d 7) "; ~ ~. / "' __'-.z-.:: 3;'- -- -- - -' 9 Q'z~ 5~/<...-~',. - - z ~LG;-: — 7 -" /'..... /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~....7'.... -"'h'~ — WK~~~~~~z' t~~~~~~~~ir<~~~~~~~~~'~ -"f: — i'-/' "::;:-;"'. Z-~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~47'"l ~~~~L~ ~ "",'"~:-,.'."' ~ ~a'~-~-' —:....7 ~: -. L.':~' j'~... / \ -7/7 ~" -~ " ~~~~~~' 7't-7 --— ~ —-~_ —-- I _.'Ax-:-. -...... -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~,, 7.Z Z - N A7 MODERN JEUSALEII EOM TI-I 501X711 ~~~~ ZC~~~~~~~~~I~~3~~~( ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ a C/~WY Ik A 8~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-... 5ZIODEIN J~i~USAL~lq 7F1-%O1~ TtIE ~OUtI. ~~~~clr r~~~~~~~~~~~~1 g~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-m ~~~~~g~Pn i~~~~~~~~~~~J s D~~~~~OENJEUAEJ FO HEs'T1 TENT LIFE IN THE HOLY LAND. BY WILLIAM C. PRIME, AUTTIOE OF "BOAT LIFE IN EGYPT AND NUBIA," " THE OLD HOUSE BY THE RIVER,' "SLATER YEARS," ETC. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1857. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. lo t U)e tLemora of Ncjnnied. rime, Ounr leuerenlb anb 3eloveb aFtlier, tI)o, tlitfie w tIe We fe ting tbe. fouuntains of Rebanon, on tIe motrnfng of t)e tbWcnttsebent t1an of sarED, in tfe "ear: efgteen itunbreb ant ffftalf:r, Ct a centI into t)e Subifme anbt Solemn 6Compano of the tatrlarchs anta vropbets of all ftnre, I M-bitate this bolum&. THE publication of BOAT LIFE IN EGYPT AND NUBIA, a volume containing the incidents of my journeying for some months before I reached the Holy Land, renders unnecessary what might, in ordinary cases, be proper by way of preface to a book like this. I visited the sacred soil, as a pilgrim, seeking mine own pleasure. I went where it pleased me. I acted as it pleased me, yielding, with delicious license, to the whim of every passing hour. I prayed or I laughed; I knelt or I turned my back; I wept or I sang; and when I sang it was now a song of sinful humanity and now a grand old monkish hymn, to which my voice made the moonlit streets of Jerusalem ring as I strolled along them, or which I sent floating over the holy waves of Galilee. I have written my book even as I traveled. NEW YoRK, March 2,o. 1.5 NEW YORK, March 27, 1851, se receptet Zion ila, Zion Pabiti, urbt tiranqutilla! Hildebert, Archiep. Tours. O BONE JESU, ut tua castra viderunt, hujus terrense Iherusalem muros, quantos exitus aquarum oculi, eorum deduxerunt! Et mox terrae procumbentia sonitu oris, et nutu inclinati corporis, Sanctum Sepulchrum tuum salutaverunt; et te, qui in eo jacuisti, ut sedentem in dextera Patris ut venturum judicem omnium, adoraverunt I Robert the Monk. Liber IX. C(ent buce splentbiba, contteo cantiiba Fertibus alife, g.unt sine fietibus in p on mnbtli, rbibttu almis;.Sunt sint crinine, Bunt sine turbite, sttut ine lite, SIn aouln iriits, ebitioribus Egraclit! *. * * * * * ~ mea, pet miea! tu potn aurea, clarior aur!.gmine gpIlenbiba, tans butte, floriba perpcte lauro; ~ tona patlia, num tua galbia tcqute tbibeo? tiona patfia, nllt tua prmnia, plena telnIo? Bernard de Clugny. For I have come from foreign lands, And seen the sun of June Set over the Holy Jerusalem; And its towers beneath the moon. And I have stood by the Sepulchre Where our good Lord was laid, And drank of Siloa's brook that flows In the cool of its own palm shade. Moir. i t n t i t S.,L Piflt pIwmtti pomril i Page LAST DAY IN EGYPT-THE PARTY FOR SYRIA-MY SERVANTS-LEAVING ALEXANDRIA-AT SEA-HOME THOUGHTS-MIRIAM SLEEPS ON DECK-LAND! -THE LAND OF PROMISE,... 13 2. &ib' Biek lemanta. LANDING AT JAFFA-EASTERN PORTERS-HOUSE OF SIMON-AMERICAN FLAG -TENT EQUIPAGE-MISSIONARIES-ANCIENT. JOPPA-A BETROTHAL-THE HAREEM — GREEK GIRL-THE TENTS,.......25 J. 1te log of fte MInhe oftlJ BREAKING UP THE CAMP-PLAIN OF SHARON-TOWER AT RAMILE —LYDDAMONKS OF HOLY LAND-RAMLEH —ABUD MARCUS-CURIOUS COINCIDENCEEMMATUS-AJALON-VALLEY OF ELAH-FIRST VIEW OF JERUSALEM-ENTERING TIE CITY-OUR HIRED HOUSE,.........41 SUNRISE OVER OLIVET-TOMB OF THE VIRGIN MARY-GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE-MOONLIGHT IN THE GARDEN,.. 58 Viii CONTENTS. Page THE MOUNT OF OLIVES-WINE OF LEBANON-CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE-FRA GIOVANNI-INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH-CALVARY-TIlE HOLY SEPULCHRE-OTHER HOLY PLACES WITHIN THE CHUCI,.... 68 S. "nll pOixt mnb ctHll p-glldl FERRAJJ-EFFECTS OF A iREVOLVER-PILGRIMS TO THE HOLY LAND —THE STORY OF FOULQUE NERRA, COUNT AND PILGRIM,... 85 7. olmb about mlsnecm. SITE OF JERUSALEM-ITS HILLS AND VALLEYS-POPULATION AND GOVERNMENT-SUPPLIES OF WATER-GENERAL ASPECT-MEANS OF LOCOMOTIONVIA DOLOROSA-CAVERNS UNDER JERUSALEM-OUR HOPSES-ARABIAN HORSES,............... 99 MOUNT MORIA —VIRGIN'S FOUNTAIN-POOL OF SILOAM-MOUNT ZION-TOMB OF DAVID-PLACE OF THE LAST SUPPER-AMERICAN JEWS' HOSPITALJERUSALEM OF OLD,..... 119 ROAD TO BETHANY-BETHANY-TOIMB OF LAZARUS-CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES-PLACE OF CHRIST'S ASCENSION-A RIDE AROUND JERUSALEM-LEPERS-JEWS' PLACE OF WAILING-RELICS OF ANCIENT JERUSALEM,............ 129 cl,e (r'To anb omh. LATIN MONKS OF TERRA SANTA-LATIN CONVENT-ITS TREASURES-RIELICS AND ROSARIES-ARMENIAN CONVENT —AIERICAN SOAP-TOMBI OF HELENA -VARIOUS TOMBS-ACELDAMA-INTERESTING TOMIBS-CATACOMIBS OF OLIVET,... 142 CONTENTS. ix X. ~nx ~fxad. Page A GHOST IN THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT-STORY OF A JEW-A PILGRIM AND STRANGER,...164 12.!e L:oshi of (mar. METHOD OF OBTAINING ADMISSION-IHiSTORICAL FACTS-DOME OF THE ROCK -DESCRIPTION OF THE PRINCIPAL MOSK-ROCK OF THE TEMPLE-PRAYINGPLACE OF JESUS-PULPIT OF DAVID —THE TEMPLE-CRYPTS-INIGIITS TEMPLA —GROTTO OF JESUS —GOLDEN GATE,...174 IJ. Cke ^ 1Thu of fije TWlcMzrnzs,. SKETCH OF OURSELVES-BETUNI-BED OF TIIE KEDRON-SAINT SABAS-NIGHT AT THE CONVENT-VIEW OF THE DEAD SEA-DESOLATE HILLS-SHORE OF THE DEAD SEA,... 195 T4+ b 1e ar igs oTrhan. BATH IN TIIE SEA-EXPERIMENTS-WATER OF THE SEA-THE JORDAN-BATH IN THE JORDAN-BLOOD REVENGE-JERICHO-ROAD TO JERUSALEM,.. 210 1J. myrz 3ilfjg-plact of flD tt oX. RIDE TO BETHLEHEM-RACIEL'S GRAVE-BETHLEHEM-PLACE OF THE NATIVITY-ARGUMENT IN ITS FAVOR-STARLIGHT ON BETHLEHEM,... 228 %. algrt ts dfi tlrs rt. POOLS OF SOLOMON-VALLEY OF ESHCOL —EBRON-CAVE OF MACHPELAI -OAKS OF MAMRE —THE PATRIARCIS1-VISIT TO THE MOSK-ROAD TO JERUSALEM,.......... 238 I* x CONTENTS. 17. DCjz ol Viacts. Page GENERAL TOPOGRAPIHY-AORA AND BEZETHA-THE HOLY SEPULCHRE-HISTORY OF CALVARY AND THE SEPULCHRE,.... 25 T. If I 1orqtd flac, @ 0mcus'alm BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS-THE DEPARTURE-THE LAST GAZE-BEEROTH-BETHEL —HANGING BETUNI-THE TENTS MISSING-FOUND,... 313 II. *ilfJ, Rljljcm, manlu ammuxa. SHILOH-MOUNT HERMON-JACOB'S WELL-JOSEPH'S GRAVE-EBAL AND GERIZIM-NABLOUS-THE SAMARITANS-SAMARIA-A PISTOL-BALL-JEZHEELi-ESDRAELON............ 32 2X. lmain inh jl mret^j SHUNEM -NAIN-RIVER KISIION - ENDOR -NAZARETI-VIRGIN'S HOUSEHOSPITALITY OF MONKS-HILL ABOVE NAZARETH-VIEW FROM THE HILLMOUNT TABOR-BATTLES NEAR TABOE,.....41 21. 1a fa1 REGINALD OF CHANTILLON-A GALLANT FIGHT-JACQUES DE MAILL — GATHERING OF THE CHRISTIAN ARMY-BATTLE OF HATTIN-THE LOSS OF THE TRUE CROSS~-FROM TABOR TO TIBERIAS-SEA OF GALILEE-THE OLD MAN'S MEMORY,...... 353 22. tjgiptbnre ow mO aTliic. - SIMON PETER'S SUCCESSOR-ON THE SEA-OUTLET OF THE JORDAN-A STORM ON THE SEA —TOILING AND ROWING-CAST AWAY ON THE LAND OF THE GADARENES-FORDING THE JORDAN,.....370 2a% (Tl Minc of giberias. SUNDAY MORNING-CARPETS AND CIGARS-BUYING WINE-SARAT OF TIBERIAS -A GALILEE WINE-CELLAR-OLD COINS,.. 882 CONTENTS. xi Page TIBERIAS - MAGDALA -CAPERNAUM- JOSEPH'S PIT- A GAZELLE CHASEMILL OF MALAHA-OUR BROTHER —SOURCES OF THE JORDAN-ARRIVAL AT BANIAS,......... 3S FOUNTAIN OF BANIAS-LAST NIGHT ON HOLY SOIL-A RUINED CASTLEROUTE OVER MOUNT HERMON-BEIT JIN,.... 401 21 my11 Mrsn of ermotT. A MOSLEM VILLAGE-TIE DRUSES-A MURDER AND BURIAL-MIRIAM'S TENT -AN ENEMY-THE COOK'S BRAVERY-SNOWED UNDER-HIRING A HOUSEWANTED A BIBLE,.......407 27. 