock foundation of the ancient city. The configura¬ 
 tion of Jerusalem has been considerably altered 
 through the deposit of the rubbish and ruins of the 
 centuries. The ancient bed of the brook Kidron is in 
 places thirty-eight feet lower than the present surface 
 of the valley. The Tyropoeon Valley also, which cut 
 across the city from northwest to southeast between 
 Mount Zion and the Temple Mount, has been so 
 largely filled up that it is likely to escape the notice 
 of the casual visitor. Through a large part of the 
 area within the fortifications, the old Hebrew city 
 lies buried at a considerable depth beneath the mod¬ 
 ern streets. 
 
 The steep, rocky slope of the Mount of Olives 
 opposite the southern end of the Haram esh-Sherif 
 is covered with hundreds and thousands of flat Jew¬ 
 ish tombstones, which in places are so crowded 
 together that it would be hard to find room to dig 
 a new grave between those already existing. Along¬ 
 side of the road, three or four more imposing sepul¬ 
 chres rise above the multitude of common graves. 
 The first of these is a temple-like monument thirty 
 feet high, hewn out of the native rock of the hill¬ 
 side. Both Jews and Christians call it the “Tomb 
 of Zacharias,” but they differ as to which of the 
 notable persons bearing this name was buried here. 
 Nearby, a Doric portico cut in the rock leads to a 
 small catacomb known as the “Grotto of St. James,” 
 because the apostle is said to have hidden here dur- 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
VALLEYS AND TOMBS 
 
 ing the trial and crucifixion of Christ. The last of 
 these larger tombs is a tall, separated building, the 
 main part of which has also been cut out of the hill; 
 but as the surrounding rock did not rise high enough, 
 the superstructure had to be built on afterwards. 
 The sepulchre is more than fifty feet high, and is 
 crowned by a kind of combination of spire and dome, 
 shaped something like a fool’s cap. Indeed, the 
 Arabic name for the monument is “Pharaoh’s Cap.” 
 The Jews believe this to be the tomb of the traitor 
 Absalom; so they spit upon it and throw stones at 
 it as they pass by. 
 
 Where the road from St. Stephen’s Gate to the 
 Mount of Olives crosses our road up the Kidron 
 Valley, there has been a church since long before the 
 Moslems captured Jerusalem, although the present 
 building dates only from the First Crusade. It is a 
 strange church; for the only part above ground is 
 the entrance porch, which itself is in a kind of pit in 
 the bottom of the valley. From this porch a long, 
 broad flight of sixty marble steps leads down thirty- 
 five feet into a low, dark church, which is hardly 
 larger than the stairway by which it is reached. In 
 a niche half-way down the stairs is shown the tomb 
 of Joseph of Nazareth, and a corresponding opening 
 on the other side contains the traditional tombs of 
 Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Virgin. In the 
 center of the subterranean church is a kind of minia¬ 
 ture reproduction of the Chapel of the Sepulchre, 
 
 8 [ 113 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 which contains the sarcophagus of the Virgin, who 
 is said to have lain here until her assumption into 
 heaven. 
 
 Not only the Jews, but also the Moslems and native 
 Christians, believe that the Valley of Kidron will 
 be the scene of the Last Judgment, when the hills 
 on either side will move apart, in order to allow 
 room for the innumerable multitude which will 
 assemble here. Accordingly the Moslems have a 
 burying-ground on the western side of the valley, 
 just under the walls of the Haram. Back of these 
 tombs is a city gate, which is now, however, closed. 
 It has perhaps not been used for general traffic since 
 the time of Ezekiel’s vision, when it was commanded 
 to be shut because “the God of Israel hath entered 
 in by it” (Ezek. 44:2). The Crusaders opened it 
 only for the Palm Sunday procession. Since the 
 early centuries of our era, Christians have known 
 this as the “Golden Gate.” The Moslems call it the 
 “Eternal Gate”; and one of its walled-up arches 
 they have named the “Gate of Mercy” and the other 
 the “Gate of Repentance.” They say that at the 
 end of the world a king (according to some, Jesus 
 the son of Mary) will enter through the Eternal 
 Gate and abolish the rule of Islam and reign in 
 Jerusalem over the whole earth. 
 
 [ 114 ] 
 
XI 
 
 THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 
 
 S OMEHOW I had alwa} 7 s thought of the Mount 
 of Olives as a small, distant, wooded, secluded 
 retreat. As a matter of fact, the Mount of 
 Olives is the most prominent elevation within the cir¬ 
 cuit of what we might call “Greater Jerusalem.” It 
 is higher than the city, longer than the city, so near 
 that you can literally throw a stone across the inter¬ 
 vening valley, and the summit of the hill shows many 
 stretches of rock and sterile soil, which probably 
 never were covered with vegetation. For the traveler, 
 the Mount of Olives, slightly curving to parallel the 
 curve of the Jerusalem hill, is like a dress-circle 
 from which he looks down upon an open-air theatre, 
 whose stage is the platform of the Hararn esh-Sherif, 
 and whose back-drop and flies are the massed houses 
 of the surrounding city. 
 
 On account of the steep pitch of the slope on the 
 east of Jerusalem, there is only a single road from 
 the city to the Mount of Olives; the one passing 
 from St. Stephen’s Gate at the north of the Haram 
 down to the Tomb of the Virgin at the bottom of the 
 Valley of Kidron. Here, however, the road divides 
 
 [ 115 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 into three or four branches, which ascend the 
 “Mount” at various degrees of steepness. The best 
 carriage road is none too easy: the worst bridle-path 
 rises four hundred feet in a quarter of a mile. 
 
 In the hollow of the valley near the Virgin’s Tomb 
 is the Garden of Gethsemane, that is, the Roman 
 Catholic Garden. A little higher up the hill the 
 Greeks have their own Gethsemane, which, however, 
 receives little consideration from Western travelers. 
 The Latin site lies in the fork of the road, and is 
 surrounded by high, irregular walls, into which are 
 set the Stations of the Cross. The little garden (it 
 is hardly two hundred feet across) is very attrac¬ 
 tively laid out, with winding paths and symmetrical 
 beds of grass and flowers, and contains a number 
 of tall cypress trees, besides olive trees of such 
 ancient and weather-beaten appearance that you 
 almost believe the monks when they tell you that 
 these trees were standing here in the time of Christ. 
 
 This seems to have been another sacred place whose 
 position was fixed upon at the time of the visit of St. 
 Helena, and nearly all modern writers believe that 
 Gethsemane was somewhere in this general locality. 
 The garden is shaded and cool and quiet, shut out by 
 the high wall from the dusty roads which pass so close 
 on either side. Nothing can be seen of Jerusalem 
 except the lofty fortifications, above which rises the 
 dome of the Mosque of Omar. It is a beautiful and 
 fitting place for meditation and prayer. 
 
 [ 116 ] 
 
THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 
 
 The hillside above the Garden of Gethsemane is 
 dotted with a number of scattered olive trees, and 
 there are a few orchards; but as a rule the great bare 
 spots are far more prominent. Right in the middle 
 of the slope is the Greek Church of St. Mary Mag¬ 
 dalene, a gaudy and inappropriate structure erected 
 by the Russian Emperor in 1888 and, according to 
 local gossip, painted a new—and uglier—color every 
 year since. 
 
 The ridge of the hill is covered now with a long, 
 loose cluster of buildings. At the northern end are 
 catacombs; at the southern end is the labyrinth of 
 the “Tombs of the Prophets”; in the middle is a 
 small and miserable village, inhabited apparently 
 chiefly by importunate beggars. Scattered between, 
 are churches and monasteries and mission-houses. 
 
 If the Chapel of the Ascension at the north end of 
 the village were the original building which was 
 erected here by St. Helena in the year 326, it would 
 dispute the claim of the Bethlehem church to be the 
 oldest Christian house of worship in the world. But 
 Helena’s basilica was long ago destroyed. The 
 modern chapel is in the court of a mosque and 
 belongs to the Moslems, who also regard it as a holy 
 place. They allow the Christians, however, to cele¬ 
 brate mass here occasionally. Within the chapel is 
 shown the footprint of Christ, which has been fre¬ 
 quently renewed, and changed in shape and position. 
 Of course the only indubitable fact about the chapel 
 
 [ 117 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 is that the Gospels make it plain that the Ascension 
 did not take place from anywhere near here. This 
 site was doubtless fixed upon by the early Chris¬ 
 tians because of its magnificent outlook. Indeed, 
 until very recently, the finest panorama of Jeru¬ 
 salem was that obtained from the minaret of the 
 enclosing mosque. 
 
 Now, however, the six-story belvedere tower of the 
 neighboring Russian monastery provides a far 
 broader outlook. The tower itself is the most promi¬ 
 nent structure in all Palestine; and the view from 
 it is, in many respects, the most varied and fascinat¬ 
 ing in the world. Jerusalem lies almost directly 
 underneath; a large part of southern Palestine can 
 be seen with the definiteness of a map; while to the 
 east the Wilderness of Judea drops down almost 
 4,000 feet to the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, 
 beyond which are visible the mountains of Moab as 
 far as Kerak, sixty miles to the southeast. The 
 most powerful church in Palestine is the Greek Ortho¬ 
 dox, of which the Czar is the natural protector and 
 champion; and it is rumored around Jerusalem that 
 the real object in erecting this lofty structure was 
 to provide a military observation-tower for use at 
 some nearby time, when the breaking out of the long- 
 expected war with Turkey shall provide a pretext 
 for still further strengthening the foothold of Russia 
 in the Holy Land. 
 
 At the southern end of the village are a number 
 
The Mount of Olives from St. Stephen’s Gate. The tall cypress 
 trees are in the Latin Garden of Gethsemane, opposite the 
 nearest corner of which is the entrance to the Tomb 
 
 of the Virgin 
 
Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Back of the center of the 
 long line of Moslem graves are the two closed entrances 
 
 of the Golden Gate 
 
THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 
 
 of buildings belonging to the Roman Catholic monks. 
 The Church of the Creed is a half-subterranean struc¬ 
 ture, whose roof rises only a few feet above the 
 ground; so that it resembles the Catholic churches 
 which are so often seen in America, finished only as 
 far as the top of the foundation walls, while for 
 years services are held in what will later be the 
 cellar or crypt of the completed building. The place 
 where Christ is said to have taught His disciples 
 the Lord’s Prayer is marked by a really beautiful 
 quadrangular cloister, around whose sides are marble 
 slabs bearing the Prayer in thirty-two different 
 languages. 
 
 It is only a few minutes’ walk over the brow of 
 the Mount of Olives to the little village of Bethany, 
 where Christ lodged during the week before His 
 crucifixion. But there is nothing worth seeing in 
 Bethany, which is now an unusually squalid hamlet 
 of forty or fifty houses, with a badly ruined mediaeval 
 fort which the natives call the “Castle of Lazarus,” 
 and the “Tomb of Lazarus,” which the Moslem vil¬ 
 lagers guard very jealously. So we shall rather sit 
 under one of the old olive trees on the western slope 
 of the hill, and look down upon the splendid pano¬ 
 rama which is spread out before us. 
 
 In spite of the very ancient tradition which 
 places the Garden of Gethsemane at the bottom of 
 the Valley of Kidron, I cannot help feeling that He 
 who so loved Jerusalem would not have chosen for 
 
 [ 119 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 His favorite retreat a spot down there, two hundred 
 feet beneath the Temple Area, where nothing of the 
 city could be seen except its grim walls and the 
 graves beside them; but would rather have rested 
 and prayed in some orchard like this, near the top 
 of the hill, from which He could gaze across the 
 narrow valley and see spread out before Him the 
 whole city over which He yearned and the Temple 
 whose daily offering was the prototype of His own 
 sacrifice. 
 
 As Dean Stanley said, “No human being could be 
 disappointed who first saw Jerusalem from the east.” 
 Right below you is the deep valley of Kidron, beyond 
 which the Holy City lies upon its hilltop, just enough 
 lower than the Mount of Olives so that every part 
 of it can be easily seen, so near that each house is 
 distinctly visible and, as it seems, purposely tilted 
 up a little, for the greater convenience of the 
 spectator. 
 
 The focus of the picture is the bright-colored 
 “Dome of the Rock,” which rises symmetrically in 
 the center of the brown, level Haram area. Back of 
 it and at the right are the thickly clustered, whitish 
 domes of the city. The roofs and towers of the Church 
 of the Holy Sepulchre can be distinguished by one 
 who knows where to look for them; but they do not 
 stand out so conspicuously as the minaret' which 
 marks the site of the Castle of Antonia at the north 
 of the Haram esh-Sherif, or the dark walls of the 
 
 [ 120 ] 
 
THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 
 
 citadel by the Jaffa Gate at the farther side of the 
 city, or the shining new steeple of the German 
 Church which was dedicated in 1898 by the Kaiser. 
 In front and at the left, the wall of the city rests 
 on the hardly less precipitous side of the valley. 
 In the distant background are the soft tints of the 
 gently rolling hills. Affer the first curious glimpse, 
 however, you do not notice the details of the pano¬ 
 rama. Four elements make up the picture; the gray 
 walls upon the valley’s edge, the white city, the back¬ 
 ground of hills, and, standing uncrowded on the cen¬ 
 tral platform, as though all the rest were only a 
 setting for this one gem, the peerless “Dome of the 
 Kock.” 
 
 Viewed thus from the Mount of Olives, the Holy 
 City is beautiful, even in this day of its bondage and 
 shame. And sometimes when the morning sun rises 
 from behind Mount Nebo and sends its first long, 
 level ray across the wilderness to touch the dome of 
 Omar with a flaming splendor, the watcher on Olivet 
 is given a vision of what Jerusalem must have been 
 in the days of its glory, when, where the Moslem 
 mosque now stands, the golden front of the Temple 
 flashed back the rays of the rising sun, and where 
 the muezzin sings shrilly that Mohammed is the 
 prophet of Allah, the sweet savor of the morning 
 sacrifice rose upward to the Lord God of Israel. 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
XII 
 
 THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 D O not all rivers flow down? Yes, of course; but 
 not so obviously as this one. Therefore was 
 it named Jordan (Hebrew, Yarden ), which 
 means “that which goes down.” 
 
 A straight line from the farthest accepted source 
 of the Jordan to its mouth measures only 115 miles; 
 the total length of the winding stream is somewhere 
 between 225 and 25 0 miles. Yet the fall of the little 
 Palestinian river is 3,000 feet; that is, it “goes 
 down” farther than the Mississippi and the Volga 
 added together, whose combined length is 4,800 miles. 
 
 The Jordan begins among the clean, fresh breezes 
 and shaded groves and bubbling springs of the 
 mountainside where the old nature-gods had their 
 shrines. It ends at the lowest, hottest, dreariest spot 
 on the whole earth. It is nowhere a navigable 
 stream. The Jews hardly ever referred to it as the 
 Jordan River. It was just “that which goes down”— 
 the Descender— Yarden! 
 
 History and religion and travel have touched this 
 strange river chiefly at three points: its source, its 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 widening out into the Sea of Gali¬ 
 lee, and its mouth at the Dead Sea. 
 
 The Jordan is the gift of Mount 
 Hermon, whose highest peak, ris¬ 
 ing 9,680 feet above the Mediter¬ 
 ranean, is the very top of Pales¬ 
 tine. So the Syrians call it Jebel 
 esh-Sheikh, the “Sheikh Mountain.” 
 On its southern and western slopes 
 are three unfailing springs whose 
 waters unite to form the sacred 
 river. 
 
 Streams in Palestine are uncer¬ 
 tain things. Most of them are fu¬ 
 rious torrents during the rainy sea¬ 
 son, and simply do not exist during 
 all the rest of the year. I do not 
 remember to have ever seen a drop 
 of water in “cool Siloam’s shady 
 rill,” and I have galloped over “Ki- 
 shon’s flood” without noticing it. 
 Most maps of the Holy Land give 
 a wrong impression of the water¬ 
 courses of the country. The nu¬ 
 merous wavy lines (broken lines on 
 the few correct maps), which one 
 naturally supposes to be rivers, 
 are most of them merely valleys 
 down which the water drains after 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 a storm, but which otherwise are as dry as a, bone. 
 One small river and a half-dozen creeks are about all 
 the summer traveler sees between Dan and Beer- 
 sheba. 
 
 Because of this indefiniteness of Palestinian 
 streams, the head of the Jordan is variously located 
 at places as much as thirty miles apart. Indeed, if 
 we include its variable tributaries, the actual length 
 does vary almost as much as this. But its farthest 
 perennial source is at the fountain by the village of 
 Hasbeya, thirty-five miles north of the Sea of 
 Galilee. 
 
 A second and much larger source is eight miles 
 below Hasbeya, at the mound of Tell el-Kadi , which 
 is Arabic for “Hill of the Judge.” Dan in Hebrew 
 also meant “Judge,” and this is almost certainly the 
 location of the famous city which was so often named 
 as the extreme northernmost settlement in Israel. 
 The mound may have been the crater of an extinct 
 volcano; for evidences of volcanic action are numer¬ 
 ous in all this district around Plermon, and earth¬ 
 quakes are still frequent. 
 
 The tell is now covered with black boulders, among 
 which grow thorn bushes and small trees, and in the 
 springtime the banks of the stream are gorgeous 
 with flowers and blossoming shrubs; so that the scene 
 is one of great natural beauty, as well as religious 
 and historic interest. The river flows out from the 
 side of the mound and also wells up among the bushes 
 
 [ 124 ] 
 
THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 at the center of the old crater. The water is abso¬ 
 lutely clear, and is so great in volume that this must 
 be numbered among the largest springs in the world. 
 