1 m be 1 a nr ug2t of (6 FROM BEIT JIN TO DAMASCU —DAMASCUS-FOUNTAINS-MOSK OF YEYEAROUND DAMASCUS-A TALE OF PASSION-THE COUNTESS IANTHE,.. 420 KHANS-HOUSES-A JEW'S PALACE-TIE SEVEN SLEEPERS-AMERICAN MISSION-A CAMEL-DRIVER'S GOAD-BETUNI-OUR FATHER-THE HILLS OF HEAVEN,.... 482 2SS ^XGsxn gnti-sebamo^lr GREAT SPRING AT FEEJEE-ABILA-TOMB OF ABEL-ANCIENT PUBLIC WORKS -INSCRIPTIONS-TOMBS-AN AQUEDUCT-ZEBDANI-FERRAJJ,... 443 Xa 1fp axitf o1f tfe ily., BAALBEC-IMMORTALITY-THE RUINS OF HELIOPOLIS-IMMENSE STONES-GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE RUINS-INSCRIPTIONS,... 456 xii CONTENTS. 31. \y gosts oif ttbamn. Page MIRIAM'S LEVEE-ROSE, SUZAIN, AND ALILA-MARRYING FOR LOVE-GRAVE OF SALAH-E'DEEN-SPECULATIONS ON THE RUINS OF BAALBEC-WARDA THE ROSE,. 469 2. SIe itomxn. CROSSING THE PLAIN-PERILOUS SITUATION-RISING STREAMS-ARRIVAL AT MAALAKHA-A CHRISTIAN TOUSE, AND DOUBTFUL FAMILY-TOMB OF NOAI, 475 53., t11}isia 1oXb1s. INJURED AND INSULTED-APPEAL TO THE GOVERNOR-A COURT OF SPECIAL SESSIONS-CROSSING LEBANON-NIGHT ON THE TOP OF A KHAN-BEYROUTTHE SEA-THE LAST GALLOP -WITH MOHAMMED-DEPARTURE FROM HOLY LAND,.............484 ADVICE TO TRAVELERS VISITING SYRIA,....... 495 ^^c i iitfi i 0 i1h ) To see the sun go down beyond the Sepulchre and rise over the mountain of the Ascension, to bare my forehead to the cold dews of Gethsemane, and lave my dim eyes in the waters of Siloam, to sleep in the company of the infinite host above the oaks of Mamre, and to lie in the starlight of Bethlehem and catch, however faintly, some notes of the voices of the angels, to wash off the dust of life in the Jordan, to cool my hot lips at the well of Samaria, to hear the murmur of Gennesareth, giving me blessed sleep-was not all this worth dreaming of-worth living for-was it not worth dying for? And all this I was to accomplish-not in some dim future, but to-morrow-to-morrow! Yea, there lay Holy Land and thither my pilgrim feet would carry me ere three suns had risen and set. How I shrank fiom the sea lest it should engulf me before I had seen Jerusalem-how I trembled lest the nerves and sinews should fail me and the delicate thread of life break before I could kneel at the Tomb! How I looked earnest, longing, clinging gazes at my wife, lest some dire mishap should prevent that perfect joy of our glad lives and forbid our standing together on the Mount of Olives. We were on the shore of the Mediterranean, two miles 14 LAST DAY IN EGYPT. eastward of the walls of Alexandria, on the mounds of the ancient city. The sun was going down behind the old castle on the point. In its very burning glory, and afterward in the deep soft flush of twilight, I saw the fastvanishing vessel in which the companions of our Egyptian winter were going to Italy. Turning to the east I looked at the gray horizon, beyond which lay the Holy Land, and the momentary feeling of lonesomeness at parting with the only persons in the East to whom we were bound by ties of kindred, and whose good companionship had been half the delight of those months on the Nile, gave place to a thrill of keen pleasure at the thought that right there awaylay Jerusalem, and in four days more we should be within the holy gates. The evening came down with all the soft and quiet beauty of Egypt, and the sky was more brilliant with stars than ever before. Night after night we had thought and said the same thing, and this, which was to be our last night in Egypt, was to our unwearied eyes most beautiful of all. The first chill breath from the sea warned us homeward. Mounting our donkeys, we woke up the donkey-boys who lay curled up in the corner of a broken tomb, and by dint of the usual amount of beating and shouting we succeeded in getting up a reasonable speed and went over the desolate hills to the gate of the city. In the streets of Alexandria all was busy and noisy. As we entered at the open Rosetta gate we met the usual crowd of soldiers and women, a wedding procession and a funeral wailing. A party of half drunken Turks nearly rode over us in their carriage, a mishap which cost their driver a swinging blow from the end of my koorbash as he dashed by me, and Mustapha Bey, followed by his retinue of servants, paused a moment as he met us, to OUR PARTY. 15 exchange a cheerful good-evening which proved to be a farewell, for we did not see him again. He had been my friend on sundry occasions in Cairo and was very much of a gentleman in his ways. Dashing on at as much speed as a donkey gallop can be accused of, we came to the door of Caesar Tortilla's Hotel d' Europe, the pleasantest in Iskandereyeh. Franks and Saracens, Jews, Turks, and Infidels crowded the sidewalk, and talked more languages than was necessary to the scattering at Babel. Donkeys and donkey-boys, speaking English equally well, assisted to increase the confusion while they settled their accounts with their late employers. Through this mass we pushed our way up to the dining-room, where we found dinner on the table, it having been delayed for our return, as Miriam was the only lady in the hotel. There was to be an arrival from Cairo that evening. That is to say the viceroy's orders for a train had been published, but that by no means insured its running, for it was a very common thing to have a train withdrawn on the morning that it was announced for, and many passengers seriously discommoded thereby. We had not advanced far, however, in the business of dinner, always a lengthy and a serious business after a day among the relics of an old city, when a general outburst of the aforementioned crowd at the door of the hotel announced an arrival, and a few minutes later our friend Moreright entered. It had been uncertain, when we left him in Cairo, whether he would join us, and we had therefore made no arrangements for him, but he had concluded to accompany us as far as Jerusalem, and our party was therefore complete. Our company for the Holy Land, and as far to the eastward as circumstances would permit, consisted only 16 MY SERV ANTS, of my friend Whitely, and Miriam and myself. But Mloreright, and Mr. De Leon, our accomplished and excellent consul-general in Egypt, with Mr. S- of Baltirore, having agreed to accompany us as far as the Holy City, we had as pleasant a party for the start as could well be desired. We gathered around the claret after dinner, and discussed the plans for our landing at Jaffa and proceedings thereafter. For although Jaffa and Alexandria are neighboring ports, it is impossible in one to obtain any information about the other. I had taken Abd-el-Atti with me. His conduct as dragoman for five months previous had been, without exception, good, and for intelligence, activity, and capability, I was very certain I should not find his superior. Were it possible to obtain a Mohammedan dragoman, who was a native of Syria, I should, on some accounts, have preferred one, but this appeared to be out of the question. All the Syrian dragomans that I could find were Christians. My prince of cooks, Hajji Mohammed, had enlisted in my service again, having been well pleased with his Egyptian term, and Ferrajj, largest, and blackest, and best of Nubian servants. Ferrajj Abd-Allah, which being interpreted, meaneth trusty servant of God, having left me in Cairo, possessed of my recommendation as a most trusty servant of men, could not find it in his heart to part fiom us so long as we were in Mohammedan land, for he had a horror of only one thing, to wit, becoming a Christian. Ferrajj rejoined us, or rather never left us but for half a day, and was always at Miriam's back. In Cairo I had three tents made under Abd-el-Atti's supervision. They were extra stout, of the best canvas I could procure, and lined throughout with cotton cloth. I could probably have purchased tents at Jaffa much cheaper, but I could not find such as these any where in the East, and I was desirous of securing Miriam's com LEAVING ALEXANDRIA 1'7 fort in a journey which was likely to be attended with much exposure. The top of her tent-pole was fitted with a flagstaff, upon which we literally nailed the American flag, the small one which we had used on the Nile, and above it stood an eagle with outspread wings, as good an imitation of the bird of Jove and America as a Cairene could get up. Our bedsteads were iron, the bedding entirely new, and consequently free from vermin of every description. These, with various cases of provisions, and the canteens containing the table furniture, we had sent from Cairo, and they were already on board the steamer. We were therefore ready to embark, and as we were to sail early in the morning we had determined to go on board that night, and were now passing our last hours in Egypt. The rooms were filled with our party and friends who called to bid us good-by, until nine o'clock, when the carriage was announced. Among my friends in Alexandria with whom I parted last and most reluctantly, was the vice-consul of Sweden and Norway, Mr. Petersen, a gentleman whose personal accomplishments would have won our regard even if we had not been so highly indebted to him for kindness and attention during this and my former visit at Alexandria. Our carriage-wheels alone broke the profound stillness now resting on the city of the great son of Philip. Down one street, along a narrow passage, through a more narrow and dark way, where the houses on each side, almost meeting over our heads, hid the stars from view; plunging into a mud-hole here, crashing over a pile of stone there, scraping the front doors with the hubs of our wheels, and threatening constantly to tear them open and exhibit the heterogeneous contents of the Alexandrian shops, we dashed furiously, the horses at a full gallop, toward the shore, preceded by two Nubian 18 THE LANDING PLACE. runners bearing the blazing meshallak torches, that glared furiously on the latticed fronts of the houses, and awoke the slumbering Egyptians with dreams of fire, until torches and carriage drew up suddenly at the water-gate of the city. After the usual loud barking, yelping, and yelling of twenty or thirty dogs was over, a profound stillness settled on the scene. The old gateway hung gloomily over us. Near its two posts, leaning on the long. handles of their torches, were the two Nubians, black as the night, with eyes flashing like stars. The smothered blaze lit the scene with a low, fitful glare, and the horses threw up their nostrils and snorted their impatience, while we dismounted and waited the opening of the gates. We had the password for the night; and a small door at the side of the great gate was at length opened by two sleepy soldiers, who came out of the guard-house so slowly that I refused them the bucksheesh that they demanded, and that I had intended giving. It was a different looking landing-place from that which we had been accustomed to see by daylight. All was profoundly still and calm. There was not a voice in the air or on the sea; no utterance of man or God to break the silence. The noisy Arabs, groaning camels, and shouting donkey-boys that infest the spot at other hours, were as if they had been in the tombs of the Pharaohs; and in very truth there was no stretch of imagination necessary to make that the city of the ancient days, Alexandria the great, and yonder Pharos, the wonder of the world. There was a strange majesty in the appearance of earth, and air, and sea that night; and I would not exchange those, my last impressions of the land of Egypt, for any that I can think possible. I commanded perfect silence, for the Arabs could not long keep their lips shut, and for a moment I looked AN ARAB ROW, 19 back at the walls of the city, and the front of the customhouse, which the moonlight converted into a Grecian temple; and my vision swept back through all the changes of two thousand years; with memories of the queen of beauty, and luxury; of the great first of the Caesars; of the preaching of John, whose surname was Mark; of the flames that followed the invasion of Omar; of a thousand scenes, down to the departure of the child of destiny, one only of which would have made Alexandria memorable forever. The full moon and silent stars shone as calmly and coldly as ever on the scene, even as in the centuries of old; and a meteor, a swift star, that seemed to have been resting on the zenith, and to have lost its throne of glory, went rushing down the eastern sky, and vanished toward Jerusalem. I smiled, and Miriam nestled close to me, as we sat down in the boat and fixed our eyes together on that star, and the spot where it disappeared; and I believe that for a moment we both felt the warm floods pressing toward our eyelids as we remembered the lands far west, and bethought us of the few hours that was between us and the end of our pilgrimage-the city of our Lord. Our reveries were most rudely interrupted. Our baggage had gone on board in the morning. One trunk alone remained, which we had packed to go on to Beyrout, and there await our arrival after we should have finished our Syrian tour. This we had with us; and it was over this that one of those infernal Arabian squabbles arose. No description will convey any idea of an Arab dispute. Three voices sound like thirty in their various gutturals and falsettos; and in this case there were five, shouting, wrangling, and swearing about the trunk. The soldiers at the gate could not allow it to pass. All packages are examined on exit from Egypt, inasmuch as there are more export duties than import. But it is not 20 AT SEA. customary to submit travelers' baggage to examination; nevertheless, as we were leaving in the night, the soldiers considered it their duty to detain the baggage until morning, that the chief officer of the customs might himself order it passed. A trifling bucksheesh, the customary substitute for the presence of the chief officer, would not answer the purpose in this instance, and this was the cause of the row, for it was a row, and nothing else. Two of the soldiers were willing, and a third, a Nubian, was unwilling; and it appeared, from a whisper that one of the two gave in my ear, that they had had a quarrel with him, and he was not friendly to them, and was unwilling to allow them to receive any bucksheesh, even to the extent of sacrificing it himself, a moral valor perfectly astounding in an Oriental. The quarrel grew furious, and the voices became intolerable, when — am not certain how it happened, but I saw Ferrajj suspiciously near the Nubian's legs, there was a tremendous splash in the sea, just under the stern of the boat, and a sudden stillness on the land, while the trunk was tumbled in, and we pushed off toward the steamer. I looked back long enough to see the fellow climb the side of the low pier, and to hear the laughter of his companions. How they settled it I never knew. The sea plashed around the bow of the boat, and under the blades of the oars, as we pulled out into the harbor. An hour later we were safe on board the Italia, and sleeping soundly. The afternoon of the second day out was far from pleasant. A wild gale of wind was blowing from the northward, and it began to be exceedingly doubtful whether we should be able to effect a landing at Jaffa, in which case it would be necessary to go on to Haifa, and materially disarrange all our plans. The sun was bright, however, and the lee side of the deck not uncomfortable. We had found it impossible to remain below in the small FERRAJJ THE FAITHFUL. 