 The most famous and beautiful source of the Jor¬ 
 dan, however, and the one which the Jews consid¬ 
 ered the beginning of their river, is that at Banias, 
 where the stream bursts forth from a cavern in the 
 mountainside and flows through a luxuriant jungle 
 of ferns and water-plants and thick-growing shrubs, 
 bordered by pleasant groves of oak trees and domi¬ 
 nated by the majestic mountain slopes which rise one 
 behind the other, up to the summit of Hermon. 
 
 It is no wonder that from time immemorial this 
 has been a sanctuary of nature-worship. Long before 
 the Hebrews entered Palestine, the aboriginal inhab¬ 
 itants worshipped here the gods of the forest and the 
 subterranean waters, which was doubtless why Jero¬ 
 boam later chose this as one of the spots to set up a 
 golden calf. When the Greeks came, they made a 
 grove of Daphne by the other source near Dan; and 
 here, at the most impressive fountain of the Jordan, 
 they found an ideal dwelling-place for their own 
 forest-god; so they dedicated the cavern of the 
 spring to Pan and called the region about it Paneas , 
 whence (as the Syrian cannot pronounce the letter 
 p) comes the modern name of Banias. Here Herod 
 the Great built “a most beautiful temple of the whit¬ 
 est stone.” Philip the Tetrarch beautified the city 
 by the spring, and renamed it after the emperor, 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 Caesarea—Caesarea Philippi, to distinguish it from 
 the other Caesarea on the coast—and under this 
 name the locality is associated with the solemn scene 
 in the Gospel history, when Peter was promised the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:13ff). 
 After the destruction of Jerusalem, Titus celebrated 
 his victory by great gladiatorial combats at Cae¬ 
 sarea, during which unfortunate Jewish captives 
 were slain by wild beasts. To-day there stands on 
 the cliff above the spring a small shrine of the patron 
 saint of England and popular Moslem hero, St. 
 George. 
 
 Fifteen hundred feet above the sacred fountain, on 
 a narrow ridge bordered by dizzy precipices, rises 
 the black bulk of a huge castle, built by the Cru¬ 
 saders in the year 1129, and the scene of some of 
 the most sanguinary conflicts in all the tragic his¬ 
 tory of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, until 
 in 1165 the stronghold was captured by the great 
 Saracen leader, Nureddin. 
 
 It would be hard to find a place which exhibits 
 a more striking combination of historic interest, fas¬ 
 cinating mythology, solemn religious associations 
 and magnificence of natural surroundings than the 
 mountain and castle and cavern and grove by the 
 fountain of Banias. 
 
 Five miles to the south the three streams unite, 
 and the full-grown river flows across the fertile plain 
 of the Huleh, much of which, however, is undrained 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
The source of the Jordan at Tell el-Kudi , ancient Dan 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. \ . 
 
 The marshes of the Huleh, with Mount Hermon in the background 
 
THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 swamp and jungle, tenanted only by wild beasts, 
 poisonous with malaria, and subject to raids by 
 the Bedouins from the east. The lower end of the 
 Huleh is an impenetrable morass, choked with papy¬ 
 rus plants, through which the Jordan meanders by 
 innumerable channels, until it widens out into its 
 first lake, which is a small, roundish body of water, 
 about three miles across. This is the “Waters of 
 Merom,” where Joshua defeated the kings of the 
 north country. They call it now the Bciheiret el- 
 Hidehy or “Lakelet of the Huleh.” 
 
 When it leaves this little lake, the Jordan “goes 
 down” indeed! It tumbles over one cascade after 
 another, in an almost continuous succession of dizzy 
 whirlpools and impassable rapids, and in less than 
 ten miles it has fallen 689 feet. It is not strange 
 that the muddy stream of this furious little river 
 can be traced far into the Sea of Galilee; so that tra¬ 
 dition says that the Jordan passes straight along 
 and out again, without mingling its waters with 
 those of the lake. In a straight line we are only 
 thirty-five miles from the source at Hasbeya, yet the 
 river has already “gone down” almost 2,400 feet, or a 
 thousand feet more than the entire fall of the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Outside of the Jordan Valley, there is no spot on 
 earth so low as the shores of the Sea of Galilee. 
 We are down at the bottom of a great pit. The 
 waves of the ocean are rolling nearly seven hundred 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 feet above. Yet the panorama spread before us is 
 of a mountain lake of wondrous beauty, to which 
 we shall return again. 
 
 The Jordan is already more than twice as low as 
 any other river; but upon leaving the Sea of Galilee, 
 once more it “goes down”—down through a strange 
 gorge, of which one traveler says, “There may be 
 something on the surface of some other planet to 
 match the Jordan Valley: there is nothing on this. 
 On the earth there is nothing else like this deep, this 
 colossal ditch.” Between the steep slopes of the 
 mountains on the west and the wall-like line of pre¬ 
 cipitous mountains on the east, is el-Ghor , “the 
 „ Depression,” a vast trench, running exactly north 
 and south, three to four thousand feet deep and 
 usually eight or ten miles across. In pre-historic 
 times this was one long inland sea, extending from 
 the Waters of Merom beyond the lower end of the 
 Dead Sea. Through the center of this old sea-bed, 
 the annual floods of the river have cut within the great 
 trench of el-Ghor another, narrower ditch, which 
 is sometimes two hundred feet deeper. Down at the 
 bottom of these gigantic steps, flows the Jordan, 
 along a groove within a ditch within a trench. You 
 cannot see the river itself from any distance; only 
 its bordering jungle* of small trees and under¬ 
 brush, which twists and turns and writhes like a dark 
 green serpent along the bare, brown floor of the 
 valley. 
 
 [ 128 ] 
 
THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 The Jordan might also be appropriately named 
 the “Winder”; for its course between the Sea of 
 Galilee and the Dead Sea is so circuitous that the 
 sixty-five miles actual distance is trebled by the 
 windings of the river, which sometimes twists east, 
 west, south and even north, in the course of a few 
 hundred yards. Yet with all its turnings, the Jor¬ 
 dan -hardly ever gets a mile away from a straight 
 north and south line drawn along the center of the 
 Ghor. 
 
 No craft has ever sailed down this low, mysterious 
 stream, except the boats of two or three intrepid 
 explorers. Its swiftly flowing waters are thick with 
 mud, and are covered with leaves and twigs and all 
 kinds of debris. Its banks are a paradise of thick¬ 
 growing trees and gorgeous flowers, and are musical 
 with the songs of birds. The water swarms with 
 fish. Wild beasts lurk in the thickets. Now and then 
 the river divides into many branches, between which 
 lie fairy-like islands; but it would mean death to 
 dwell beneath their miasmatic foliage. From this 
 side and from that, charming rivulets pour their 
 spring floods into the already swollen river—rivulets 
 whose own sources lie far below the level of the 
 ocean. 
 
 So, on the river rushes, down and down and ever 
 down, until at last, 1,292 feet below the surface of 
 the Mediterranean, it discharges its now polluted 
 stream into the clear, blue depths of the Dead Sea. 
 
 9 
 
 [ 129 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 Near the mouth of the Jordan we found a man’s 
 garments laid in a neat pile by the bank. “Where 
 has the owner gone?” we asked our Bedouin com¬ 
 panion. “Allah knows!” he answered. “Probably 
 he was murdered by the robbers.” The little heap of 
 clothing seemed a fitting symbol of the deathly deso¬ 
 lation of the place. 
 
 The river which goes down!—from the splendid 
 groves of Hermon to the slime and dreary barren¬ 
 ness of the poisonous Sea of Death, and all the way 
 through the most extraordinary cleft on our earth. 
 On exceptionally clear days it is possible to stand 
 by the mouth of the Jordan and look straight up the 
 valley to the far-off, faint outline of Mount Hermon, 
 from whose fertile shoulders the river sprang. 
 
 No wonder that to the Hebrews it was simply a 
 barrier. It was Christians, not Jews, who first saw 
 beauty and poetry in the Jordan. Those who dwelt 
 near it seldom mention it in their literature except 
 as a kind of great dividing line—“this side Jordan,” 
 or “beyond Jordan.” That is all! 
 
 As we ride away from it, the deep rift in the 
 mountains becomes more evident. You are never 
 long out of sight of it, as you travel through the 
 hill country of central Palestine. Always it is there; 
 that straight, deep trench at the east of the Holy 
 Land; the strangest of all valleys. Surely it was 
 no mere geological cataclysm which dug this great 
 moat; but a providential wisdom which shut in the 
 
 [ 130 ] 
 
Copyright by Stereo-Travel Co. 
 
 Looking into the level plain of the Ghor near Jericho, where the 
 
 Jordan Valley is the widest 
 
The Jordan River near the Pilgrims’ Bathing Place 
 
THE RIVER THAT GOES DOWN 
 
 Hebrews to their own tiny land among the hilltops, 
 so that there, in enforced separateness from the 
 heathen empires round about them, they might 
 develop their unique insight into spiritual truth. 
 
 1 
 
 [ 131 ] 
 
XIII 
 
 The sea of Death 
 
 Unpins awful hollow, this bit of the infernal 
 regions come up to the surface, this hell 
 with the sun shining into it”—so one trav¬ 
 eler characterizes the basin of the Dead Sea. 
 
 I am glad that my first visit was in mid¬ 
 summer, when this hottest, most unhealthful region 
 of the inhabited world was at its superlative, inimi¬ 
 table worst. Indeed, it gives a wrong impression to 
 speak of the district as “inhabited”; for, except dur¬ 
 ing the harvest season, when the villagers from the 
 neighboring hills come down to reap their grain, the 
 Jordan Valley north of the Dead Sea is so still and 
 lonely that the sound of a human foot-fall makes 
 your heart jump with mingled curiosity and 
 apprehension. 
 
 The Jericho of Old Testament days is a ruin; the 
 Roman Jericho is a ruin; the third and modern town 
 is a mass of hot, filthy hovels on the edge of the 
 valley, whose two or three hundred inhabitants are 
 sickly and listless and degenerate. The babies have 
 emaciated limbs and swollen bodies, like the children 
 of a famine district. The grown people are burnt 
 
 [ 132 ] 
 
THE SEA OF DEATH 
 
 almost as black as negroes by the terrible Ghor sun, 
 and are of a mongrel Arab blood, despised by the 
 true Bedouins, and notorious for their laziness and 
 dishonesty and the licentiousness of their women. 
 The last trait is very rare among pure Arabs. We 
 are reminded that the three inhabitants of Jericho 
 mentioned by name in the Bible were a harlot, a 
 beggar, and a dishonest tax-gatherer. 
 
 Herod the Great laid a further curse upon Jericho 
 (the Roman city, of course) by choosing it for one 
 of his favorite residences. He built a castle here 
 and an amphitheatre and several palaces, and here 
 he perished of an indescribably loathsome disease. 
 Five days earlier, he had raised his head from his 
 sick-bed to order the execution of his own son. As 
 the last important act of his infamous career, the 
 dying madman ordered a thousand of the chief men 
 of the Jewish people to be shut up in the amphi¬ 
 theatre, and gave orders (which, however, were mer¬ 
 cifully disregarded) that immediately upon his de¬ 
 cease, all these should be massacred, in order that, 
 as he said, even the nation which hated him should 
 have cause to lament upon the day of his death. 
 Then, selfish and murderous to the last, the foul 
 soul of the tyrant left Jericho for its own place. 
 
 After a sleepless night—for a burning sirocco was 
 blowing and the temperature of our bedroom must 
 have been at least 100 degrees—we breakfasted at 
 half-past three in the morning, and shortly after- 
 
 [ 133 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 wards drove off to the ford of the Jordan, six 
 miles to the east of Jericho. Even in the grey light 
 of the early dawn, it was an insufferably hot and 
 uninteresting journey, excepting when we bumped 
 over the edge of the inner trench into the old bed of 
 the river, where its ancient meanderings through the 
 soft marl had sculptured strangely artificial-looking 
 castles and walls and monuments. Then the carriage 
 nearly upset as it slid down the bank of still another 
 channel, which was cut in more recent times, and is 
 still sometimes • filled by the spring floods. Last of 
 all we came to a dense thicket, which completely hid 
 the river from view until we stood on its muddy 
 banks. 
 
 Opposite Jericho the Jordan is about a hundred 
 and fifty feet across; and in spite of the muddiness 
 of the water, there are many charming views up the 
 winding stream, between the thick, overhanging 
 foliage which lines it on either side. 
 
 There are numerous fords along the lower course 
 of the river. One of these is regarded as the place 
 of Christ’s baptism, and consequently at Easter¬ 
 time it is thronged with pilgrims who come dow T n 
 from Jerusalem to bathe in the sacred river. Great 
 personages frequently come here from distant coun¬ 
 tries, attended by their chaplains, to be baptized in 
 the Jordan. Bottles of the water are carried away 
 as relics, or to be used for important ceremonies in 
 the churches of Europe. A syndicate was recently 
 
 [ 134 ] 
 
THE SEA OF DEATH 
 
 formed with the object of exporting hogsheads of 
 the water to America, where presumably it was to be 
 disposed of at a large price for the christening of the 
 children of wealthy parents; but, so far as I know, 
 the venture has not been a success. 
 
 Between the fords, the river is often quite deep. 
 In the driest month of the year, I swam down twelve 
 or fifteen feet under water without reaching bottom: 
 I was afraid to go deeper, on account of the danger 
 of being entangled in the roots and water-plants. 
 Even so far from the source and where the fall of 
 the river is least, the current is very powerful. We 
 had been bathing in the Mediterranean eight months 
 in the year and felt quite at home in deep water; 
 but the strongest swimmer in our party said that 
 he would rather not try to cross this narrow river. 
 Those of us who did try it found the effort quite 
 exhausting, and one man had to rest fifteen minutes 
 on “the other side of Jordan” before he felt equal to 
 the swim back. 
 
 Six or seven miles below this ford, the river empties 
 into the Dead Sea. We reached its shore just at 
 sunrise—a glorious sunrise of purple and gold, which 
 nevertheless, in this great oven of a valley, reminded 
 us of nothing so much as the flames playing above 
 the coals of a furnace. 
 
 The people who lived near it never called this the 
 “Dead Sea.” To the Hebrews it was the “Salt Sea,” 
 or the “Eastern Sea.” In Roman times it was 
 
 [ 135 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 known as the “Asphalt Lake,” from the deposits of 
 bitumen which are found by its shores. The Arabs 
 call it Bahr Lilt , “the Sea of Lot”; for Mohammed 
 introduced into the Koran the story of Lot and 
 Sodom. 
 
 A cross-section of Southern Palestine. The horizontal dis¬ 
 tances are in miles; vertical, in feet 
 
 The northern two-thirds of the sea is very deep, 
 the mean depth of this portion being over 1,000 feet 
 and the greatest, 1,310 feet; but below the low, white 
 peninsula of the Lisdn, or “Tongue,” the water grows 
 suddenly very shallow and is nowhere more than 
 about fourteen feet deep. Because of this fact, and 
 also because of the great number of salt pinnacles 
 near the southern bay, many scholars think that the 
 ancient “Cities of the Plain” were in what is now 
 this shallow portion of the Dead Sea, and that a 
 subsidence of land accompanying the other phe¬ 
 nomena at the time of the destruction of Sodom and 
 
 [ 136 ] 
 
Inhabitants of modem Jericho 
 
THE SEA OF DEATH 
 
 Gomorrah caused the water of the sea to extend 
 southwards over the ruins of the fallen cities. 
 
 The rapid current of the Jordan carries down 
 6,500,000 tons of water each day, all of which must 
 be taken up by evaporation, as the Dead Sea has no 
 outlet, and yet its level remains approximately the 
 same. Consequently the water is impregnated to an 
 unusual extent with mineral substances. It has 26 per 
 cent, of solid matter in solution, as compared with 
 the ocean’s 4 to 6 per cent. Sulphur and petroleum 
 springs are found near its shores, and presumably 
 also in the sea bottom. Besides chloride of sodium 
 (table salt), the water contains chlorides of calcium 
 and magnesium. The former makes the water feel 
 smooth and oily; the latter gives to it a nauseating 
 and bitter taste. Indeed, the bitter, oily taste is more 
 noticeable than the saltness. 
 
 Of course no one can drink this terrible fluid. 
 Even swimming in it irritates the skin, and if it 
 touches the eyes or nostrils or a half-healed scratch, 
 it causes the most exquisite pain. Bathing in the 
 Dead Sea is a memorable experience, however, be¬ 
 cause the specific gravity of the water is so great 
 that it is simply impossible for a person to sink. You 
 can walk along in the water with your head and 
 shoulders above the surface, or lie back, as if in a 
 hammock, and read or smoke with perfect ease. I 
 saw a young Russian, who could not swim a stroke, 
 floundering around away out from shore, where the 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 sea must have been hundreds of feet deep, for all the 
 world like a child in a hay-mow. 
 