21 cabin, and, having spread our Persian carpets, we sat down or lounged on the deck, and read, as the ship rolled, enjoying the voyage as keenly as good company and good books could be expected to enable us. It is not to be denied that one or two of the party left the dinner table somewhat abruptly, but this was accounted for by several suppositions reasons. No one was precisely sea-sick. I have seldom seen any one, in the cabin of any vessel in which I have traveled, who was sea-sick. Curious disordered states of the stomach, dyspeptic symptoms, disarrangements of the bile and indigestion, have been frequent complaints, but always cured by shore air, and therefore not alarming, though so very common. As the evening came down, a low mist was driving along the sea, and the gale increased in violence. The ship tossed and strained her creaking timbers, and threw herself down in the deep hollow of the waves, and sometimes the white spray went over her foretop, and blue water came rushing aft to the quarter-deck ladder, and rolled off in the scuppers. But the first officer was very certain that there was enough of easterly in the wind to enable us to make a harbor at Jaffa, and we were patient and content. Ferrajj was ill when we left Cairo, and was now so much worse that I became alarmed about him. He was always as black as the room in the great pyramid without candles, and his teeth were whiter than his eye-balls; but now, his blackness was as deep as the same room in a dark night, if that could make it, or he could be, any blacker, and his teeth contrasted with his face in a manner that was actually frightful. I am not writing very feelingly about it now, but I was very anxious for the poor fellow. He was worth his weight in gold, and we had become attached to him, as I believe he had to us. 22 0O ME THOUG HTS. I wrapped him up as carefully as the circumstances would permit, and, giving him such medicine as I thought proper for his case, left him to sleep. Ten minutes afterward his huge form was visible as he crawled aft with my bournoose, or Syrian cloak, which I had left near him, and which he knew I would want in the night air that now came down damp and chilling. I sent the faithful fellow back; and, throwing myself down on my carpet, under the lee of the cabin hatchway, by the side of Miriam, who was transformed into a bundle of shawls and cloaks, with a pair of bright eyes peeping out of it, I talked a little while, and then I dreamed —not sleeping dreams-far otherwise-broad awake dreams, such as God hath in mercy granted poor humanity the power to dream. In long gone years I had sometimes thought of Holy Land. In my home in the up country, standing by my father's knee, I had heard him tell of the hills of Jerusalem. Lying in my mother's arms, year after year, I had slept peaceful sleep as she sang the songs of Christian story. No other music ever lulled my young soul to slumber; and, in later years, no sound had ever half the power to calm the storms that sometimes swept over the wastes of my life-no other songs the " peace be still" effect those had on the waves of sorrow. How well I remembered them now! My father's head was white with the snows of three-score years and ten, but his footstep was as firm as mine. But, though I-I -yes, it was even so-I knew it not-I was on the borders of Canaan, my footsteps were entering Holy Land on earth, and his, far away from me, were on the borders of the Promised Land! I was close to the Jerusalem of the cross, he already close to the Jerusalem of the crown -I was going to lave my weary limbs in the Jordan, he was to lie down on the banks of the river of life-I was to go wearily to Gethsemane and the place of death and MIRIAM. 23 the sepulchre, he was passing swiftly to the presence of the Risen Lord. How well I remembered them! My mother's hand taught my footsteps their first essays on the sad earth; and lo! here, what far pilgrimage they had accomplished! God grant me safe return, to tell her of the hills that are round about Jerusalem, even as the Lord is round about such as she! The moon rose up above the mists and shone across the stormy sea. I looked at Miriam; her eyes had closed; she was sleeping quietly and peacefully. Such already was the experience of travel, that she, delicately nourished at home, and accustomed to shrink from the least exposure, whom I always wrapped in cloaks of a summer evening when she rode out, and whose feet scarce ever touched the damp earth of America, could already lie on the deck of a ship in a storm, with the spray flying over her, and sleep profoundly. It was no sad thought that marked my countenance as I looked at her. To have accomplished the pilgrimage to Holy Land was the realization of a hope long cherished almost despairingly; but now that it was accomplished, her presence was the crowning joy. I had a pride and a pleasure that I can not well make my reader a partaker of, in having successfully reached this point in our journey, which so many had prophesied we should never complete. Nor was this pride and pleasure all. He who has known in youth the delight of a beautiful scene, enhanced by the presence of one well beloved, or who in later years has found his own keenest happiness in enjoying the happiness of those for whom he would think the sacrifice of his entire life a very small gift, will understand what I mean when I speak of the happiness with which I saw my fragile little wife sleeping calmly in her bundle of shawls, on the deck of the steamer, when the 24 "THE PLEASANT LAND." lookout in the foretop shouted that thrilling word, in whatever language of earth it is uttered, but which was tenfold more thrilling now that the shore before us was the Holy Land. " Up, Miriam! awake!-it is the Land!" She sprang to her feet, and we staggered up to the weather side, and then up to the lee rail, as the ship went down in the sea, but for a little while saw nothing. And then the mist went up, up into the sky, and the clear moon was in the bright blue on the hills of Ephraim, and we saw the desire of our eyes, the Land of Promise. WE could not obtain pratique at night, and were compelled to wait on board the steamer until morning. The appearance of Jaffa from the sea is picturesque; but there is nothing about it sufficiently striking to impress the memory. The plain of Sharon, which here runs along the coast, is not broken by any high hills, though the ground is more uneven near the sea than a few miles inland, where it spreads out into a broad prairie-like champagne. Jaffa itself is situated on a bluff which is somewhat higher than the land around it, and which, therefore, makes the city a commanding point in the landscape. The sea washes the walls of the city. There is no harbor whatever. A reef of rocks, mostly out of water, runs parallel with the shore,.a few hundred feet from it; but there is no anchorage inside for large vessels, and, indeed, no channel by which they could enter. A breakwater might be constructed, however, without as much expense as we have often seen given to less important places; and perhaps the day may come when Jerusalem will have a port with a safe harbor, though when that day does come I incline to think Haifa will be selected in preference to Jaffa. There is, not far from Jaffa, a dark lake, separated from the sea by a narrow bar, which it is the opinion of 2 26 LANDING AT JAFFA. competent judges could be removed at a small expense, opening a channel for vessels to a safe and land-locked anchorage. But the mountains between the port and the Holy City offer a great obstacle to communication. Should the time ever come when a railway will connect Jerusalem with the sea, it is apparently more practicable to direct it to the plain of Esdraelon and the outlet of the river Kishon, than down a grade of thirteen hundred feet to the ancient Joppa. The shore boats were crowded alongside of the ship when we came on deck in the morning, and Abd-el-Atti had already commenced the disembarking of the baggage. We entered another boat, in which the American agent at Joppa, Mr. Murad, had come off, and in a few moments dashed off through a narrow channel in the reef, and up to the dirty wooden ladder, at the top of which were crowded the representatives of every nation on earth, and several others, as one might well be excused for imagining. The din of voices was, as usual, intolerable; and it was for a moment quite doubtful whether we should be able to effect a landing. But Ferrajj came up at the instant in his boat with the baggage, and swinging a huge bag in his brawny arms, sent it flying up on the landing-stage into the very faces of the crowd. It floored three, and swept an open space, into which Whitely sprang, and was followed by the party. We now worked our way through the crowd, having yielded to the absolute certainty of the effects of that contact with oriental vagabonds, and emerged at last in the open street, under the wall of the city, which skirts the shore. Passing along this street, and turning into one more narrow and dirty, we ascended sundry flights of steps to a house over which the American flag was floating, and which we knew thereby must be the residence of the consular agent. EASTERN PORTERS. 27 Accepting Mr. Murad's hospitality for the moment, while I returned to see that the baggage was safely landed, I left Miriam in charge of Mrs. M., an exceedingly beautiful Armenian lady, and Whitely and myself went down the stairways, and lost ourselves, of course, in the labyrinthine alleys, called streets in eastern cities. Without knowing it then, I inquired at the house of Simon the Tanner of ancient reputation, which was my way to the Austrian steamer-office; but my Arabic was unintelligible to the black-eyed little girl that sat in the mud near the door; so we pushed on till we could hear the terrible confusion of tongues at the landing, and then directed our course accordingly. We were just in time. Seven men, from as many different rum-shops, had as many separate packages on their backs, and in a moment more we should have been losers of six sevenths of them. For disregard of personal rights commend me to the porters of a Mediterranean seaport. The plunder was going on at a furious rate. They appeared to imagine that all that pile had been landed from the steamer as a public benefit, free to all comers to select what they wanted. Abd-el-Atti had gone on board to look up the camp kitchen equipage, and left the goods in charge of the cook, who was a capital hand at a pasty, but a very poor watchman among a horde of his own kind and kin. Ferrajj arrived on the spot just as we did, and while he boxed the ears of a tall Arab who had my portmanteau on his shoulders, Whitely upset a Nubian loaded with baskets, and I made my koorbash whistle around the bare legs of a half breed Italian and Greek, who danced furiously as he dropped two carpet bags that he was quite unable to explain his intentions in regard to. I don't think the Jaffa porters were accustomed to that sort of thing. They were, for once, most thoroughly 28 HO USE OF SIMON. polite, and when I said Vanish, they vanished, leaving us with Hajji Mohammed and Ferrajj masters of the field, and of our own luggage. We then ordered the tents to be immediately pitched outside of the city walls, on a green spot near the quarantine station, overlooking the sea, and the luggage to be conveyed to them as rapidly as might be. This completed, we had nothing to do for an hour or two but to examine the city of Jaffa. Returning to Mr. Murad's house for Miriam, we walked out and through the passages, which surpassed in filth the worst parts of New York, and which seemed redolent of plague, until our little guide informed us that we were at the house of Simon the Tanner, and I recognized the same child sitting in the samne mud-hole that I had seen an hour before near the entrance. The interior of the house is now transformed into a sort of Mohammedan praying place, having examined which, we went up to the roof where Peter dreamed of things clean and unclean. I do not know how old the tradition concerning the house is, but the house itself is not very ancient, and the locality is too far up the hill to meet the requirements of the Scripture narrative. Simon the Tanner, resided by the sea-side. This is by the sea-side, but. elevated far above it, and not in a locality where he would have been apt to carry on his trade, though it is by no means certain that he lived where his work was done. It is an interesting fact, however, that in the afternoon I was walking along the sea beach, looking for shells, and at about a fourth of a mile from the city, to the southward, I found two tanneries directly on the sea-side. I observed that the rocks in front of them were covered with the water a few inches deep, and that they soaked their hides on these rocks, and also submitted them to AMERICAN FLAG. 29 some process in the water which I did not stop to understand. Arguing from the general fact that the modern customs are like the ancient, in all matters of art, in the East, and that it was probable that tanneries in Jaffa were conducted two thousand years ago very much as now, I think it not unreasonable to suppose that the house of Simon the Tanner was situated at some such spot as this, and literally by the sea-side. We sat for a long time on the house-top, for it was, at least, much such a place as this on which Peter slept, and we could look out on the sea and over the plain to the south-east, but as noon approached we walked out through the streets to the gateway of the city opening inland, and, passing through a crowd of people occupied in buying and selling the magnificent oranges of Jaffa, which are unequaled in the world elsewhere, we walked along the outside of the old gray south wall of the city to the green plot, back of the quarantine station, and took formal possession of our tents, which were now to be our houses and palaces for some months. The American flag was floating gayly over Miriam's tent. It was the first time, I have reason to believe, that it had ever been seen in Syria, except guarded by officers of the American government, and I had been assured that it would be dangerous to attempt to use it in some parts of the country. I determined to trust its safety to revolvers, in the hands of two American travelers, supported by a half dozen Arabs who would have died for us, and Miriam volunteered, with her repeater, to help in case of need. It was never taken down from that day till we left Syria, at Beyrout, in the late spring, except once when the snows of Mount Lebanon weighed it down and broke the staff, and it was never insulted by look or word so far as my knowledge extended. On the contrary, it was treated with the utmost respect by Turk 30 TENT EQUIPAGE. ish officers in all parts of the Orient, and it was a source of pride to us to find the flag known in places where we had no idea that the American name had penetrated. The tents were already the centre of a large crowd of curious natives, but a word from Ferrajj scattered them, and we had quiet to examine our prospects. The tents proved excellent. Miriam and I occupied one, and Moreright and Whitely the other. There was ample room for four in each, and we should, perhaps, have been as comfortable had they been smaller, for air was plenty. We had iron bedsteads and excellent bedding, while the mats which Abdul Rahman had given us in Nubia, spread on the ground, with the Persian carpets over them, made a floor soft enough for a queen's footstep. Hajji Mohammed had his fire kindled and dinner under way. His kitchen was a long, shallow box of sheet iron, standing on six legs that folded up, and having a perforated grate-like bottom. In this he kindled a charcoal fire, and on this simple affair he cooked us royal dinners. I have eaten worse dinners in first-rate hotels at home, than he gave us from that four feet by one range standing in the open air. Abd-el-Atti was possessed of a grand canteen, containing a full outfit of table-furniture, from the soup tureen to the wine glasses. This was a present to him fiom some former traveler, and was invaluable for his purposes as a dragoman. There was, in fact, nothing wanting to our equipment which could be imagined, even to gimlets, which being bored into the tent-poles, made pegs or hooks whereon to hang one's dress at night. So we threw ourselves down in our tents, with the door curtains lifted toward the sea, and lay looking out on the blue Mediterranean, westward and homeward, while the fire burned and the servants were busy preparing the dinner, and the crowd of MI SI S NARIES. 