 The Dead Sea is forty-seven miles long and nine 
 or ten miles wide; that is, it is just about the size 
 of Lake Geneva; but where the Swiss lake is over¬ 
 looked by green pastures and shady groves and 
 bordered by prosperous cities, the great lake of Pales¬ 
 tine is surrounded by dry, salty desolation. Never¬ 
 theless the Dea Sea is beautiful. A French explorer 
 calls it “the most imposing and beautiful lake 
 which exists on the earth.” From a distance its 
 waters are the deepest, most incredible blue; nearby 
 they are of a wonderful transparency, so that at a 
 depth of twenty or thirty feet the stones at the 
 bottom are distinctly seen. Except at the south¬ 
 ern end, its shores are covered with dazzling white 
 pebbles and sand; on either side high mountains 
 rise above it; and overhead is the glorious Judean 
 sky. 
 
 But its beauty is the beauty of death. No vege¬ 
 table life is found along its shores, except heaps of 
 drift-wood carried down by the river, which are 
 stripped and bleached like bones and incrusted with 
 a layer of salt. No flocks graze beside it, no wild 
 beasts come hither to drink, no fish swim in its 
 depths—though, indeed, I have seen thousands of 
 Jordan fish floating near the surface of the sea whose 
 poisonous waters had killed them. No life of any 
 kind is found in or near it, except perhaps a few 
 
 ' [ 138 ] 
 
THE SEA OF DEATH 
 
 deadly microbes. The Arabs say that even the birds 
 will not fly over it. 
 
 It is a nightmare lake, full of marvels; but they 
 are all marvels of a dead, hot, thirsty desolation. 
 Cakes of hard black asphalt rise up from its depths 
 when loosened by storms or earthquakes. At 
 the southern end are almost impassable bogs—the 
 “slime pits” where the armies of Sodom and Gomor¬ 
 rah were overwhelmed (Genesis 14:10). Here too 
 is a mountain of pure rock-salt, six hundred feet high 
 and seven miles long; and a cliff of solid flint a thou¬ 
 sand feet high. And here grow the “Apples of 
 Sodom”; beautiful orange-like fruits which, when 
 dead ripe, crumble away in the hand like ashes. 
 
 On the western side of the Dead Sea are an oasis 
 and a ruined castle, both of which are worth visit¬ 
 ing, though both are touched with the tragedy which 
 seems to grip everything that even overlooks this 
 valley of death. 
 
 The oasis is at Engedi, “the Spring of the Kid,” 
 half-way down the lake. Here David hid from Saul 
 “upon the rocks of the wild goats” (I Samuel 24:1); 
 and here, many years later, Jehoshaphat slaughtered 
 the invading army from beyond Jordan (II Samuel 
 20). Between the Salt Sea and the precipitous cliffs 
 of the Judean Wilderness is a fertile wedge of land, 
 watered by a generous stream, which bursts from a 
 warm spring in the rocks and rushes down in noisy 
 cascades to the sea four hundred feet below. In 
 
 [ 139 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 spite of the unusual fertility, this is one of the wild¬ 
 est, loneliest spots in all Palestine, tenanted chiefly 
 by the wild goats which gave to the locality its 
 ancient name. 
 
 A little way south of Engedi there projects into 
 the sea an almost inaccessible promontory two thou¬ 
 sand feet high, upon whose summit are the ruins of 
 the Castle of Masada, whose walls rise from the 
 very brink of the precipice. It was here, in these 
 lonely, desolate surroundings, that there occurred 
 the final tragic act in the drama of Jewish national 
 history. After Jerusalem had been captured by 
 Titus in 70 A. D., the last survivors of the garrison 
 fled with their women and children to this remote 
 fortress, which they stubbornly defended against the 
 Roman besiegers. But at last a breach was made 
 in the outer fortifications, and the Jews were shut up 
 within a hastily constructed inner rampart of wood 
 and earth. Then the dauntless commander Eleazar 
 prevailed upon his unfortunate compatriots that, 
 rather than yield to the Romans, they should die by 
 their own hands.* So each man killed his own wife 
 and children. “Nor was there at length any one of 
 these men found that scrupled to act his part in this 
 terrible execution, but every one of them dispatched 
 his dearest relations. . . They then chose ten 
 
 men by lot out of them, to slay all the rest , 
 
 * Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book vii, chapters 8-9. 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 
The northern shore of the Dead Sea 
 
The Wilderness of Judea 
 
THE SEA OF DEATH 
 
 and when these ten had, without fear, slain them all, 
 they made the same rule for casting lots for them¬ 
 selves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the 
 other nine, and after all, should kill himself.” Of 
 the entire garrison of Masada there survived only 
 two women and five children, who had hidden in a 
 cave under the castle. 
 
 So when next morning the Roman army ascended 
 the steep cliff for the final assault upon the fortress, 
 they found only smouldering ruins and the bodies 
 of the nine hundred and sixty heroes who had made 
 the last brave, hopeless stand for Jewish independ¬ 
 ence on the rocky promontory which looks out upon 
 the Sea of Death, 
 
 [ 141 ] 
 
XIV 
 
 The Backbone of Palestine 
 
 A LTHOUGH the long contemplated road to 
 Nazareth is at last completed, there is still 
 only one really satisfactory way to travel up- 
 country from Jerusalem. That is, of course, on horse¬ 
 back. It is hard to enter into the spirit of Palestine 
 from the seat of a carriage. On the other hand, 
 pedestrianism is not advisable for the Western visitor; 
 for he will not quickly recuperate from the fatigue of 
 over-exertion under the burning sun; so the pleasure 
 of the trip will be spoiled and, in his weakened condi¬ 
 tion, he may come down with a fever. 
 
 Besides two quite passable hotels on the European 
 plan, there are four kinds of accommodations for the 
 three nights which the rider usually spends between 
 Jerusalem and Nazareth. You can sleep in your own 
 tent, a native khan, a monastery, or the home of a 
 missionary. The first is the most expensive, and 
 most out of touch with the real life of the country. 
 The last is an imposition upon busy and underpaid 
 people, of which you should be guilty only under 
 very exceptional circumstances, unless, indeed, you 
 are willing to lodge strangers over-night in your own 
 home in America. 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 I have stayed in a good many S} r rian khans —when 
 I could not help it. The first thing you do after 
 arrival is to sit on the edge of the manger and smoke, 
 while your horse is being fed. The reason why you 
 stay there in the stable is because otherwise the oats 
 you have paid for would be stolen from under the 
 poor animal’s nose. And it is better to smoke, 
 because tobacco smoke does not smell so bad as some 
 other things. Then your host conducts you to the 
 chamber of honor—if there is one. In many of the 
 khans there are no sleeping-rooms at all; for the 
 muleteers and camel-drivers are content to roll up 
 in their blankets and spend the night on the stable 
 floor, or perhaps on a large raised platform which 
 is provided for that purpose. 
 
 The first time I slept at the khan at Jenin (ancient 
 Engannim), on the edge of the Plain of Esdraelon, 
 we were given a little upper room, like a small house 
 built on the flat roof of the main building; doubtless 
 the same kind of a guest-chamber which the widow of 
 Shunem built for the prophet Elisha. The furniture 
 consisted of four very rickety and very dirty beds, 
 one broken-down chair, a little wooden bench with two 
 jugs of water on it, a smoky lamp, and a piece of 
 dark, stony substance which was said to be soap. 
 But by the time we had washed the soap, there was 
 not enough of it left to wash ourselves with; so our 
 evening ablutions were performed by cautiously pour¬ 
 ing our scanty supply of water over each other’s 
 
 [ 143 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 hands, in the time-honored Oriental manner. As our 
 muleteer threw the saddle-bags on the floor he 
 turned to us with a grin and said, “Fine room! 
 Cook’s Hotel!” 
 
 We gave him a bishlik (eleven cents), and told 
 him to go to the bazaar and buy us some supper. He 
 came back with a big bundle of bread and cheese 
 which lasted the two of us for three meals. Even 
 counting the price of the coffee from the khan , and of 
 a can of sardines left over from lunch, our meal cost 
 us only about four cents apiece. After supper we 
 sat out on the flat roof for half an hour in the moon¬ 
 light. Any Syrian town looks beautiful after dark. 
 Then we rubbed vaseline on our sunburns and tumbled 
 into bed—with our clothes on, for obvious reasons— 
 and in spite of the fact that all the window panes 
 were broken and somebody had told the mosquitoes 
 of our arrival, we slept a solid ten hours. 
 
 The next time I passed through Jemn, we were 
 given a tiny pavilion in the center of the orchard 
 back of the khan. Here the surroundings were really 
 most romantic. No sign of human life was visible. 
 Only the hum and buzz and chirp of a hundred thou¬ 
 sand insects shattered the dead stillness of the night. 
 Between the deep shadows of the old olive trees, the 
 bright moonlight streamed upon the flowers grow¬ 
 ing beneath in wild profusion. But our garden pavil¬ 
 ion was more of a ruin than the chamber on the roof 
 of the khan. The door was gone and the shutters of 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 the windows swung on one hinge; so when towards 
 midnight we heard a number of drunken muleteers 
 carousing at the farther end of the orchard, we 
 moved our four-poster beds up against the openings 
 of the pavilion, in such a way that we should be 
 quickly aroused by any intruders. This time we 
 were more extravagant and spent a bishlik apiece for 
 a very large course dinner, consisting of rice stew, 
 mutton stew, bean stew, tomato stew, and I know 
 not how many stews besides. While we were eating, 
 our lamp attracted attention, and, with one accord, 
 all the insects in the orchard stopped buzzing and 
 came in to welcome us. But poor food and dirty 
 beds and insect pests and drunken neighbors are 
 powerless to disturb the peaceful slumbers of those 
 who have ridden all day in the brisk, fresh air of the 
 uplands of Palestine. 
 
 It is seldom, however, that the traveler need sleep 
 at native khans. Ordinarily he can plan his journey 
 so as to spend each night at one of the numerous 
 monasteries which make a business of entertaining 
 strangers. These seldom have any fixed charge. I 
 usually pay a medjedie (eighty-five cents) for sup¬ 
 per, bed and breakfast for myself and horse. 
 
 As a rule these monasteries are clean and com¬ 
 fortable, and provide good food as well as satisfac¬ 
 tory lodging. The buildings are always forbidding 
 stone structures, built so as to stand a siege, if need 
 be. Around the inner court, with its pebble walks 
 
 l© 
 
 [145] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 and central cistern, are cloisters from which open 
 the living and sleeping-rooms; or, in the case of a 
 large monastery, the bedrooms will open from an 
 upper gallery. The surroundings are quiet and 
 peaceful, the beds have the necessary mosquito-nets, 
 the food is good in quality and often elaborate in 
 variety. I had an eight-course dinner at the Fran¬ 
 ciscan monastery at Shechem. And if you talk 
 French or Arabic, the monks are only too glad to sit 
 down for an after-dinner chat with you. 
 
 There are three views which repeat themselves 
 again and again as you ride along the central range 
 of Palestine: the valley, the ravine, and the panorama 
 from the mountaintop. 
 
 The first you see with increasing frequency as you 
 pass from the rather barren pasture land of Judea 
 to the richer farming country of Samaria. You ride 
 along a long, narrow meadow, like the bed of an 
 ancient lake—which doubtless it was. On each side 
 are the steep hills, whose rocky sides are only 
 sparsely covered with small, stunted trees and 
 scrubby bushes; but the valley between is one level, 
 apparently unbroken mass of velvety green, dotted 
 here and there with brilliant clumps of wild flowers. 
 No brooks wander through these meadows. Their 
 moisture comes from the winter rains. No farm 
 houses are seen. It is not safe for the peasants to 
 dwell alone; so they live in compact villages a little 
 
 [146] 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
 
 Shechem and Mount Ebal 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
 
 The Samaritan high priest and the famous roll of the Pentateuch 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 way up the hillsides by the springs, and come down 
 each day to the valley to work their fields, except 
 just at the harvest time, when they camp out in 
 little booths made of leafy boughs, lest their ripe 
 grain should be prematurely garnered by some mid¬ 
 night robber. So there is nothing to break the soft, 
 quiet monotony of the warm valley cuddled there 
 between the surrounding hills. 
 
 Suddenly the meadow turns sharply and ends 
 in a narrow, winding ravine, whose stony bottom, 
 cluttered with tremendous boulders, shows the marks 
 of the torrential flow of the rainy season. There 
 may be an insecure bridle-path along one side of the 
 bed of the wadi, or you may have to ride up the dry 
 river-bed itself. Your horse stumbles over the 
 rounded stones at almost every step; but you need 
 not worry; he is used to these rough roads, and will 
 not fall. On the right hand and the left the almost 
 precipitous hillside is untidily covered with tough, 
 thorny bushes, which often scratch you as you ride 
 between them on the narrow trail. There is no wind 
 down here between the hills, and the stones under¬ 
 foot are almost as hot as the sun overhead. You 
 can never make out the path for more than a few 
 rods ahead; then it turns around some rocky 
 shoulder, or is lost in a tangle of underbrush. Some¬ 
 times the road is as steep as a stairway and, unless 
 you are a seasoned traveler, you tire yourself out 
 trying to help the horse climb over the huge blocks of 
 
 [147] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 fallen limestone. You hope that each new turn in 
 the twisting ravine will be the last; but you are so 
 often disappointed that at last you come to feel as 
 if all Palestine were one narrow, steep, hot, endless 
 cleft in the rocks. 
 
 Then, all of a sudden, you are out on the top of 
 the world. You take off your helmet to let the cool 
 breeze blow through your matted hair, and gulp in 
 great breaths of the delicious mountain air. The 
 ravine up which you have been traveling is already 
 hidden in the bushes. You would have hard work 
 to find it again. Overhead is an illimitable expanse 
 of the clearest, cleanest air, with feathery clouds 
 gently floating eastward from the sea through the 
 dark, rich blue of the sky. Bright-colored flowers 
 grow among the rocks of the hilltop, and scrub oaks 
 and cactus bushes. Farther down, the slopes are 
 terraced in innumerable narrow platforms, each of 
 which bears one or two long, curving rows of orchard 
 trees. All about you are rounded mountain summits, 
 with soft, level grain fields between them. On spurs 
 of the hills which project into the valleys are clusters 
 of tiny, gray-white houses. Especially at the east 
 there are mountains and mountains and more moun¬ 
 tains. Then suddenly they stop, and you fairly 
 feel the unseen drop where Palestine falls down 
 into the Jordan Valley, beyond which is the bluish 
 wall of the plateau of Gilead. At the west there is 
 one place where a break between the hills shows a tiny 
 
 [148] 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 triangle of the Mediterranean, which shines dark 
 blue or gray or golden, according to the height of 
 the sun. And away off to the north is the faint out¬ 
 line of Mount Hermon. 
 
 The center of Palestine geographically, and in 
 many respects the center historically and religiously, 
 is the city of Shechem, which lies in the transverse 
 valley which cuts across the highlands of Samaria 
 from east to west between Mount Gerizim and Mount 
 Ebal. The city is built upon a kind of ridge or 
 “shoulder,” which stretches across the narrow valley 
 from mountain to mountain; hence its ancient name 
 of Shechem or “the Shoulder.” It has been known 
 for the last nineteen centuries as Nablus ( i.e ., 
 Neapolis) or “New-town.” 
 
 The “Vale of Shechem” is exceedingly fertile. 
 Where Jerusalem has no natural springs at all, 
 Nablus boasts of twenty-two never-failing fountains. 
 There is an elaborate system of irrigation; but at 
 certain seasons of the year there is such an over¬ 
 supply of water that it is actually let run to waste 
 through the city streets, which are sometimes dan¬ 
 gerous for horses, on account of the floods rushing 
 over the slippery stones. In all my travels through 
 Syria and Palestine I remember only three cities 
 where there was a visible abundance of water: Da¬ 
 mascus, Ba‘albek and Shechem; and of these, only the 
 last is within the limits of the ancient Land of Israel. 
 
 [149] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 The whole valley around Shechem is crowded with 
 a luxuriant growth of orchards and vineyards. In 
 the town itself there are a number of manufactories 
 of olive-oil soap. It is the only place in Palestine 
 where I have been awakened at live o’clock in the 
 morning by the shrill blast of a factory whistle. Out¬ 
 side of Jerusalem, which is a show-place rather than 
 a self-sustaining community, Shechem is the largest 
 city in the Holy Land, and its surroundings are by 
 far the most attractive. 
 
 In historical interest too, Shechem is a rival of the 
 Holy City. Here was the oak of Moreh, where 
 Abraham "worshipped; and an increasing number of 
 scholars believe that the Samaritans are right in 
 maintaining that not at Jerusalem but at Gerizim 
 was Mount Moriah, where Abraham would have sac¬ 
 rificed Isaac. Here Jacob dwelt and here Joseph was 
 buried. Here the curses of the Law were read from 
 Ebal, and the blessings from Gerizim, while the 
 assembled Tribes of Israel in the narrow valley 
 between shouted the loud “Amen!” Here the rebel 
 Abimelech was crowned king. Here also Rehoboam 
 was crowned and here, only a brief time afterward, 
 Jeroboam set up the first court of the rival Northern 
 Kingdom. Here, after the Exile, was the chief 
 colony of the “Samaritans,” that strange, mongrel, 
 lonely people from Mesopotamia, who were settled 
 in Palestine by the Assyrian conqueror, who 
 apparently intermarried for a while with the Hebrew 
 
 [150] 
 
Jacob’s Well 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
 
 The village of Samaria and the tree-clad summit where stood the 
 
 ancient capital 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 residents and picked up some few teachings of the 
 Hebrew religion and set up a rival to the Jerusalem 
 temple on their own holy mountain, Gerizim; and yet 
 were always despised by the orthodox Jews, whose 
 contempt they reciprocated with a bitter, sullen 
 hatred. 
 
 The inhabitants of the modem city number some 
 24,000, and are nearly all Moslems, who are almost 
 as fanatical and turbulent as those in Hebron. I 
 have seldom felt myself more of an unwelcomed 
 intruder than when riding through the sullen crowd 
 in the Nablus bazaar. It is not a pleasant place for 
 the stranger to stroll about after dark. 
 
 Of the old Samaritan sect, only a few survive. 
 There are now fewer than two hundred of them, 
 and their number is rapidly decreasing. Another 
 generation or two will doubtless see the end of them. 
 But they will die game. They are as proud and 
 exclusive and stubborn as ever. They marry their 
 own boys to their own girls—there are pathetically 
 few of either. They wear their own distinctive dress. 
 They jealously guard their own Bible—a copy of 
 the Pentateuch, which they believe to have been 
 written by Abishua, the grandson of Aaron. And on 
 the summit of Gerizim, by the ruins of their ancient 
 temple, they celebrate the Passover and the other 
 ancient feasts with sacrifices and elaborate cere¬ 
 monies, in strict accordance with the Mosaic ritual. 
 
 At the eastern end of the Valley of Shechem, two 
 
 [151] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 miles from the city, is a sacred place which is unique 
 among the myriad of reputed and disputed sites in 
 the Holy Land; for “Jacob’s Well” is the only par¬ 
 ticular spot which is indisputably identified with the 
 life of Jesus of Nazareth. We know, of course, that 
 He was born somewhere in Bethlehem, and visited in 
 some houses in Capernaum, and prayed in some 
 garden on the Mount of Olives, and died somewhere 
 outside the walls of Jerusalem. But scholars of all 
 religions and sects, Eastern and Western, Catholic 
 and Protestant and Jewish and Samaritan and 
 Moslem, agree that He sat here—perhaps on this 
 very well-curb—while He talked with the woman of 
 Samaria about the water of life. 
 
 The surrounding parcel of land is now owned by 
 the Greeks, who have enclosed it with a rough stone 
 wall. Over the well itself is built a small, dark vault, 
 some fifteen feet square, and lying more than half 
 underground. This tomb-like structure is crudely 
 fitted up as a chapel, with a few hanging lamps and 
 ornamental candlesticks and sacred pictures, and 
 broken fragments of columns from the church which 
 was built here in the fourth century. 
 
 The well-curb is a single piece of stone, very old 
 and worn, which rises a foot above the floor of the 
 vault. For a small fee, the priest will let down a 
 candle so that you can see the interior of the well. 
 It is deep, as the woman of Samaria said, though it 
 is not so deep now as it was then. The great mass of 
 
 [152] 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 rubbish which has fallen into it, and the innumerable 
 stones which have been dropped by centuries of 
 curious pilgrims, have raised the bottom so that it is 
 now only seventy-five feet below the surface of the 
 valley. Twelve hundred years ago a Mohammedan 
 visitor estimated the depth as two hundred and forty 
 feet. He may have somewhat exaggerated; but at 
 any rate, the well is not nearly so deep as it used to 
 be, and during the dry summer months, the water at 
 the bottom does not now rise above the accumulated 
 rubbish. 
 
 As we come out from the gloom of the chapel over 
 the well, we see, half a mile to the north, the dazzling 
 white walls of “Joseph’s Tomb,” which reflect the 
 rays of the sun almost as brightly as a heliograph. 
 Joseph was doubtless buried somewhere nearby; but 
 this building is a modem Moslem structure which is 
 not worth visiting. Such welis , or tombs of holy men, 
 are typical features of the landscape, and are seen 
 shining on almost every conspicuous summit of the 
 country. They usually consist of a rectangular, 
 block-like structure, surmounted by a small dome; 
 and when one is seen rising all alone on the very top 
 of some round, bare, isolated hill, it looks so much 
 like an observatory that you cannot help wishing 
 that there were indeed a telescope set up there in the 
 clear, dry atmosphere. 
 
 Another memorable feature of Samaria is the 
 countless multitude of caves in the soft limestone 
 
 [153] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 r : 1 . 1 ■ . ; ~ ..- " 1 .— 
 
 rock. Indeed there are caves all over Palestine, lit¬ 
 erally tens of thousands of them, ranging in size all 
 the way from single tomb-like chambers to immense 
 natural catacombs like the “Cave of Adullam” in the 
 wilderness south of Jerusalem. In Samaria the land¬ 
 scape is fairly dotted with dark, mysterious openings 
 between the boulders, so that we are continually 
 reminded of how the fugitive prophets of Israel hid 
 in “mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” 
 
 Ten miles northwest of Shechem lies the other 
 great, historic stronghold of central Palestine, the 
 city of Samaria. But where Shechem is a busy, 
 modern city in a narrow valley, Samaria is a squalid 
 village among imposing ruins on an isolated hilltop. 
 They call it now Sebastiyeh, from the Greek Sebaste , 
 “Augustus.” 
 
 The situation of Samaria is very beautiful, in a 
 quiet, peaceful way. In the center of a fertile basin 
 among the mountains, rises a single rounded, terraced 
 hill, about three hundred feet high, which must have 
 been almost impregnable before the invention of 
 gunpowder. Upon its summit stood the luxurious 
 capital which Isaiah well named “the crown of pride” 
 of the Northern Kingdom, the “flower of his glori¬ 
 ous beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley.” 
 To this day, the circle of surrounding valleys is “fat” 
 with olive orchards, the hillsides beyond are cov¬ 
 ered with grape vines and wild flowers, and from the 
 
 [154] 
 
THE BACKBONE OF PALESTINE 
 
 western end of the city is one of the most charming 
 views in Palestine, over the nearest hills and then 
 down through the distant vales to the Mediterranean 
 Sea. Doubtless Queen Jezebel often looked out from 
 Ahab’s palace in Samaria with homesick longing for 
 the Great Sea whose waves beat upon the coast of 
 her own native Phoenicia. 
 
 This stronghold within sight of the sea has been 
 more often in the grip of heathen masters and 
 heathen faiths than any other large city in the Holy 
 Land. Its important history begins with Ahab and 
 Jezebel, who built here a temple of Baal; it ends with 
 Herod the Great, who built here a temple to Augustus 
 Caesar, and who murdered here his own wife and two 
 of his sons. Difficult as Samaria is to be taken by 
 assault, it has been starved out again and again. Its 
 history is a monotonous and sickening succession of 
 sieges and razings and massacres, followed by the 
 rebuilding and embellishing of a new city by the con¬ 
 queror. Herod the Great not only fortified Samaria, 
 but erected upon it a palace and a temple and a race 
 course and a magnificent colonnade which ran entirely 
 around the hill, just below its summit. 
 
 These columns of Herod are the most prominent 
 objects on the hill to-day. Some are still standing in 
 their original position beside the road. Many are 
 built into the low walls which separate the little fields 
 of the villagers. Others buttress the terraces and 
 border the paths. A multitude lie where they have 
 
 [155] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 stopped rolling down the hill, broken and weathered 
 and half-covered with earth. Carved sarcophagi are 
 also seen here and there; and heavy foundations of 
 long vanished buildings. Samaria is a veritable rub¬ 
 bish-heap of broken stones and fallen pillars and 
 crumbled masonry and whitish dust. The houses of 
 the tiny modern settlement at the east end of the hill 
 are built on rubbish and seem to be built of rubbish. 
 The city of Jezebel and Herod, for all its matchless 
 situation and the surrounding fertility, has become 
 a desolate ruin, even as it was foretold by the prophet 
 Micah, 
 
 “I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, 
 
 And as places for planting vineyards; 
 
 And I will pour down the stones thereof into 
 the valley, 
 
 And I will uncover the foundations thereof.” 
 
 [156] 
 
XV 
 
 THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES 
 
 B ETWEEN Samaria and Galilee the central 
 mountain range of Palestine is cut through 
 from east to west, as if a tremendous trowel 
 had scooped out all the hills and then, turning over 
 southward, had emptied its load to form Mount 
 Carmel. This triangular leveled area is the Plain of 
 Jezreel, or Megiddo, or Esdraelon, or the “Great 
 Plain”; a kind of broad channel separating Galilee 
 from Samaria as effectually as the English Channel 
 separates Great Britain from France, and, like the 
 English Channel, a highway for the world’s 
 commerce. 
 
 Of course the Plain of Esdraelon is neither abso¬ 
 lutely level nor exactly triangular. At its western 
 end it divides into narrower valleys which connect 
 with the Plain of Acre and the Plain of Sharon. At 
 the east it drops down to the Jordan Valley by sev¬ 
 eral branches. But so sharply does it contrast with 
 the surrounding heights that to the eye it appears 
 to be a great, smooth triangle, whose base from north 
 to south measures fifteen miles, and whose altitude 
 from east to west is about twenty miles. The south- 
 
 1157] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 western side is bounded by the bills of Samaria, 
 which run out into the long, even mass of Mount 
 Carmel. At the north are the highlands of Galilee. 
 The eastern edge is indicated less clearly by a string 
 of separated mountains: Gilboa, Little Hermon and 
 Tabor. The area thus enclosed not only appears per¬ 
 fectly horizontal, but is unbroken by houses or trees 
 or streams. The narrow Kishon, or “Twister,” 
 meanders along between high mud banks which pre¬ 
 vent it being seen from any distance. So the plain 
 seems like the level surface of a body of water, brown 
 or green according to the season, lying unruffled by 
 the breeze, within the bold headlands which encompass 
 it. Indeed, this was once an arm of the great Jordan 
 Valley lake. Sometime, under proper cultivation, it 
 will be one of the most productive wheat fields in the 
 world; for in the rainy season the old lake bottom 
 is one broad, fertile mud-flat. 
 
 I 
 
 Judea is an island of hilltops, separated from the 
 world outside by sudden valleys and barren deserts, 
 and with no important trade routes crossing it. 
 Samaria is more open and accessible, whether for 
 friends or foes; and so Samaria was more affected 
 by corrupt heathen civilizations and fell sooner 
 before invading armies. But the great road across 
 Palestine passes through the level plain of Esdrae- 
 lon. This was the greatest thoroughfare of the 
 ancient world. From Sharon to Jordan, from 
 Phoenicia to Bashan, from Rome to Palmyra, from 
 
 [158] 
 
The Kishon River and Mount Carmel 
 
 t 
 
Looking across the Plain of Esdraelon to Mount Tabor 
 
THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES 
 
 Gaza to Bagdad, from the Mediterranean to the Sea 
 of Galilee, from Cairo to Babylon, from the Occident 
 to the Orient and back again; the caravans of count¬ 
 less centuries passed and repassed along the “Great 
 Plain.” 
 
 It is no wonder that this easiest, most-traveled 
 highway of antiquity has been also the war-path of 
 the empires, the scene of more decisive battles than 
 any other place on earth. Again and again, through 
 forty centuries, the fate of continents has hung in 
 the balance while the armies of East and West fought 
 across the smiling wheat fields or floundered in the 
 springtime morasses of the flooded Kishon River. 
 
 From the summit of Mount Tabor, Deborah looked 
 down upon the plain where the army of Sisera had 
 been routed by Barak, and sang: 
 
 “The kings came and fought; 
 
 Then fought the kings of Canaan, 
 
 In Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. . . . 
 The river Kishon swept them away, 
 
 That ancient river, the river Kishon. 
 
 Oh, my soul, march on with strength.” 
 
 In the valley north of the hill of Moreh (Little 
 Hermon) Gideon’s gallant band of three hundred 
 picked men routed the invading Midianites from 
 beyond Jordan by their sudden night attack. On 
 Mount Gilboa, Saul and Jonathan made their last, 
 
 [ 159 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 tragic stand against the Philistine army. In the 
 southwestern arm of the plain, King Josiah was 
 defeated and slain by the Egyptian army in the 
 “Valley of Megiddo.” 
 
 Holofernes set up his camp on the Plain of 
 Esdraelon; so did Pompey and Mark Antony and 
 Titus. Near Mount Tabor, Vespasian in the year 
 67 A. D. routed the Jewish patriots with great 
 slaughter. The last significant campaign of the 
 Crusades took place when, one after another, the 
 Christian strongholds on the edges of this plain were 
 captured by the Saracen army under Saladin. Six 
 hundred years later, East and West again met on 
 the historic battlefield, when Napoleon Bonaparte was 
 victorious over the Turks, though the victory was 
 won at such great cost that he had to retreat to Acre 
 and give up his ambitious dreams of rivalling Alex¬ 
 ander the Great as the conqueror of Asia. It only 
 remains to recall that the plain had so strong a hold 
 upon Hebrew imagination as the greatest of all bat¬ 
 tlefields that, when the Apocalypse (Rev. 16:16) 
 pictures the final conflict between the forces of good 
 and evil, “the battle of that great day of God 
 Almighty” is fought at Ar-mageddon,* i.e Megiddo. 
 
 * Ar-mageddon is somewhat perplexing, because ar (better, 
 har ) means “mountain,” not “plain.” Some think that it means 
 Mount Tabor. But there can be little doubt that the reference 
 is to this general locality, as the scene of so many decisive 
 battles. 
 
 [ 160 ] 
 
THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES 
 
 Of course no city could long escape destruction on 
 this war-path of the world; so no place of any 
 importance has ever been built on the plain itself. 
 The strongholds of Esdraelon have always been on 
 spurs of the surrounding mountains. Megiddo, 
 Taanach and Engannim on the southwestern side of 
 the triangle; Harosheth at the western apex; Jezreel, 
 Shunem, Nain and Endor at the eastern base of the 
 central plain: all are a little way up on the slope of 
 the mountains. 
 
 As we ride northward toward Galilee, we come 
 first to Jezreel (now Zer'in ), on a rounded hill 
 three hundred feet in height, which is thrown out 
 into the plain from the last northernmost spur of 
 Mount Gilboa. The situation is so beautiful and 
 commanding that it is no wonder that luxury-loving 
 Ahab and Jezebel chose it for their favorite residence. 
 But the royal city was cursed by idolatry and cruelty, 
 whose classic instance was the murderous plot for 
 acquiring Naboth’s vineyard; and the history of Jez¬ 
 reel as a place of any importance ended when Jehu 
 massacred the family and adherents of Ahab and cast 
 the body of proud, wicked Jezebel out of the palace 
 window. To-day the soft pasture-land of the rounded 
 hill is covered with grazing flocks and dotted with 
 black Bedouin tents. Only thirty or forty hovels 
 cluster about the ruin of a large square tower, which 
 rises like a monument at the very summit of the hill. 
 
 Seven miles to the north, beyond the head of the 
 
 11 
 
 [161] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 eastern branch of the plain which was presumably the 
 original “Valley of Jezreel,” the hill Moreh rises to 
 a height of 1,690 feet, its summit crowned conspicu¬ 
 ously by the white-domed tomb of a Moslem saint. 
 The same zeal which localized so many Biblical events 
 within the confines of the Church of the Holy Sepul¬ 
 chre caused the early Christian pilgrims to move 
 Mount Hermon from its somewhat inaccessible north¬ 
 ern situation and identify it with this hill on the 
 Plain of Esdraelon. Since the mistake was rectified, 
 the elevation has been commonly known among Euro¬ 
 peans as “Little Hermon.” 
 
 On its western slopes, a little above the plain, are 
 the villages of Shunem, Nain and Endor; all charm¬ 
 ingly situated, but all alike, small, crowded, unsan¬ 
 itary collections of mud huts. I have a special inter¬ 
 est in Shunem because, unlike Elisha who received 
 such a hospitable welcome there, my friend and I were 
 stoned out of the village. The only other place where 
 I have been stoned is Jenin; and in both cases it 
 was apparently only the work of a mob of the same 
 kind of young roughs who, in America, would insult 
 a Chinese or a Japanese stranger. 
 
 Following the eastern edge of the plain across the 
 mouth of another branch which descends to the Jor¬ 
 dan Valley, we reach one of the most beautiful and 
 interesting of mountains, Tabor. It is less than two 
 thousand feet in height, but from a little distance its 
 hemispherical mass seems to start upward right from 
 
 [162] 
 
THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES 
 
 the level plain, and its steepness, as well as its isola¬ 
 tion, make it an ideal place for a fortress or a watch- 
 tower. Small oak trees still cover a good part of the 
 mountainside, the open spaces provide a fair pastur¬ 
 age, and among the bushes are numerous game-birds 
 and small wild animals, such as foxes and rabbits. 
 
 The summit is now divided between two monas¬ 
 teries, belonging respectively to the Latin and Greek 
 Churches. Both are built on the sites of very ancient 
 Christian structures, and both claim that the Trans¬ 
 figuration took place within their precincts. There 
 are two exceptions to the rule that Oriental dogs 
 are starved, spiritless creatures, which lie all day long 
 in the road, only moving a little out of the way when 
 they are kicked, or to avoid being trampled upon by 
 a passing horse. The dogs of the Bedouins and of the 
 monasteries are great, courageous beasts, which 
 resent any intrusion upon the premises they are 
 guarding. One of m}^ friends had to shoot a Bedouin 
 dog before it would loose its grip upon the flank of 
 his galloping horse. But the biggest, fiercest dogs 
 I have ever had to do with personally are those on 
 Mount Tabor. They are usually chained during the 
 daytime; but if they happen to be loose, it would be 
 a very reckless visitor who would attempt to dis¬ 
 mount at the monastery gate before the monks 
 appeared. 
 