31 Syrians stood at a distance eying us as if they had never seen white men before, and at length the sun went toward the west. We walked out a little way to call on Mr. and Mrs. Saunders, Americans, who are resident missionaries here, under the patronage of an independent association in America. They are Seventh-day Baptists. I can not here omit expressing our admiration for Mr. and Mrs. Saunders personally, in which I am very certain that every American who visits Jaffa will cordially agree with me. Their devoted attention to us, although entire strangers, the kind-hearted and earnest character of Mrs. Saunders, her true American and New England welcome to Miriam, and her sincere and simple piety, endeared her to us so that we shall not forget them while we remember the Holy Land. Their residence is out of the city, in an orange grove, which it is risking nothing to say has not its equal on the earth. No Sicilian or Cuban orange grove can compare with it in luxuriance or in the size and quality of the fruit. The Jaffa oranges are celebrated throughout the Levant, where they fill the entire market when in season, to the exclusion of all others, except the Maltese Mandarin or Yusef Effendi orange, which, though small, is a great favorite for its peculiar flavor and the ease with which the rind comes off. When we returned to the tents dinner was ready; and, while seated at it, a basket of oranges was sent to us from the Greek merchant who was the owner of the grove we had visited, and with it an invitation to visit his house that evening on occasion of the feast of the betrothal of his daughter. We accepted the invitation, and then strolled along the sea-shore, gathering shells and listening to the familiar murmur of the waves. " It breaks on the point at home, my wife! It is the same surf that rolls by Watch-hill and Napatree, and 32 JOPPA. murmurs on the rocks at the foot of the garden, and it speaks the same language all the world over." Miriam stood looking into the west where the sun had gone down, and her large gray eyes were full of tears, as the old, old sound of the waves that had lulled her to sleep from childhood in her home, came up to the tents on the hill. Joppa is mentioned in 2 Chron. ii. 16, where Hiram of Tyre proposes to Solomon to furnish him wood out of Lebanon for the temple at Jerusalem, and bring it in floats to Joppa; and again, in Ezra iii. 7, where the same process is spoken of, the bringing " cedar-trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa." This Joppa is, without doubt, the Japho of Joshua xix. 46, over- against which were the borders of Dan. It was a city of variable governments, being sometimes in the possession of the Philistines, and at others of the tribes of Israel. Jonah took ship at Joppa (Jonah i. 3) for his perilous adventures on and under water, and it is not again heard of, until, in the history of Tabitha (Acts ix. 36), and of Peter's residence at the house of Simon the Tanner. We dressed for the evening with as much care as our limited wardrobes would permit. I can not say that we should have been admitted in New York to a wedding party in such dress. On the contrary, I am afraid my worthy friend B — himself would have shouted for a police-officer, and sent both Whitely and myself to the Tombs, if we had ventured into his house in such guise. Some pleasant evening I propose to try him. Slippers instead of boots, silk shawls in place of vests, long black beards, brown faces and tarbouches, made us somewhat such men as you would not like to meet of a dark evening in the avenue well up town, or even on the east side of Broadway near Stewart's. A FEAST. 33 The governor had politely ordered the gates of the town to be opened for us; and, on our presenting ourselves before its ancient and gloomy portals, the password was exchanged, and the dark archway became visible as the huge old valves, looking as if they were of the days of Richard the Mighty, swung back on their creaking hinges, and we passed in between the files of the guard. We were separated at the doorway of the house. The ladies went to the hareem, while we were conducted to the gentlemen's apartments, where we found an imposing array of old Greeks and Mohammedans, the venerable men of Jaffa, who had ohtsat the guests of the day, and were waiting to receive the foreigners. The feast was one which lasted three days, and we had made an error in coming so late in the evening. Had we been earlier in the day we should have seen a greater crowd; the ladies in the hareem informed Miriam that they had two hundred narghilehs in use at one time by the ladies. But on other accounts, as will appear hereafter, it was very fortunate that we came in so late. The chief room of the suite into which we were shown was a long chamber with raised diwans running all around it, broken only by the doors. The centre was vacant, except as occupied by the little pans which held the chibouk bowls and caught the ashes, or by the fragrant narghilehs, whose bubbling murmur was often the only sound that interrupted the silence of the room. Wine, the rich blood of the grapes of Eshcol, was handed us in tiny cups, then old delicious arrakee, and then fruits and cakes, and jellies, and various oriental dishes in a profusion that overcame our powers of appetite. I smile now as I recall the comical appearance of one of our party at a moment when the Greek bishop, a ven2* 34 HOSPITALITY. erable and patriarchal man, with flowing white beard, that lay on his breast like the beard of Aaron, finished a long sentence which he had addressed to him, and which he turned into a question at its conclusion. My unlucky friend had taken a chibouk in preference to the sheshee, and was smoking quietly; had he been wise, he might have supped on the fragrance of that delicious Latakea; but, a rare cake of almonds, and a slice of orange dipped in spiced wine, and a plate of delicate jellies, and sundry other exceedingly inviting articles had tempted him until the moment that the venerable bishop concluded his sentence, which related to the Patriarch of the Church, with the question, " But did you not see him in Iskandereyeh?" and the old man looked up at my friend for a reply, and beheld him with the amber mouth-piece of the ehibouk on his lip, each hand occupied in grasping a delicacy, and his knees motionless with a load of the provisions of our worthy host's hospitality. No smile crossed the features of the bishop nor of his friends, though I am compelled to admit that we were strongly inclined ourselves to unseemly laughter, and it required the calling up of all our newly-acquired oriental manners to avoid it. MAy friend had paid our host the highest compliment he could in thus accepting every thing, and his compliment was evidently appreciated as such, and acknowledged in polite phrases that would have sounded well at hore. It was at this moment that a small piece of a dark night slipped into the room and around among the chibouks and narghiles to my feet, where, pressing his forehead to my hand, he contrived to whisper to me that the "Sitt Miriam" wanted to see me. Supposing thereby that she was ready to depart, I went out into the large reception room, but no one was there. My sable guide led on, while I followed, strongly suspicious that the imp might A HAREEM. 35 commit an error and guide me into forbidden rooms. I was not far wrong. Crossing a court, down into which the stars shone, I followed him into a dark entry when he threw open a door and I found myself in the holy of holies of an eastern house, that spot forbidden to the foot of man in all known ages of Moslem rule. The scene that burst on my astonished vision was worth a journey to the Orient to see. One swift glance around the room convinced me that it was all right, for I caught the eyes of Miriam, who was curled up on a crimson diwan and smoking a narghile as if she had been brought up to it all her life, and in a moment I understood that she had managed the introduction by some ingenuity that I could not have believed possible. In Greece the seclusion of the hareem is unknown. But in Greek families living in Egypt or Syria it is even more strictly enforced than by the Mohammedans themselves, for the contempt which is poured out on a Mohammedan woman who has shown her face to men is visited tenfold on Christians, who have difficulty in keeping their positions in the country. The footstep of a man had never crossed this threshold before, except of a father or brother, and the inhabitants'of this retreat shrank at first in terror from having their faces seen by a stranger. It was by adroit management, by proposing it as a frolic, working up their curiosity, and pledging eternal secrecy and instant departure from the country, that Miriam had persuaded them to consent to send for me, and they secured the old man's permission on the ground of the, universal love of Greeks for Americans, and so I was sent for and so I came. The scene in the room when I entered was worthy a painter's presence. The mother of the family, seated on a pile of cushions, was a woman of splendid beauty, and her daughters were like their mother. I-Ier young sister, 36 A GREEK MAIDEN. a girl of twenty-two or three, and her niece, a girl of seventeen, were standing near her, while their Nubian slaves, slender and graceful women, black as night but not thick-lipped, having rather the features of the Shellalee of Egypt, and in form and face models of grace and beauty, waited on their beautiful mistresses. A troop of children, with large black eyes, dressed like fairies, greeted my entrance with a shout of welcome, and for a moment I hesitated to enter a place sacred not only by oriental custom against such a visit, but sacred especially by the presence of so much magnificent beauty, not before exposed to the eye of a stranger. But the unsurprised look of Miriam and of Mrs. and Miss Saunders reassured me, and I advanced with as much courage as could be expected of a somewhat diffident American in an eastern hareem. Often since then, in still and quiet evenings, when I remember the incidents of my eastern travel, the face of that radiant Greek girl comes before me like a vision of the unreal beauties of paradise. I never saw a woman half so beautiful. She was the first and last one that I saw abroad whom I thought equal to the American standard of female beauty; and she was a star. She was reclining on the diwan, half buried in its cushions, with her arm around Miriam's neck, telling her, in all the rich oriental phrases she could invent, of her love for her newly-found sister. I will endeavor, for the sake of my lady readers, and with Miriam's assistance, to describe her dress, which was almost a fac-simile of the dresses of four other ladies in the room, whose inferior beauty must excuse my leaving them to sketch their splendid companion. Firstly she wore that part of the Turkish lady's dress which we should call the trowsers, known by them as the THE BEAUTY. 37 shintiycsn, and a very different affair from the pantaloons which the American ladies'-rights ladies argue so much in favor of. They are necessarily more cumbersome than the ordinary European style of dress, being enormously heavy folds of silk stuff, embroidered with heavy gold thread, gathered at the ankles with gold and jeweled bands. Those of which I now speak were of rose-colored silk, and the little feet that were quite hidden in the folds as they fell around it when she walked, were covered with velvet slippers, embroidered with seed pearls. The yellak, a sort of open dress that falls in a long train behind and is fastened only at the waist, falling away so as to leave the shintiyan visible, is I believe not worn by unmarried ladies, but she had a similar dress, of the same rose-colored silk, richly embroidered. A low chemisette, with embroidered front and sleeves, left almost the entire bust exposed; and a velvet jacket, heavy with gold thread and jewels, completed the rich and gorgeous costume. But the dress, although of the most costly fabrics of the Damascus looms, was as nothing compared with the jewels that flashed from her wrists, and neck, and hair. Over her left shoulder, hanging like a sash down to the right side of her waist, was a golden girdle or band, made of broad pieces of gold, shaped like willow leaves, and fastened together at the sides. The belt of the yellak and shintiyan, which is ordinarily a cashmere shawl (known vulgarly in America as camels' hair), was silk, gathered at the side with a star of brilliants. On her arms were jeweled serpents; and the only covering of her bosom, which was exposed, as I have said, consisted of strings of pearls that lay across it, each string shorter than the one above it, and whose whiteness was rivaled by the neck they adorned. Her hair was bound together under a small cap of 38 A WITNESS. crimson velvet, that rested only on the back of her head, and of which the velvet was but the material on which were clustered as many pearls and diamonds as, I remarked to Miriam, would purchase all the jewelry that the most gorgeous New York saloon could exhibit in a crowded evening assembly. I have described the lady's costume as literally as I can for the benefit of my lady readers; but I thought little of her costume then, when I was looking at her splendid beauty. Miriam was in ecstasy herself, and would interrupt her caresses constantly by turning to me with the demand, "Is n't she beautiful?" Her hair was black as the clouds of a December night, and swept away from a fine forehead, in heavy tresses. Her face was no cold Greek countenance. It was full of life and passion; her eyes black, and flashing with fun; the red blood tingling close under the skin through her cheeks, and sometimes flushing her forehead with an exquisite glow; her lips were red and laughing; her chin the smallest imaginable; and her form slender, yet full and graceful as the forms of dream-land. I know that I am liable to the charge of exaggeration in my description of this scene, and that WVhitely and Moreright will assure inquirers after my truthfulness that they do not believe a word of it. I am sorry to say that my otherwise conscientious friends were so envious of my success in this instance, and so much annoyed at my frequent reference to it when they grew eloquent on the subject of beauties they had seen, that they are not likely to be candid witnesses. I am, therefore, glad of one friend to whom I may appeal for my accuracy. Miriam had, as we came from the tents, laughingly asserted her intention of procuring me admission to the hareem, and I had pledged myself to one of the gentlemen that if I entered he should go as well. PERFUMED NARGHILEHS. 39 Mr. De Leon's high position with the Greeks, which he earned by his noble conduct when they were threatened with expulsion from Egypt, made his name a sort of household word with them in all parts of the Levant; and having broken the ice by allowing my presence, there was no difficulty in procuring the assent of the ladies to admitting one whom they knew, so well to be a man of honor, and a friend to their countrymen. The same imp of darkness was dispatched to bring him; and when he came, the fun of the whole thing was complete, and the fair prisoners, as romance has called them, seemed to be delighted with the novelty of their company. The old man, who had come in, entered into their joy completely, and looked on with smiling face for a few moments before he returned to his guests in the other part of the house. He left us to a rattling conversation with the fair ladies, in which my Arabic was amply sufficient for my purposes, since they did all the talking, and constantly repeated their warnings that we were not to reveal in Jaffa the fact that we had seen their countenances. Narghilehs, on which they placed perfume-wood from Mecca, were renewed as constantly as we finished them; and coffee and a host of delicacies were, from time to time, presented by the slave-girls, who seemed to enter into their mistresses' enjoyment most keenly. When we rose to go, and I am bound to admit the hour would have been thought late even in America, they would scarcely permit Miriam to leave them, but again and again embraced her, and kissed her on each cheek, and on her lips, while the Nubians would seize her at the same instant from behind, with one hand on each side, and give her a sympathetic squeeze in