 The artificially leveled summit of Tabor was once 
 entirely occupied by an enormous fortress, whose 
 
 [163] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 outer ramparts enclosed an area several times as large 
 as the entire walled city of Jerusalem. The castle is 
 now a mass of hardly distinguishable ruins, among 
 which can be made out the outlines of several towers 
 and a little church. Among the heaps of fallen 
 stones are a number of dark openings, leading 
 apparently to underground passages which it would 
 be interesting, though perhaps dangerous, to explore. 
 
 While some of the lower foundations of this castle 
 go back to Roman times and perhaps earlier, the 
 larger part of the ruins are of Crusading origin. All 
 over Palestine and Syria, from the northern heights 
 of Lebanon down to the Sinaitic Peninsula, at Sidon 
 on the coast, and Ranias below Mount Hermon, and 
 “Belfort” by the Jordan, and “Belvoir” overlooking 
 the gorge of the Leontes, and on many another 
 strategic situation throughout the length and 
 breadth of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, are 
 the remains of these old Frankish fortresses. Prob¬ 
 ably nine-tenths of the ancient buildings in Palestine 
 date from the twelfth century. We are filled with 
 wonder and admiration as we contemplate the evi¬ 
 dences of the architectural knowledge, administrative 
 ability and splendid daring of those Crusading 
 princes, who, with comparatively small bodies of 
 troops scattered here and there through a strange 
 land, surrounded by a suspicious and unfriendly 
 populace, and always in danger of raids from the 
 Arab world just to the east, yet set up, not a mere 
 
 [164] 
 
THE WAR-PATH OF THE EMPIRES 
 
 provisional military government, but a completely 
 organized kingdom, with all the ecclesiastical and 
 judicial and political machinery of the Western civil¬ 
 ization to which they were accustomed, and built, 
 not temporary shelters and earthen breastworks, but 
 entire new cities and beautiful cathedrals and tre¬ 
 mendous fortresses which, even in their ruins, are 
 among the largest and most impressive in the world. 
 
 [165] 
 
XVI 
 
 GREETINGS BY THE WAY 
 
 W HEN a certain Oriental charged His disciples 
 to “salute no man on the way,” He did not 
 intend to lay down a permanent rule of 
 conduct; for this would have been to strike at one of 
 the strongest social customs of His age and country. 
 The Seventy were sent out upon such an urgent mis¬ 
 sion that they must disregard even the ordinary 
 amenities until their task was accomplished ; but there 
 is no indication that they were lacking in courtesy 
 after this particular journey was ended. The runner 
 who is bearing an important message cannot stop for 
 mere politeness’ sake; but we should not be always on 
 the run, and we quite miss the spirit of this injunction 
 of Christ when we apply it to our own everyday lives, 
 and use it as an excuse for a brusqueness that was 
 never taught by the Master or manifested in His own 
 conduct. We shall be nearer the mind of Christ if 
 we remember rather that other time when He taught 
 His followers to greet every person whom they met; 
 for “if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more 
 than others ?” 
 
 The modern inhabitants of the Holy Land are 
 seldom discourteous, except where they have come 
 
 [166] 
 
The village of Nain. In the background, Mount Tabor 
 
Syrian villagers 
 
GREETINGS BY THE WAY 
 
 under European or American influence. In the sea¬ 
 port towns, travelers often have to complain of the 
 insolence of the lower classes; but this is because the 
 natives have copied our Western freedom and blunt¬ 
 ness of speech, without learning, also, the underlying 
 modesty and honor which we like to believe compen¬ 
 sate for our plain-spoken words. The unspoiled 
 Syrian, however, is by nature and training a person 
 of great politeness, and of infinite tact. This is true 
 of poor as well as of rich, and the illiterate Arabs of 
 the desert are famous for their good manners. How 
 different this is from our Occidental civilization, 
 where the very root of “urbanity” and “civility” must 
 be found in the “city” life! The Oriental is also gifted 
 with an ability to read human nature, which seems 
 almost miraculous to our heavier minds. School¬ 
 boys get to know the pet weaknesses of their Amer¬ 
 ican teacher long before they learn the English 
 “A B C,” and I have heard grimy bootblacks dissect 
 the characters of foreign missionaries and tourists 
 with an acumen that was positively uncanny. When 
 such an insight is coupled with a desire to please, 
 inspired by a highly imaginative mind, and equipped 
 with a language more rich than any other in the world 
 except our own conglomerate English, it is no wonder 
 that social intercourse in Palestine is marked by irre¬ 
 sistible refinement and tact—and seems to waste a 
 great deal of time ! 
 
 As indicated also in the etymology of our English 
 
 [167] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 word “salute,” the greetings of the East largely have 
 to do with bodily “safety” and peace; yet there is 
 hardly any situation in life that has not its own par¬ 
 ticular salutation and reply. These are elastic 
 enough, however, to admit of almost infinite varia¬ 
 tions of wording and w r armth. 
 
 If you meet a friend on the crowded street of a 
 city, you perhaps will not stop for a conversation; 
 but as you pass by you say, Naharak sa‘id, “May 
 your day be happy,” and he answers, Sa‘id umbarak, 
 May your own day be “happy and blessed.” These 
 greetings, as well as those which follow, are not so 
 lengthy as the English translation would seem to 
 indicate. In the Arabic there are seldom more than 
 two or three words, which are often rhyming or allit¬ 
 erative. Other passing salutations are, “May your 
 day be white,” or, “May God give you prosperity,” 
 or, “Good health to you.” Up on Lebanon the sturdy 
 mountaineer greets you with “Welcome!” and you 
 reply, “A double welcome!” In certain parts of 
 Judea the farmer says, “May God give you health,” 
 to which there is but one proper response, “May He 
 give you health and peace.” But if you are a Chris¬ 
 tian, you must not say to a Moslem, “Peace be unto 
 you,” for this greeting is used only between brethren 
 of the same faith.* 
 
 * Perhaps the most significant incident of the recent revolu¬ 
 tion was the jubilant celebration of the new era of fraternity, 
 during which Moslems greeted Christians as “brethren” and 
 wished them “peace.” 
 
 [168] 
 
GREETINGS BY THE WAY 
 
 If you have time to stop and talk awhile, which is 
 nearly always the case outside of the larger cities, or 
 better yet, if there is a visitor at your own home, you 
 continue your inquiries as to his health while he sips 
 the cooling sherbet which your servant has brought. 
 “How are you? How is your condition?—health?— 
 well-being? — work? — affairs? — possessions? — 
 manner of living?” Every now and then you will 
 interject, “Inshallah (please God) } r ou are well?” 
 and your guest will supplement his affirmative reply 
 with the abbreviated Hamdillah , “God be thanked!” 
 At any time that there is a lull in the conversation, 
 the polite inquiries can begin all over again. After 
 an hour's talk with an English-speaking Syrian, I 
 have heard him make a fresh start with, “Good after¬ 
 noon, sir! How are you?” 
 
 When your friend comes from the bath or from 
 being shaved, you would be lacking in civility if you 
 did not gravely say to him, “God prosper you.” 
 When he appears in a new suit you greet him with a 
 different blessing. If you wish to be very polite, you 
 say, “May you wear it out with the sweat of health.” 
 As a man rises from table you say, “May you have 
 double health,” and he turns the wish by adding, 
 “Unto your own heart!” After a person has recov¬ 
 ered from an illness, it is natural to greet him with, 
 “Thank God you are well”; but the response must 
 always take the set form, “May God give you also 
 health.” At a wedding, after you have exclaimed to 
 
 [169] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the bridegroom, “0 blessed hour!” you turn to the 
 guest near you, and wish that his turn may come next. 
 If he is already married, the expression has to be a 
 little changed: “May it be the turn of your son next.’ 5 
 The different holidays and holy days have character¬ 
 istic salutations, as with us; but it is significant of 
 the lack of security for life and property that the 
 New Years’s wish is for “safety, 55 not, as in the West, 
 for a more active happiness. 
 
 The salutations just mentioned do not form a tithe 
 of those used in everyday intercourse. There are hun¬ 
 dreds of set phrases, with an infinite number of varia¬ 
 tions to suit every possible contingency. At first the 
 Frank is apt to chafe under the tedium of these multi¬ 
 farious courtesies; but before long he comes to love 
 the beautiful greetings, and misses them when now and 
 then they are lacking. I remember riding one day 
 through a village in northern Lebanon that is famous 
 for the number of its inhabitants who have amassed 
 moderate fortunes in America, and then returned to 
 their own land to end their days in comparative lux¬ 
 ury. The first man whom we passed greeted us with: 
 "Hello! You boys talk English?” The second way¬ 
 farer shouted: “Hello ! I been New York. You fellows 
 Americans, too?” After that we answered passers-by 
 in Italian, until we found a gray-bearded old man who 
 asked twenty-seven Arabic questions about our distin¬ 
 guished healths before he would tell us whether we 
 ought to take the left-hand road or that to the right. 
 
 [170] 
 
GREETINGS BY THE WAY 
 
 Travelers in the Holy Land are apt' to condemn 
 the natives because they do not really mean all the 
 kind wishes and protestations of friendship which are 
 expressed in so many different forms. But do we 
 Americans always mean just what we say when we 
 chop off a curt, “G’mornin’,” or, “Glad t’meetche”? 
 The people of Palestine are not hoodwinked by the 
 protestations of a false friend any more than we are, 
 and the Arabic salutations are not necessarily less 
 sincere than ours, just because they are more varied 
 and beautiful. 
 
 I always feel like a barbarian when I think of my 
 muleteer, Abu Mustapha. He was fat and lazy, he 
 did not know the roads, and he lagged so far behind 
 that we dubbed him Yawash, which is Turkish for 
 “Go slow!” On the fourth day of the journey I 
 discharged him with the least possible bakhsheesh , 
 and with a blunt American statement as to what I 
 thought of his character. Yawash, with a gloomy 
 countenance, went to the stable and harnessed his 
 mules. Then he shuffled shamefacedly into my room 
 and put out his grimy hand, saying quietly, “Fare¬ 
 well, master! Go in peace!” If he cared at all 
 whether I lived or died, it is probable that he would 
 have preferred the latter alternative; but, I repeat, I 
 always feel like a rough-spoken barbarian when I 
 compare myself with fat, lazy old Abu Mustapha. 
 
 But it is only when the Arabic salutations fall from 
 the lips of a true friend that you come to appreciate 
 
 [171] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the beauty of these time-honored compliments. When 
 a kindly host walks with the departing guest, not one 
 mile but twain along the mountain road, and wishes 
 him peace and safety on the dangerous journey; when 
 a gray-bearded sheikh raises his turbaned head to 
 heaven and invokes the manifold blessings of the God 
 of Abraham; when in the ’buses of London or the 
 subway of New York you meet an old friend who 
 drops his newly learned English to greet you in the 
 more rhythmical Arabic of his Eastern home; then the 
 oft-repeated phrases can be filled with a very tender 
 beauty. Foreign residents in Palestine come to use 
 the native salutations even when talking among them¬ 
 selves. At first it is done half in fun; but there is 
 soon felt an increasing desire to intersperse these deli¬ 
 cately-turned expressions through the bolder English 
 speech, until at last only the short Saxon “good-by” 
 takes precedence over the gracious Arabic phrases, 
 many of which translate word for word the ancient 
 greetings that must have often come from the lips of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, 
 
 [172] 
 
XVII 
 
 The Ring of the gentiles 
 
 G ALILEE is different from the rest of Palestine. 
 As you ride across the flat Plain of Esdraelon 
 towards the line of hills which rises abruptly 
 from its northern edge, like a gigantic fortification, 
 you have time to prepare for a scenery and a history 
 very unlike those of the cramped, shut-in mountain 
 country where most of the important events of 
 Hebrew history took place. 
 
 The northern district toward which we are riding 
 was no hidden sanctuary for the slow growth of a 
 national spirit and a lofty faith. It was the cross¬ 
 roads of the nations. The Old Testament seldom 
 mentions it except as the scene of fitful forays and 
 frontier skirmishes. In New Testament days it was 
 despised by the conservative southern Jews for its 
 Greco-Roman civilization and was called Galilee 
 (Galil means “Ring” or Province) of the Gentiles. 
 As in the case of French Provence, the name was 
 finally shortened to just Galilee —the Province. 
 
 This Galilee was famous for the wealth and beauty 
 of its cities, and its European culture. So the excla¬ 
 mation, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” 
 
 [173] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 did not imply that the place was an obscure, secluded, 
 ignorant country village; but rather meant, “Can 
 any good Jewish thing come out of this city, which 
 is so near to the great trade routes of the world and 
 so surrounded by the luxurious and corrupting influ¬ 
 ences of Gentile life that it has become out of sym¬ 
 pathy with the ideals of historic Judaism?” 
 
 Geologically this northern district is connected 
 with Syria rather than Palestine; for the heights of 
 Galilee are long, root-like spurs thrown southward 
 from the mountains of Lebanon. Politically, it is 
 to-day included in the vilayet of Beirut. 
 
 Rising at the south from about the level of the 
 Samaritan hills beyond the Plain of Esdraelon, the 
 northern half of Galilee has the highest average ele¬ 
 vation of any part of Palestine. The entire district 
 seems much more fertile than any we have yet visited. 
 The scenery is more like that at home. Numerous 
 unfailing brooks are fed by the springs in the north¬ 
 ern mountains. The out-croppings of bare gray 
 rock are fewer than even in Samaria. Among the 
 scattered forest trees of the hilltops is a close growth 
 of underbrush; in the valleys are rich wheat fields 
 and olive orchards; and on the middle slopes are 
 broad, swelling, grassy pasture lands like those of 
 Scotland. 
 
 Indeed, when comparing Galilee with the rest of 
 Palestine, you are often reminded of Scotland. The 
 air is fresher and more moist than in the south. The 
 
 [174] 
 
53 
 
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 p* 
 
 3 
 
 p* 
 
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 o 
 
 >-t 
 
 p* 
 
 <I> 
 
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 cn 
 
The Spring of the Lady Mary 
 
THE RING OF THE GENTILES 
 
 climate is cooler. The outlook is freer. The moun¬ 
 tains are higher. The inhabitant* seem more inde¬ 
 pendent—and sometimes more churlish. Like Scot¬ 
 land, Galilee has long been noted for its turbulence 
 and its impatience of southern rule. The Galileans 
 were always rebels at heart. One thinks also of how 
 Scotland was for centuries in heartier sympathy with 
 France than with England, just as Galilee was in 
 such close touch with Gentile civilization. To com¬ 
 plete the comparison, from both of these virile, inde¬ 
 pendent northern peoples have come intellectual and 
 religious leaders of world-wide influence. 
 
 The chief town of modern Galilee is Nazareth, 
 which has given its name to all Oriental Christians, 
 who are now called in Arabic Nasara (singular 
 Nusrani) or “Nazareth-people.” The town lies in a 
 shallow basin among the hills at the extreme southern 
 edge of Galilee, a thousand feet above the Plain of 
 Esdraelon. From a distance, the cluster of houses, 
 like all Syrian towns, is dazzling white; seen from 
 nearby, the circle of green orchards and cactus hedges 
 (introduced into Palestine from America!) is a 
 notable and pleasing feature of the landscape. The 
 inhabitants number about 10,000, of whom a third 
 are Moslems. The people of Nazareth have the 
 reputation of being rude and inhospitable. I found 
 them, however, very polite and obliging. 
 
 On account of its fine location and sacred associa¬ 
 tions, there is a larger foreign element in Nazareth 
 
 [175] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 than in any other city of Palestine except Jerusalem. 
 The Russians have here schools for boys and girls, 
 a pilgrim’s hospice and a normal college; the Ger¬ 
 mans have a hotel and a mill; the Scotch have a med¬ 
 ical mission; the English have an orphanage and a 
 church (with a Syrian rector). There are relig¬ 
 ious houses of various Latin orders, such as the Fran¬ 
 ciscans, the Clarisses, the Sisters of St. Joseph, and 
 the Ladies of Nazareth. The Greek Orthodox, Greek 
 Catholic, and Maronite Churches also have important 
 establishments here. Perhaps it is largely due to the 
 example of foreigners that the homes of the natives 
 are many of them well-built and clean; so that, on 
 the whole, Nazareth appears to be the most solidly 
 constructed and prosperous city in the country. 
 
 Of course, all sorts of events in the life of the Holy 
 Family have been exactly localized, and commemo¬ 
 rated by sacred buildings. In some cases the oppo¬ 
 sing sects each have their own rival sites. Thus, the 
 Greek and Latin Churches of the Annunciation are 
 at exactly opposite ends of the town; as far apart as 
 the two communions are in mutual appreciation and 
 sympathy. The “Workshop of Joseph” is within the 
 Franciscan Monastery. The synagogue in which 
 Christ is said to have taught is now made over into 
 a Greek Catholic Church. The “Table of Christ,” 
 on which He and His disciples dined, is a block of 
 stone twelve feet long, which is treasured by the 
 Latins. 
 
 [176] 
 
THE RING OF THE GENTILES 
 
 The most venerable and respectable traditions of 
 Nazareth cluster around the Latin Church of the 
 Annunciation. Under the center of the high altar 
 a flight of marble steps descends to a series of caves 
 like those in Bethlehem, only rather smaller. The 
 first of these is the Angel’s Chapel, with an altar to 
 Gabriel. Directly back of this is the Chapel of the 
 Annunciation, with the inscription in Latin, “Here 
 the Word was made flesh.” A column marks the place 
 where Gabriel addressed Mary, and another column, 
 which is broken off* at the base and held only by the 
 joint at the ceiling, is “miraculously” supported over 
 the spot where the Virgin stood. The third cave, 
 originally part of the second, from which it is sepa¬ 
 rated now by an artificial wall, is dedicated to Joseph. 
 From this, a narrow, curving flight of steps leads to 
 a cistern called the “Kitchen of the Virgin.” The 
 mouth of the cistern is pointed out as the chimney 
 of the kitchen. After you have wandered about 
 through ecclesiastical Palestine for a while, you 
 wonder whether the ancient Hebrew inhabitants spent 
 all their time underground. 
 
 Over these caves stood the house of the Virgin; 
 but on May 10, 1291, it was in such danger of dese¬ 
 cration by the approaching Moslem army that angels 
 lifted it bodily and carried it over the sea to Tersatto, 
 on the heights above Fiume. Three years later it was 
 again miraculously lifted up, transported across the 
 Adriatic, and set down in a laurel grove on the Italian 
 
 12 
 
 [177] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 coast. There, in the famous pilgrimage town of 
 Loreta, beneath the dome of the Church of the Holy 
 House, can be seen to this day the Casa Santa , a 
 small, one-story stone structure, which is surely the 
 most traveled building in the world. The truth of 
 the story of its wonderful joumeyings was officially 
 confirmed by the Roman Catholic Church, during the 
 pontificate of Pope Paul II. 
 
 Nazareth has only one source of water supply, 
 outside of the cisterns which store the winter rains. 
 In the northern edge of the hollow in which the city 
 lies, is a small spring, the water of which is piped a 
 few hundred feet to a public fountain. This is now 
 known as ‘Ain Sitti Miryam or “the Spring of the 
 Lady Mary”; and indeed it is practically certain 
 that the mother of Jesus must have come often to 
 this one fountain which her native town possessed, 
 and carried home the water for household purposes 
 in a great earthern jar balanced on her head, just as 
 we see the young women of Nazareth doing to-day. 
 
 It is about four hours steady riding from Naza¬ 
 reth to the Sea of Galilee. One route takes you over 
 the hill back of the town, to the little village of Cana, 
 only thirty or forty minutes’ walk for Jesus and 
 His mother when they went thither for the wedding 
 feast. 
 
 From Cana on, there is little of special interest 
 until we come out on the edge of the broad, billowy, 
 
 [ 178 ] 
 
A street in Cana 
 
The Horns of Hattin 
 
THE RING OF THE GENTILES 
 
 treeless moor which drops eastward in long, soft 
 curves toward the basin of the Sea of Galilee. Some 
 wheat fields are here; but a large part of the table¬ 
 land is rich grazing ground. Flowers are abundant, 
 of course. So is animal life. Birds fly overhead 
 or twitter in the long grass. Camels are feeding 
 by the hundred, just as cattle do on the plains at 
 home. Small Wild animals scurry away when they 
 hear our horses coming. A graceful little gazelle 
 gives us one frightened glance, and then streaks 
 across the moor like a flash of animated lightning. 
 But a brown fox strolls up casually to within fifty 
 yards of us, and then calmly sits down to inspect the 
 strangers, just as though some one had told him that 
 we had no guns. 
 
 Above the rolling tableland rises a saddle-shaped 
 hill, whose two curious humps are known as the 
 “Horns of Hattin.” The high, grassy hollow between 
 them has long been considered the place where the 
 multitudes sat while Christ preached the Sermon on 
 the Mount. 
 
 “A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” There it is! 
 The Master must have pointed toward it as He spoke 
 the words; for lofty Safed, twelve miles to the north 
 of Hattin, is the highest town in Galilee, and it 
 glistens in the sunlight like a piece of white marble 
 lying upon the brown mountainside. 
 
 Safed is now considered by the Jews to be one of 
 the four sacred cities of the world (see page 52) ; 
 
 [ 179 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 and it is believed that this is to be the birthplace of 
 the Messiah. It contains more Jews than any other 
 place in Palestine except Jerusalem. They make up 
 more than half of its population of 25,000, and are 
 noted for their orthodoxy, conceit and shiftlessness. 
 They conform to all the demands of the Law, Mosaic 
 and post-Mosaic. They will not even wind their 
 watches on the Sabbath or write a letter of the alpha¬ 
 bet, and they spend much of their time in furious and 
 fanatical discussions over trilling details of form and 
 practice, as did the Pharisees of old. There is no 
 wall around Safed; so in order to put into force the 
 Hebrew laws concerning walled towms, these zealous 
 legalists once erected poles at the ends of all the 
 streets and strung wires between them, to serve as 
 a substitute for a wall. 
 
 These Jews of Safed are, like all others in Pales¬ 
 tine, European Jews. They are largely supported 
 by their co-religionists in the West, and in return 
 perform the rites of the faith as vicarious substitutes 
 for rich Jews in the great capitals, who are too 
 busy to attend personally to the rigid requirements 
 of the Talmudic laws. One young Safed Jew paid 
 his way through college by serving as a scapegoat 
 for a number of his friends who wanted to be clear of 
 guilt for the Day of Atonement, and who therefore 
 cast all their sins upon him, at a medjedie (dollar) 
 a head. After a somewhat intimate acquaintance 
 with the young man, I should say that he really 
 
 [ 180 ] 
 
THE RING OF THE GENTILES 
 
 did possess the iniquity of at least fifty ordinary 
 sinners. 
 
 On the high, rolling plain to the east and south 
 of Hattin there took place, on July 5, 1187, one of 
 the decisive battles of the world, which practically 
 settled the outcome of the Crusades and determined 
 whether Christians or Moslems should rule the Holy 
 Land. 
 
 On one side was the flower of European chivalry, 
 who bore among them as a talisman a fragment 
 of the True Cross. But the flower was faded, and 
 the Cross dishonored by cruelty and treachery and 
 lust. The nominal ruler of the Latin Kingdom of 
 Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, was a weak, vacillating 
 puppet, who was always ready to follow the counsel 
 of his latest adviser. The noble vows of the Knights 
 of the Hospital and the Temple had long since been 
 trampled in the dust of their selfish ambition. The 
 Crusading princes were enervated by the climate, 
 envious and suspicious of one another, and smitten by 
 the guilty knowledge that they had wantonly broken 
 truce with the foe now marching upon them. The 
 men-at-arms were dizzy with the summer heat, 
 parched with thirst, itching and burning from the 
 smoke of the smudge fires which the enemy had 
 kindled around them. 
 
 Against these weakened, disheartened, disunited 
 and unfaithful soldiers of the Cross came the myriads 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 of lean, sunburned Saracens, hardened to the climate, 
 familiar with the country, centuries in advance of 
 Europe in their knowledge of the importance of 
 advancing to battle in open order, on fire with the 
 zeal of a Holy War against the “Infidel” invaders, 
 smarting with anger at the Christians’ impudent dis¬ 
 regard of treaty promises, and led by one of the 
 greatest generals of all time, the gallant Kurd, 
 Saladin. 
 
 Foolish, wearying rushes when the Crusaders 
 should have stood on the defensive—panic-stricken 
 inactivity when there should have been a bold attack 
 —fickle changes from one half-tried stratagem to 
 another—shameful cries of “sauve qui pent,” as 
 princes boldest at the council table fled first from 
 the Saracen attack—magnificent, useless courage of 
 many a true knight who fell facing the enemy with 
 the corpses of his men-at-arms piled high around him 
 —brave, stubborn struggles by regiments of 
 exhausted foot-soldiers who were dying of thirst and 
 heat before ever the enemy’s arrows pierced their 
 panting bosoms—and then, on the upper slopes of 
 the very Mount where He whose name they bore said 
 “Love your enemies,” the last battle-standard of the 
 Crusaders was dragged down; the last little company 
 of Christian knights driven over the precipice, or 
 spared for future massacre or Saracen slavery. 
 
 Saladin was now practically master of all Pales¬ 
 tine. Jerusalem itself fell three months afterwards. 
 
 [ 182 ] 
 
THE RING OF THE GENTILES 
 
 Later Crusades, which started from Europe with 
 impressive pomp and high hopes, never seriously 
 threatened the Moslem rule over the Holy Land. 
 The fate of Palestine for all the succeeding centuries 
 was settled on that burning July day when the 
 Crusading armies were swept down to tragic, shame¬ 
 ful defeat on the plains of Hattin. 
 
 [ 183 ] 
 
XVIII 
 
 The lake of god’s delight 
 
 T WICE I have approached the Sea of Galilee just 
 at sunset. In front of us the green fields 
 sloped down to the blue lake. The cliffs on the 
 other side, though eight miles away, were distinctly 
 mirrored on the calm surface of the water. Tiberias 
 on the shore below us and Safed on the mountain far 
 above were all a glittering white, but less white than 
 great Hermon, whose snow-clad summit rose, unchal¬ 
 lenged in its grandeur, high above the red clouds that 
 floated over the marshes of Merom. 
 
 I think that the old rabbis must have had in mind 
 some such view as that when they taught that, of all 
 the seas which God has created, this one is His 
 special delight. 
 
 But the only beauty of the Sea of Galilee which 
 remains is that of the water and sky and mountains. 
 The glory of the rich and splendid Greco-Roman 
 cities, which in the time of Christ stretched in a daz¬ 
 zling circle around the shores of the sea, has gone 
 forever. The very location of proud Capernaum is a 
 subject of scholarly disputation. Save for a few 
 tiny, poverty-stricken hamlets here and there, the 
 
 [ 184 ] 
 
The City of Tiberias 
 
THE LAKE OF GOD’S DELIGHT 
 
 only inhabited place is the city of Tiberias, built long 
 ago by a cruel tyrant on an accursed spot above an 
 ancient graveyard^and so shunned by pious Hebrews 
 and, for all its importance, never once mentioned in 
 the New Testament. Yet to-day—such is the irony 
 of history—this is counted one of the four sacred 
 Hebrew cities, and is inhabited almost entirely by 
 Jewish immigrants from Europe, who drag out a 
 miserable existence by the aid of the alms sent by 
 their co-religionists abroad, and study the Talmud 
 diligently and, like the Jews of Safed, are very punc¬ 
 tilious about observing all the requirements of the 
 Law, and every autumn shake with chills and fever, 
 and die like rats when the pest comes. I had hardly 
 left Tiberias when, in this town of barely 5,000 peo¬ 
 ple, the death rate from Asiatic cholera rose to a 
 hundred a day. 
 
 But as soon as you get out of sight of Tiberias, 
 the beauty of the deep blue water and pebbly shores 
 and soft, distant mountains and the strong, comfort' 
 ing vision of majestic Hermon again grip your soul. 
 You can readily imagine that not mere glistening 
 stones and sand but marble palaces shine yonder 
 across the lake; and in some quiet, grassy cove beside 
 the gently lapping wavelets you can picture the mul¬ 
 titudes sitting while they listen to the simple, won¬ 
 drous words of Him who told them stories of their 
 everyday fishing or farming life—stories with a 
 meaning as deep as the waters of Galilee, as fresh as 
 
 [ 185 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 the mountain breezes and as instinct with lofty hope¬ 
 fulness as yonder cone of Hermon rising upward to 
 the clouds of heaven. x 
 
 The Sea of Galilee, however, is not always calm. 
 The mountains immediately adjoining it are 2,000 
 feet high, and through their deep gorges the storm 
 winds are sucked into the hollow of the lake, so that 
 sudden squalls come literally out of a blue sky. One 
 charming spring morning we started out to sail from 
 Tiberias to the traditional site of Capernaum. There 
 was not a ripple on the water or a cloud in the heav¬ 
 ens. But when we were a quarter of a mile from 
 shore, our boatmen noticed a band of rough water 
 rushing toward us from the other side of the lake. In 
 spite of our remonstrances, they immediately gave up 
 the plan for making Capernaum, took down the sail 
 with such frantic haste that they nearly upset the 
 boat, and then rowed for the land with all their might 
 and with excited urgings to one another. We thought 
 them a very cowardly crew. But hardly had the boat 
 been beached in a sheltered cove, when the wind was 
 howling down on us from the mountains, and the 
 heavy breakers were foaming along the shore and as 
 far out into the lake as we could see. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later, the Sea of Galilee was 
 again as level as a mirror, and only a soft, warm 
 breeze was blowing over the smiling waters. 
 
 Like all mountain lakes, this one is very deep. 
 Reported soundings go all the way from two hundred 
 
 [ 186 ] 
 
THE LAKE OF GOD’S DELIGHT 
 
 feet to a very suspicious seven hundred feet. Its 
 water is clear and fresh, and abounds in fish, some 
 varieties of which are found nowhere else outside of 
 the tropics. The rabbis believed that the local fish¬ 
 ing regulations went back to the days of Joshua. In 
 Roman days the pickled fish of Galilee were sold all 
 over the Empire, and were highly esteemed for their 
 delicious flavor. There are now few craft on the lake, 
 perhaps a dozen in all; but still at eventide you can 
 see the fishermen coming home with their boats loaded 
 almost to the gunwales, and still the sons of Zebedee 
 mend their great nets which are spread out to dry on 
 the pebbly beach. 
 
 [ 187 ] 
 
XIX 
 
 THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 W E have lost the steamer by a few short hours; 
 
 but ma besail, “never mind!” We have both 
 missed important engagements; but ma 
 besail! My traveling companion is lying helpless at 
 the inn, with a cold compress on his throbbing fore¬ 
 head ; but ma besail! Who cares ? Not he; for every 
 few minutes a pretty little waitress tiptoes into the 
 darkened room with something more cooling than the 
 last: not I; for after the long ride, with poor food, 
 poor beds and poor mounts, it is the acme of delight 
 to lie at full length on the warm slope of Carmel and 
 brood idly over the long sweep of the Bay of Acre. 
 It is very warm and very still up here on the brow 
 of the mountain. On the whole vault of the glaring 
 sky there is not a cloud the size of a man’s hand, and 
 the blazing sun beats down upon my pith helmet with 
 an enervating heat that leads to drowsy day-dreams 
 and lazy content. 
 
 The landscape is wrapped in a decorous calm, like 
 that of a Sabbath afternoon. The soughing of the 
 sea breeze rises and falls with a soothing melody, into 
 which the twittering of the sparrows breaks with 
 
 [ 188 ] 
 
Haifa and the Bay of Acre, from Mount Carmel 
 
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y 
 
 View from the Horns of Hattin 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 irreverent distinctness. From far below there comes 
 the sound of the muffled lapping of the waves, and now 
 and then the faint crowing of a distant cock. A few 
 tiny sailing vessels rock slowly to and fro in the little 
 harbor of Haifa; and then the sand sweeps around in 
 a dazzling arc, past the ruined walls of Acre to the 
 steep headland of the “Ladder of Tyre.” Back of 
 the beach, the blue Kishon winds lazily through the 
 green orchards and wheat fields. Farther inland, on 
 the other side of the Plain of Esdraelon, are the 
 rounded summits of Gilboa and Little Hermon; and 
 through the haze are dimly seen the mysterious moun¬ 
 tains beyond the Jordan. I cannot make out Mount 
 Tabor to-day, and Nazareth lies hidden in a little 
 hollow; but the summit of the hill just back of the 
 city is in clear view, and beyond it the heights of 
 Galilee lead up to the mountain peaks of Lebanon. 
 
 This is indeed a goodly land, even when viewed 
 apart from its historic and religious associations. To 
 the ancient prophets it may well have seemed the land 
 “which is the glory of all lands.” I did not think so 
 at first: many foreigners never think so at all. The 
 short, hurried trip of the spring tourist, full of 
 excitement and fatigue, as well as unpleasant experi¬ 
 ences with dirt and dragomans, heat and hotels, leaves 
 little time or inclination to dwell upon the beauties 
 of nature. Few travelers penetrate into the moun¬ 
 tain regions of northern Lebanon, and those who 
 visit Judea and Galilee do not come with the same 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 purpose that prompts a sojourn in Switzerland or 
 the Engadine; for it is the memory of the great men 
 who have lived here and the Master who died here 
 that gives to the country a solemn beauty which is 
 richer than that of mountain or river or forest. 
 
 Then it is true that Palestine is very different from 
 America, especially from the northern and eastern 
 parts of America; and it is this strangeness which 
 most impresses one at the beginning of a residence 
 here. There are very few brooks. As has been said, 
 most of the streams are mere wadis which flow only 
 during the rainy season. The largest rivers are the 
 Leontes and Jordan; and neither of these is navi¬ 
 gable, even for small fishing-smacks. There is no turf 
 in Palestine, and no lawns, and the American traveler 
 misses the forests and orchards and shade-trees of 
 his own land. What few trees there are seem stunted 
 and faded, and the mountains look very bare to one 
 who has just come from a land of rolling pastures 
 and wooded hillsides. When I used to get so home¬ 
 sick during those first months in Syria, it was, always 
 for some particular sheet of w r ater or patch of green; 
 the little mill-pond near my home, or the woods out 
 at the farm, or a shady piece along the country road. 
 
 After the first year, however, the strangeness began 
 to wear off, and I became reconciled to the fact that 
 this land is not at all like America, and was never 
 intended to be. Then I began to love the new home 
 for its own sake. When I came here, I thought that 
 
 [ 190 ] 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 this was the most desolate country I had ever seen; 
 now it seems full of fertility. Where the great moun¬ 
 tainsides looked bare and white and glaring, there are 
 now marvelous depths of color; while the once dull, 
 dry, dusty fields are all bespangled with gorgeous 
 flowers. It is not the landscape that has changed, 
 but myself. When I came here, I looked everywhere 
 for things American, and was disappointed because 
 I did not find them; now I look for things Syrian, 
 and new beauties reveal themselves every hour. 
 
 From beginning to end it is a land of contradic¬ 
 tions ; bare and brilliant, arid and fertile; with a 
 burning sun which beats upon cool, comfortable 
 houses; with impudent children who reverence gray 
 hairs; with bloodthirsty bandits who would die in 
 defense of an unknown guest; with unscrupulous 
 sharpers and unselfish hospitality; with a glib, formal 
 politeness which often covers a warm heart; where 
 the women wear trousers and the men wear skirts; 
 where the epidemics of cholera and plague cannot per¬ 
 manently destroy the healthfulness of the mountain 
 breezes; where there is never a grass plot, though the 
 fields and hillsides are covered with bright blossoms. 
 
 Even under present conditions, the soil is fertile; 
 and it could be made to bear still more generous har¬ 
 vests under a government which would insure the 
 tranquillity and justice which are necessary before 
 foreign capital will be invested in schemes for 
 irrigation, improvement of roads and the introduction 
 
 [ 191 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 of modern agricultural machinery. The exports are 
 now practically all products of the soil. Beirut 
 ships about two million pounds of tobacco every year. 
 The mulberry tree flourishes, and six hundred thou¬ 
 sand pounds of raw silk are annually exported to 
 Marseilles. There are large wheat fields on the plains 
 of Esdraelon, Coele-Syria and Hamath. The Plain 
 of Sharon, besides being still celebrated for its flowers 
 and fruits, yields a splendid return of wheat and 
 barley; and east of the Sea of Galilee the plain of 
 the Hauran, which is the great natural granary 
 of western Asia, gives even a larger harvest, although 
 the farming is of the most primitive character. The 
 oranges of Jaffa, Sidon and Tripoli are famous 
 throughout Europe. The olive forest of Beirut is 
 said to be the second largest in the world. Shechem 
 has no fewer than twenty-two perennial springs. The 
 road to Damascus winds through mile after mile of 
 luxuriant orchards and vineyards, which are fed by 
 the rushing waters of Abana and Pharpar. Even the 
 “desert” affords a fair pasturage after the early 
 rains. And hidden up in the mountain regions is 
 many a valley like a fairy garden, with countless 
 waterfalls ringing into the little brook beneath, and 
 the terraces of the steep hillsides all crowded with 
 vineyards and orchards of olive, fig and mulberry. If 
 we include Hermon and Lebanon, there is no other dis¬ 
 trict of like size in the world which produces such a 
 variety of food products as does the Holy Land. 
 
 [ 192 ] 
 
t 
 
 THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 There may be no turf, but there is an amazing 
 wealth of flowers. Last week, as we rode between the 
 fields of wheat, already higher than our stirrups, the 
 broad caravan trail was almost hidden under a carpet 
 of bloom. Several times between Mount Tabor and 
 the Sea of Galilee we actually wandered off from the 
 road, because the grain and flowers had spread quite 
 across it from field to field. Probably the Palestinian 
 farmer calls these flowers “weeds”; but some of them 
 were such weeds as would be welcomed into any 
 American conservatory. The most striking were the 
 garish scarlet poppies, whose blossoms were full four 
 inches in diameter; but the red and white anemones 
 were almost as large and showy. Then there were 
 orchids of every conceivable shape and size and color, 
 besides the high hollyhock, the delicate cyclamen, the 
 stalwart thistle just bursting into bloom, the more 
 modest daisy and buttercup and dandelion, and a 
 little blue flower enough like the forget-me-not to 
 bring up memories of home. There was many a 
 square yard within which we could have counted a 
 score of colors, and twice as many varieties of wild 
 flowers. One does not need to be an artist or a 
 botanist to appreciate the splendor of such an array: 
 red, pink, yellow, blue, white, purple, scarlet, green, 
 lavender—all the hues of the rainbow crowded 
 together with the supreme disregard of color-harmony 
 which is successful only in Nature’s studio. 
 
 And the flowers are not confined to the fertile low- 
 
 11 
 
 [193] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 lands. I have ridden down many a valley of Lebanon 
 whose terraced sides seemed like the tables of a hot¬ 
 house, which raised their delicate blossoms just high 
 enough so that now and then we could lean from the 
 saddle and pluck the cluster which most struck our 
 fancy. The campus of the American College at 
 Beirut is laid out upon a rocky bluff near the head of 
 the cape, where the soil does not appear to be 
 especially productive; yet there are over two hundred 
 varieties of wild flowers growing within the college 
 enclosure. Even on the summit of Mount Hermon, 
 among the snow which lasts well into the summer, 
 many a warm slope is covered with flowers so large 
 and showy that it is hard to realize that no florist has 
 tended them except the Syrian sun. 
 
 Then the gardens are almost as beautiful as the 
 fields of wild flowers. These gardens are always hid¬ 
 den from public view; for the Oriental does not like 
 to take his pleasures where all the world can watch 
 him. Along the dusty roads there front only high 
 walls, with broken bottles spread inhospitably along 
 the top, where a myriad lizards lazily sun themselves, 
 or scurry away into their crevices at the sight of the 
 wear}^ traveler. But behind these same walls there are 
 fragrant blossoms and spreading trees, with clean 
 pebble walks and comfortable benches, where one can 
 spend the heat of the day under the cool of green 
 bowers beside the central fountain, sleeping or read¬ 
 ing or listening to the bulbul singing in the branches 
 
 [194] 
 
The ground beneath the olive trees is usually covered with a gay 
 
 carpet of flowers 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 of the sycamore. Once or twice I have even seen 
 a little piece of English lawn. Last winter a friend 
 of mine gave away fifteen bushels of chrysan¬ 
 themums, in order to clear out the tangle in her 
 garden. Roses can be made to bloom twelve months 
 in the year. I know of a garden—a very small one— 
 where there are seventeen varieties of roses, and 
 another where there are twenty-five. All of them are 
 now in blossom, in April, and the largest bush has 
 climbed twenty feet up a neighboring cypress tree, 
 from which its thousands of flowers hang over the 
 garden path in long, graceful festoons of pink. 
 
 The trees are usually smaller than those of Amer¬ 
 ica, but they are not without a beauty of their own. 
 As you ride down from the neighboring hills, the olive 
 orchards of Sidon can be seen long before the city is 
 reached; and few occupations are quite so satisfac¬ 
 tory as lying in one of these same orchards and eating 
 the golden fruit plucked from the low-lying branches. 
 Near the Tell el-Kassis, where Elijah is said to have 
 slain the prophets of Baal, we passed a small oak 
 forest whose glades were as spruce and clean as a 
 carefully tended city park at home. Pine trees are 
 often found on the hillsides; and up on highest 
 Lebanon are still preserved a few groves of cedars; 
 great hoary giants, hundreds of years old, beautiful 
 both in themselves and for the memories which they 
 suggest. 
 
 This is the native land of the olive, and the olive 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 tree has always been a symbol of fertility and pros¬ 
 perity. At first I did not like these trees. They 
 seemed small and pale; but chiefly I criticised them 
 because they were not apple trees, which was illog¬ 
 ical and unjust. Once granted that an olive can 
 never be an apple, even an American comes to waver 
 in his allegiance to the orchards at home. The Syrian 
 tree has a singular fascination. There may be young 
 olive trees, but they never look young. The trunks 
 are always knotted and gnarled, or twisted into fan¬ 
 tastic shapes like the forms of writhing imprisoned 
 goblins. Often there is a great hollow in the center 
 of the trunk, which is filled with stones to give the 
 necessary stability. These twisted, weather-beaten 
 trees, leaning on their stone supports, are strangely 
 redolent of age and dignity, of grandfathers and 
 ruined grandeur. Yet the ground beneath is usually 
 covered with a gay carpet of flowers. Near the city 
 of Samaria we passed an orchard whose scarred old 
 trunks bore up their delicate foliage over a velvety 
 field of wheat. The contrast of the greens of the 
 grain and trunks and leaves was very beautiful; so 
 was the contrast between age and newness. It was 
 all clean and prosperous, yet sedate and dignified, like 
 the ruined towers which rise above the neat lawns of 
 Kenilworth. 
 
 The olive color seen in masses has a strangely weird 
 quality. It always reminds me of the moonlight; and 
 an olive orchard really seen in the moonlight is 
 
 [ 196 ] 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 uncanny. You look down the long, even glades 
 between the rows of trees, and fantastic sprites are 
 formed from the distant trunks. The tiny leaves are 
 lost in the great feathery mass above; the brilliant 
 light throws moving shadows on the grass beneath; 
 and over it all is that most delicate, most fascinating 
 of colors, the olive green—suggestive of mystery and 
 witchery and powers hidden from our coarser natures. 
 
 We have already stood on many a mountain-top 
 and drunk in the mountain air and the mountain view. 
 Crowning all the rest is “the glory of Lebanon,” sung 
 by the Psalmist and dreamed of by the prophets as 
 the great, peerless type of fertility and virility and 
 manly beauty. The Syrians say that Lebanon bears 
 winter on its head, spring on its shoulders, summer on 
 its bosom, while autumn lies slumbering at its feet. 
 This is not the place to tell of the wonders of the 
 northern mountain range: like the poet-preachers of 
 Israel, we can only think of it as something far-off 
 and ideal in its inimitable splendor. But if I had the 
 time, I should like to sing of the mountains I know 
 and love so well. I should tell of their deep, rocky 
 gorges and warm, green valleys, the sheep and goats 
 upon their sheltered alpine pastures, their sturdy 
 inhabitants, their thousands of cold, pure springs, 
 their musical waterfalls and natural bridges and 
 unexplored caverns, their great Crusading castles 
 and massive ruined temples, their delicious fruits, 
 the cool pine groves found here and there on their 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 upper slopes, the snow banks that never melt during 
 the hottest summers, and the noble prospects from 
 the highest summits. 
 
 Th crowning glory of a Palestinian landscape, 
 however, is just its brilliant coloring. Before I left 
 America, it seemed to me that the vivid tints of 
 Tissot’s paintings must surely be exaggerated; but 
 they fall short of the reality. Of course no artist 
 could hope to reproduce the marvelous warmth and 
 depth of the landscape, or to imitate the vague, soft 
 hues which are so characteristic of the Palestinian 
 atmosphere; but it would be almost as impossible to 
 find tints that were over-bright, or to arrange them 
 in a color scheme too daring to be matched by the 
 Syrian sun. Unfortunately the tourist season, from 
 February to April, is at a time of year when there 
 are very apt to be clouds and mists, and even occa¬ 
 sional showers. The most beautiful hues are seen 
 only when the sky has cleared for the dry season. 
 Then the long, clear, though not cloudless summers 
 give to the atmosphere an Italian transparency, and 
 the morning and evening skies surpass any that I 
 have ever seen in Italy. 
 
 The very nights are full of color. The moonlight 
 is so brilliant that it is easy to read a guide-book; 
 and even on a moonless night and in the wilderness, 
 far from any city’s glare, the starlight has been so 
 bright that I could see the second-hand of my watch, 
 and could find quite a distinct shadow cast by 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
The gardens are almost as beautiful as the fields of wild flowers 
 
A cedar of Lebanon 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 Jupiter. A moonlit scene at home gives only the 
 impression of light spots and dark spots: everything 
 is black or white or gray. But here the moonlight 
 shows all the colors of the rainbow. The green of 
 the trees and grain, the red of the tile roofs, the blue 
 of sea and sky, and the gray of the distant moun¬ 
 tains are softer and more delicate, but hardly less 
 distinct one from the other than in the sunlight. 
 
 But the sunset colors are the best of all, especially 
 where the mountains come close to the sea. After 
 the day’s work is done, we like to sit on the rocks at 
 the point of the cape and wait for the sunset. It is 
 never twice the same. Sometimes there is not a 
 cloud to be seen, and the waters meet the firmament 
 in one vast sheet of dazzling bronze. Usually there 
 are great cumulous banks near the horizon; but with 
 no mists to dull the outlines, so that the edges of the 
 clouds are as clear-cut as the canvas scenery of a 
 stage. Often the mirage makes kaleidoscopic changes 
 in sea and cloud and sun. Now the yellow disk is 
 flattened like a drop of molten metal. The next 
 moment it is a regular hexagon, which splits into two 
 suns, one in the sea and one in the sky; or it rounds 
 into two hemispheres, which turn away from each 
 other, like the halves of a squat hour-glass of gold. 
 As the sun sinks down between the sea and sky, there 
 is no blurring or indistinctness. The last star-like 
 gleam hovers for an instant upon the face of the 
 waters. Then suddenly it is evening, and it is cool 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY 
 
 down by the shore. But out from under the western 
 horizon, the dead sun sends up a blare of fire which 
 sets the heavens ablaze with splendor. 
 
 As we turn homeward from the rocky point, we see 
 the final sunset glory, not in the west but in the east. 
 Straight in front of us the mountains are bathed in 
 the evening light. The reddish tint on the rocky 
 slopes deepens into a richer alpenglow as it lingers 
 for a moment on the snow-capped summit, so that the 
 green of the orchards and vineyards below is quite 
 lost in the warmer hue of the mountainside. When 
 the rose color has risen off the highest peaks, it is 
 followed up by a veil of pink, and that in turn by 
 a Tyrian purple which clothes every jagged summit 
 and rounded slope with a distanceless, heightless 
 majesty, and fills the depths of the rocky wadis with 
 a fathomless mystery. 
 
 We pause for a moment by the little roadside 
 mosque to hear the muezzin sing the call to prayer; 
 and as the long-drawn notes vibrate sweetly into rest, 
 it seems as if they too were but a part of the rich 
 color-harmony of the Eastern evening. 
 
 Where I am writing these last lines, the Sabbath 
 quiet of Mount Carmel has given place to the nervous 
 clamor of a Western metropolis. The whole city is 
 blatant of surplus energy and reeking with new-found 
 wealth. Five lines of electric cars are clanging past 
 the corner below. The sky is overcast with factory 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS 
 
 smoke. Newsboys are hawking the latest “extra,” 
 still damp from the press. This is life indeed; earnest, 
 virile, successful life! It is ambition! It is oppor^ 
 tunity! It is progress ! 
 
 But a warm land breeze which comes in through 
 the open window puffs it all away; and I feel the 
 desert sirocco blowing hot under my battered old pith 
 helmet, as I jog along the rocky paths of Palestine, 
 or rest lazily under some gnarled olive tree, whose 
 low-spread branches frame a picture of sunset seas 
 and purpling mountain peaks that some day, 
 inshallah , I shall see again. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [ 201 ] 
 
A MAP OF PALESTINE 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 B. C. 
 
 4 Death of Herod the Great. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 29 The Crucifixion. 
 
 70 Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. 
 
 100? Death of Josephus, the Jewish historian. 
 
 326 St. Helena visits the Holy Land. 
 
 386 St. Jerome takes up his residence in 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 527 Accession of Justinian I, builder of El-Aksa. 
 616 Jerusalem captured by the Persian Chosroes 
 
 II. 
 
 622 Mohammed’s flight (Hegira) from Mecca; 
 the Moslem year one. 
 
 636 The Moslems under Omar conquer Palestine. 
 693 Completion of the Mosque of Omar. 
 
 1099 The First Crusade captures Jerusalem. 
 
 1187 Saladin defeats the Crusaders at Hattin. 
 
 1189 The Third Crusade. Richard Coeur de Lion 
 in Palestine. 
 
 1291 Christian rule in Palestine finally overthrown. 
 1453 Constantinople taken by Mohammed II. 
 
 1517 Palestine made part of the Turkish Empire. 
 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte invades Galilee. 
 
 1832 Palestine ceded to Egypt. 
 
 1840 Palestine re-conquered by the Turks. 
 
 1862 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Hebron. 
 
 1898 William II of Germany dedicates the German 
 Church in Jerusalem. 
 
 1909 Overthrow of Abdul Hamid II and the begin¬ 
 ning of constitutional government in 
 Turkey. 
 
 [ 204 ] 
 
THE BEST BOOKS ON PALESTINE 
 
 George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the 
 Holy Land (London, 1902; pp. xxiii -f- 713) is 
 somewhat limited in its scope, as indicated by the 
 title, but is nevertheless the best single book on Pales¬ 
 tine. It has a number of excellent maps. 
 
 William M. Thompson’s The Land and the Booh 
 (New York, 1880; 3 vols.) is the most exhaustive 
 work on Bible manners and customs, as illustrated by 
 the life of modern Palestine. 
 
 For the general reader, these two books are worth 
 more than all others put together. 
 
 Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria (Leipsic, fre¬ 
 quently revised; pp. cxviii -f-472) was compiled by 
 Prof. Albert Socin, a noted Orientalist, and besides 
 very good sectional maps and the usual matter of a 
 guide-book, it contains a long introduction dealing 
 with the history, religions, races, climate, etc., of 
 Palestine. 
 
 Edward Robinson’s Biblical Researches in Palestine 
 (Boston, 1868; 3 vols.) is the most scholarly work 
 ever written on the subject, and is still considered a 
 first-rate authority on most points, but it is now out 
 of print. The person who can pick up a set at a 
 second-hand book store may consider himself for¬ 
 tunate. 
 
 Dean Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine is another 
 excellent work which is out of print, but which may 
 be found at most libraries. 
 
 The best maps are those published by the Palestine 
 Exploration Fund of London. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Roman numerals refer to chapters, Arabic to pages 
 
 Abraham, Shrine of, 27. 
 
 Tomb of, 61. 
 
 Absalom, Tomb of, 113. 
 
 Aby&sinian monastery, 83. 
 
 Aceldama, 109. 
 
 Acre, Bay of, 188. 
 
 Adam, Grave of, 52, 82.] 
 el-Aksa, 67. 
 
 Altitude of cities, 8. 
 
 Anak, Sons of, 52. 
 
 Anne, Tomb of, 113 
 Anointing, Stone of, 83 
 Annunciation, Church of, 177. 
 Animal life, 129, 163, 179. 
 
 Antonia, Castl<? of, 120. 
 
 Apples of Sodom, 139. 
 
 Arabs, 36. 
 
 Ar-mageddon, 160. 
 
 Ascension, Church of, 117. 
 
 Bani&s, 125. 
 
 Beauty of Palestine, XIX. 
 
 Bedouin life, 36. 
 
 Beer-sheba, 28. 
 
 Beirht, 14, 192, 194. 
 
 Beit Jala, 24. 
 
 Bethany, 119. 
 
 Bethel, 91. 
 
 Bethlehem, IV, 97. 
 
 Bethlehemites, 21, 39, 41, 95. 
 Boundaries of Palestine, 3. 
 el-BuraJc, 71. 
 
 Caesarea Philippi, 126. 
 
 Calvary, 84, 88, 105. 
 
 Cana, 178. 
 
 Capernaum, 184. 
 
 Carmel, Mount, 6, 157, 189. 
 
 Casa Santa, 178. 
 
 Caves, 154. 
 
 Center of the earth, 70, 82, 84, 85. 
 Christ and Moslems, 69, 73, 114. 
 Christianity, Oriental, 33. 
 
 Christmas Church, 49. 
 
 Church of Annunciation, 177. 
 
 Church of Ascension, 117. 
 
 Church of Creed, 119. 
 
 Church of Holy Sepulchre, VIII, IX. 
 
 Church of Lord's Prayer, 119. 
 
 Church of St. Mary Magdalene, 117. 
 Church of Nativity, IV. 
 
 Cities of the Plain, 136. 
 
 Climate of Palestine, 9. 
 
 Colors of landscape, 198. 
 
 Constantine the Great, 27, 42, 79, 85. 
 Cotton Grotto, 104. 
 Contradictoriness of Palestine, 191. 
 Courtesy, 167, 171. 
 
 Creed, Church of, 119. 
 
 Crimean War, 45. 
 
 Cross, Finding of, 80. 
 
 Relics of, 86. 
 
 Crusades and Crusaders, 31, 44, 53, 
 59, 68, 72, 84, 86, 113, 114, 126, 
 160, 164, 181. 
 
 Czar of Russia, 118. 
 
 Damascus Gate, 101. 
 
 Dan, 124. 
 
 David, Castle of, 20. 
 f Tomb of, 101. 
 
 Dead Sea, XIII. 
 
 Dogs, 163. 
 
 Ebal, 7, 149, 150. " 
 
 Elijah, Monastery of, 23. 
 
 Endor, 161, 162. 
 
 Engannim, see Jenin. 
 
 Engedi, 139. 
 
 Eshcol, Valley of, 27. 
 
 Esdraelon, Plain of, XV. 
 
 Eusebius of Cremona, Tomb of, 47. 
 Expense of brief tour, 13. 
 
 Fertility of Palestine, 8, 192. 
 
 Fish of Galilee, 187. 
 
 of the Jordan, 129. 
 
 Flowers, 14, 193. 
 
 Franks, 66. 
 
 Galilee, District, XVII. 
 
 Sea, XVIII, 127. 
 
 Gardens, 194. 
 
 Gehenna, 108. 
 
 George, Saint, 14, 67, 126. 
 
 Gerizim, Mount, 150, 151, 152. 
 Germans in Palestine, 49, 75, 121, 
 176. 
 
 [ 207 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Gethsemane, 116, 119. 
 el-Ghor, 128. 
 
 Gihon, Pool of, 21. 
 
 Gilboa, Mount, 158, 159, 161.' 
 
 Golden Gate, 114. 
 
 Golgotha, see Calvary. 
 
 Gordon’s Calvary, 88, 105. 
 
 Greek Catholic Church, 34. 
 
 Orthodox Church, 34. 
 
 Haifa, 189. 
 
 HalhftI, 26. 
 
 Haram esh-Sherif, 65. 
 
 Harosheth, 161. 
 
 Hasbeya, 124. 
 
 Hauran, the, 192.. 
 
 Hattln, Battle, 181. 
 
 Mountain, 179. 
 
 Plain, 179, 181. 
 
 Hebron, V, 8. 
 
 Helena, St., 42, 79, 85, 86, 87, 116.. 
 117. 
 
 Hermon, Mount, 7, 123, 130, 185. 
 Herod the Great, 26, 47, 56, 125, 133,* 
 155. 
 
 Hinnom, Valley of, 21, 100, 108. 
 Hittites, 55. 
 
 Holy Fire, IX. 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, 87, 105. 
 
 Church of, VIII, IX. 
 
 House of the Virgin, 177. 
 
 Hfileh, Plain, 126. 
 
 Lake, 127. 
 
 Isaac, Tomb of, 61. 
 
 Jacob, Tomb of, 61. 
 
 Jacob’s Well, 152. 
 
 Jaffa, 14, 192. 
 
 Jaffa Gate, 16, 92. 
 
 James, Grotto of St., 112. 
 
 Jenin, 143, 162. 
 
 Jeremiah, Grotto of, 104. 
 
 Jericho, 129. 
 
 Jerome, St., 43, 47. 
 
 Jerusalem, VI-XI. 
 el-Aksa, 67. 
 
 Area 2 107 
 
 Chur’ch’of Holy Sepulchre, VIII, JX. 
 Damascus Gate, 101. 
 
 Environs, II, X. 
 
 Golden Gate, 114. 
 
 Haram esh-Sheiif, 65. 
 
 Jaffa Gate, 16. 
 
 Jews, VII. 
 
 Lepers, 17. 
 
 Mosque of Omar, VI. 
 
 Population, 2, 16. 
 
 St. Stephen’s Gate, 113, 115. 
 
 Streets, 102. 
 
 Underground Jerusalem 107. 
 Wailing Place, 76. 
 
 Walls, 19, 111. 
 
 Water supply, 20, 26. 
 
 Jezreel, City, 161. 
 
 Plain, 157. 
 
 Valley, 162. 
 
 Jews of Palestine, VIII, 54, 57, 108, 
 180. 
 
 Joachim, Tomb of, 113. 
 
 Jonah, Tomb of, 26. 
 
 Jordan, River and Valley, XII, 134, 
 137. 
 
 Joseph, Tomb of, 60, 153. 
 
 , of Arimathea, Tomb of, 81. 
 of Nazareth, Tomb of, 113. 
 
 Ka'aba of Mecca, 70, 71. 
 Kadesh-barnea, 28. 
 
 KaVat el-Burak, 25. 
 
 Kerak, 118. 
 
 Khans, 143. 
 
 Kidron Valley, 100, 110, 114. 
 
 Kishon River, 158, 189. 
 
 Koran, 68, 69, 136. 
 
 Ladder of Tyre, 189. 
 
 Last Supper, Room of, 101. 
 Language of Palestine, 30. 
 
 Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 126, 
 164. 
 
 Lazarus, Tomb of, 119 
 Lebanon, 197. 
 
 Lepers and Leprosy, 17. 
 
 Little Hermon, 158, 159, 162. 
 
 Lord’s Prayer, Church of, 119. 
 
 Loreta, 178. 
 
 Machpelah, Cave of, V. ’ 
 
 Mamre, Oak of, 27. 
 
 Mary, the Virgin, Tomb of, 113. 
 Masada, 140 
 Megiddo, City, 161. 
 i Plain, 157, 160. 
 
 Merom, Waters of, 127. 
 
 Melchizedek, Tomb of, 82. 
 
 Moonlight views, 198. 
 
 Moreh, Oak of, 150. 
 
 Moreh, see Little Hermon. 
 
 Moriah, Mount, 150. 
 
 Nablus, see Schechem. 
 Nain, 161, 162. 
 
 Nativity, Church of, IV. 
 Nazareth, 8, 174, 175. 
 Nicodemus, Tomb of, 81. 
 Notre Dame of Paris, 86. 
 
 [ 208 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Olives, Mount of, XI. 
 
 Olive trees, 195. 
 
 Omar, Mosque of, VI. 
 
 Oranges, 192. 
 
 Palestine: 
 
 Altitudes, 8. 
 
 Animals, 129, 163, 179. 
 
 Area, 4. 
 
 Beauty, XIX. 
 
 Boundaries, 3. 
 
 Caves, 154. 
 
 Climate, 9. 
 
 Contradictoriness of, 191. 
 
 Dangers of travel, 12. 
 
 Fertility XIX. 
 
 Fish, 129, 187. 
 
 Healthfulness, 12. 
 
 Manufactures, 27, 41, 55. 
 Population, 33. 
 
 Products, 8, XIX. 
 
 Races and religions. III. 
 
 Rivers, 123, 190. 
 
 Tourist season, 11. 
 
 Paula, 43, 47. 
 
 Perseus and Andromeda, 14, 67. 
 
 Pisa, 110. 
 
 Persons incidentally mentioned: 
 Aaron, 151. 
 
 Abd el-Melek, 67. 
 
 Abdul Hamid II, 38. 
 
 Abimelech, 150. 
 
 Abishua, 151. 
 
 Abraham, 55, 70, 71, 150. 
 Absalom, 53, 101. 
 
 Ahab, 155, 161. 
 
 Albert Victor, 58. 
 
 Andromeda, 114. 
 
 Antony, Marc, 160. 
 
 Augustus Caesar, 154, 155. 
 
 Baldwin of Flanders, 44. 
 
 Benjamin of Tudela, 63. 
 Chateaubriand, 90. 
 
 Chosroes II, 86. 
 
 Comnenos, Manuel, 45. 
 
 David, 22, 43 52, 54. 70, 101, 139. 
 Deborah, 159. 
 
 Dwight, H. O., 59, 62. 
 
 Edward VII, 57, 90. 
 
 Eieazar, 140. 
 
 Elijah, 23, 70, 195. 
 
 Elisha, 143, 162. 
 
 Eusebius of Caesarea, 79, 90. 
 Eustochium, 47. 
 
 Ezekiel, 114. 
 
 George V, 58. 
 
 Gideon, 159. 
 
 Godfrey of Bouillon, 90. 
 
 Gordon, General, 88, 90, 105. 
 
 Guy of Lusignan, 181. 
 
 Hadrian, 69. 
 
 Helena of Adiabene, 106. 
 Holofernes, 160. 
 
 Ibrahim Pasha, 61. 
 
 Isaac, 52, 70. 
 
 Isaiah, 111, 154. 
 
 Ish-bosheth, 54. 
 
 Jacob, 24, 63, 70, 150. 
 
 James, St., 112. 
 
 Jehoshaphat, 139. 
 
 Jehu, 161. 
 
 Jeremiah, 104. 
 
 Jeroboam, 125, 150. 
 
 Jerome, St., 23, 90. 
 
 Jezebel, 155, 161. 
 
 Jonathan, 159. 
 
 Joshua, 127, 187. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 82, 84. 
 
 Joseph of Nazareth, 176, 177. 
 Josiah, 160. 
 
 Judas Maccabeus, 22, 
 
 Justinian, 67, 90. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 48. 
 
 Khaled, 38. 
 
 Lamartine, 90. 
 
 Lazarus, 119. 
 
 Leah, 61. 
 
 Lot, 136. 
 
 Louis, St., 86. 
 
 Louis VII, 90. 
 
 Manasseh, 111. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, 81, 82, 117. 
 Mary, the Virgin, 82, 85, 111, 177, 
 178. 
 
 Melchizedek, 70, 81. 
 
 Merrill, Selah, 59. 
 
 Micah, 156. 
 
 Mohammed, 30, 52, 67, 70, 71, 72j 
 136. 
 
 Montefiore, Sir Moses, 21. 
 
 Moses, 29. 
 
 Naboth, 161. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, 160. 
 Nicodemus, 84. 
 
 Nureddin, 126, 165. 
 
 Omar, 67, 86. 
 
 Onophrius, 109. 
 
 Origen, 48. 
 
 Peter, St., 14, 126. 
 
 Peter the Hermit, 90. 
 
 Philip the Tetrarch, 125. 
 
 Pompey, 160. 
 
 Rehoboam, 150. 
 
 Ruth, 42. 
 
 Robert of Normandy, 90. 
 
 Samson, 52. 
 
 Sarah, 52. 
 
 Saul, 139, 159. 
 
 [ 209 ] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Sheba, the Queen of, 23. 
 Shefket Pasha, 38. 
 
 Simon the Tanner, 14. 
 Stanley, Dean, 58, 120. 
 
 Sisera, 159. 
 
 Sultan Suleiman, 19, 20. 
 Tancred, 22. 
 
 Terrill, 58. 
 
 Thekla, 109. 
 
 Tissot, 198. 
 
 Titus, 104, 126, 140. 
 Vespasian, 160. 
 
 Wallace, Lew, 16, 58, 90. 
 William II, 90, 121. 
 
 Willibald, St., 90. 
 
 Protestants, 35, 68, 105. 
 
 Races, III. 
 
 Rachel’s Tomb, 24. 
 
 Rebecca, Tomb of, 61. 
 
 Religions, III. 
 
 Rivers of Palestine, 123, 190. 
 Roman Catholics, 34, 85, 97. 
 Russians, 93, 108, 117, 118, 176. 
 
 Sacred cities, 52. 
 
 Safed, 179. 
 
 Safety of travel, 12, 51. 
 
 Sainte Chapelle, 86. 
 
 Salutations, XVI. 
 
 Saladin, 53, 160, 182. 
 
 Samaria, City, 8, 154, 196. 
 Samaria, District, 154, 158, 185. 
 Samaritans, 151. 
 
 Santa Croce, Rome, 87. 
 
 Sarah, Tomb of, 61. 
 
 Scales of Judgment, 66. 
 Sebastijeh, see Samaria. 
 
 Sharon, Plain of, 14, 192. 
 Shechem, 149, 192. 
 
 Shunem, 161, 162. 
 
 Sidon, 164, 192. 
 
 Siloam, Pools of, 110. 
 
 Village, 110. 
 
 Sinai, Mount, 28. 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, 136, 139. 
 Solomon’s Pools, 24. 
 
 Quarries, 104. 
 
 Stables, 72. 
 
 Sultan’s Pool (Jer.), 20. 
 
 (Hebron), 54. 
 
 Summer itinerary, 13. 
 
 Sunset views, 199. 
 
 Syrian characteristics, 31, 166. 
 
 Taanach, 161. 
 
 Tabor, Mount, 6, 158-160, 162. 
 Tell el-Kddi, 124. 
 
 Tell el-Ka8sis, 195. 
 
 Temple, the Jewish, 66, 70. 
 Tersatto, 177. 
 
 Tiberias, City, 185. 
 
 Tiberias, Lake, see Galilee. 
 
 Tombs or graves:—Absalom, 113. 
 Adam, 52, 82. 
 
 Anne, 113. 
 
 David, 101. 
 
 Eusebius of Cremona, 47. 
 Eustochium, 47. 
 in Valley of Hinnom, 109. 
 Jerome, 47. 
 
 Joachim, 113. 
 
 Jonah, 26. 
 
 Joseph, 60, 153. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 81. 
 Joseph of Nazareth, 113. 
 in Valley of Kidron, 112, 114. 
 Lazarus, 119. 
 
 Melchizedek, 82. 
 
 Nicodemus, 81. 
 
 Paula, 47. 
 
 Rachel, 24. 
 the Virgin, 113. 
 
 Zacharias, 112. 
 
 Tombs of the Kings, 106. 
 
 Judges, 107. 
 
 Patriarchs, 60. 
 
 Prophets, 117. 
 
 Tophet, 108. 
 
 Tourist season, 11, 198. 
 Transfiguration, 163. 
 
 Traveling in Palestine, 12, 142. 
 Trees, 195. 
 
 Tripoli, City, 192. 
 
 Turks, 30. 
 
 Tyropceon Valley, 112. 
 
 Underground Jerusalem, 107. 
 
 Valleys around Jerusalem, X. 
 Vegetation, variety of, 8. 
 
 Vildyets of Palestine, 3. 
 
 View from Bethel, 91. 
 
 Carmel, 188. 
 
 Damascus Gate, 101. 
 
 Ebal, 7. 
 
 of Sea of Galilee, 184. 
 in central Palestine, 140. 
 
 Olivet, 118, 119. 
 
 Tabor, 6. 
 
 Vulgate, Latin, 44. 
 
 Wailing Place, 
 in Hebron, 57. 
 in Jerusalem, 78. 
 
 Wilderness of Judea, 72. 
 
 Zacharias, Tomb of, 112. 
 
 Zionism, 75. 
 
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