accordance with each kiss of their fair mistresses. We left her with them while we stepped back into the room 40 THE TENTS. among the men, where the smoke was so thick that I do not think our absence had been noted. The little old bishop was still talking about the patriarch, the wine and the coffee circulating as before; and in a few moments we took leave of our kind host with sincere respect for his hospitality. He, and his son, and the entire party, not excepting the bishop, rose when we rose, and accompanied us to the door, and then to the street, and then up and down the narrow, winding streets of Jaffa; nor did they leave us till we roused the sleepy guard at the gloomy gateway, and walked out into the glorious moonlight, that fell on the walls of the city with that strange effect that moonlight has on ancient piles of stone, and more beautifully still on the white tents that stood on the hill above the sea. The tall form of Ferrajj stood waiting for us as we approached them. A picket of horses had been established near us, in accordance with our published orders, that we wished the finest horses in the country to be brought to us for selection the next morning. A deep and regular sound from the kitchen tent indicated that Hajji Mohammed had done with the labors of the day, and with a gay good-night we sought our several beds. How gloriously, how deeply, serenely and profoundly we slept that first night of our tent life, on the sounding shore of the classic sea, in the Holy Land. '" "I; ——.?~;- -~-~ - ~,_: —~ ~ ~ ~ ~'.!i ~ -~ -i —---- _ — ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ _. -!-z —:.I~~= — =~ = = TH GLE GT, XEIR~E~ONMUTMRkI he Soj of fl^ tO ole p gf. THE dash of the sea, rolling in before a stiff northwester, awoke me at day-break, and I ran down the bank for a plunge in the blue and white surf before the sun should have kissed off the freshness of the foambeads. The gray old walls of the city came out in strong lights and shades as the dawn advanced. I strolled along the trench to the great gate, and recalled with some degree of ease, now that all was sombre and silent, that brave old time when Richard of the stout heart, alone, with his strong arm, put to flight the Saracen hosts before the walls of Jaffa. When I returned to the tents, Iajji Mohammed was kindling his charcoal fire for breakfast, and the scene around them was busy and active. I had directed horses to be brought for our inspection, the selection of these being the most important matter in commencing a Syrian tour. They had assembled, white, brown, and bay, halt and lame, sore-eyed and sorebacked, the sorriest-looking drove of horses that Christian eyes ever rested on. There was one blear-eyed nag that made you weep for sympathy if you looked into his face, so overpowering was its melancholy, and there was another that did not touch his near hind foot to the ground when he walked, but his owner could not per 42 BREAKING UP THE CAMP. ceive that he was in the slightest degree lame. He admitted, on close questioning, that the animal had been lame formerly, but he assured me he was cured of it perfectly. For our party we should need, beside the horses that we rode ourselves, not less than ten or fifteen mules to carry the baggage and tents, and it soon became manifest that Jaffa could furnish nothing that was at all to our purposes. We might find what would answer as far as Jerusalem, but not for the long journey we had in prospect. There was not one in this crowd that I would have taken for a gift, and telling Abd-el-Atti to make what arrangements he pleased with them, but no further than Jerusalem, Whitely and myself went down to the beach for a stroll, and came up in fine condition for breakfast and the road. But the first start was not so easy a matter, and while the Arabs wrangled about the prices of the beasts, we walked into the town again, and through the crowded bazaar, just inside the gate, where we endeavored to find something to purchase as a memorial of Jaffa. But we found nothing, and were obliged to content ourselves with the flowers that Miriam had gathered on our camp ground, and pressed in a little flower-press, which was her last gift at parting from Joe Willis. At length the calvalcade was ready The tents were struck, the camels which Abd-el-Atti had chosen, in preference to the sorry mules of Jaffa, for our baggage, had departed, and where a few moments before our village had been, now was a green spot, with a half dozen saddled horses waiting their riders. They had not long to wait. Looking back for a moment over the blue sea, somewhat longingly I will not deny, for who could tell what might occur before we should see its waves again, or who of us might never come back from the far wander PLAIN OF SHARON. 43 ings, to Nineveh and Bagdad, that we expected to go on, we sprang into our saddles and went off, a gay cavalcade, at a rattling canter, through the winding paths between the hedges of prickly pear and the orange groves, on the road to Jerusalem. We soon emerged from the gardens that surround the city, and found ourselves on the broad plain of Sharon, which comes down from the north, and loses itself in the desert hills near Gaza. Overtaking the camels, who were lounging along in a straggling train, we passed them and pressed on. It was vain to look for roses here. The plain was under cultivation, but no bushes of any kind grew on it. The crimson anemone, which abounds throughout the East, covered the ground in all directions, while here and there large tufts of the leaves of some species of lily gave promise of future flowers not yet in bloom. The people were plowing their fields, and in more than a dozen instances we saw an ox yoked with a donkey before the plough. Our spirits were excellent. We dashed off at full gallop across the plain, occasionally turning out of the road to ascend a knoll and get a distant view. So we continued on until we saw in the distance the tower and village of Ramleh, ywhich was three hours from Jaffa. Before reaching them, however, we again left the level plain, and found ourselves in groves of olives, passing through hedges of prickly pear, high over which the tower was visible. When within a half mile of the village we made a detour across a ploughed field and through an olive grove to the foot of the tower, which has been a source of much speculation to antiquarians. This lofty and commanding structure stands in the north-west corner of a large space, surrounded with walls on its four sides, under which we found subterranean vaults of substantial structure, the whole place appearing 44 R A M L E H. much like a fortified khan; an idea which received additional weight from the fact that this place has always been on the great caravan route between Egypt and Damascus. Whatever its original purposes, it is manifest that the pious Mussulmans did not forget their religion in its construction, and the conveniences usually found in mosks for directing the prayers of the faithful toward Mecca. The tower itself is square, of Saracenic architecture, gracefully as well as substantially built. A winding staircase within it, much dilapidated but still amply secure for our ascent, enabled us to reach the ruined battlements, high up above the plain of Ramleh, where, seated on the crumbling and almost tottering stones of the wall, we looked out for a half hour in intense delight on one of the most beautiful of views. The hills of Ephraim-and Judah bounded the view on the east, and the blue Mediterranean formed the horizon below which the sun would soon descend. The plain of Sharon, beautiful in tradition and holy story, lay below us, and around us, stretching far away northward to the neighborhood of Ashdod, and even to Gaza, in the land of the Philistines. Directly at our feet lay the village of Er-Ramleh (the sand-bank), a name for which I in vain seek a derivation or a reason. Other travelers have stated it, in general terms, as derived from the sandy soil; but my observation was directly the reverse of this. The soil was less sandy than other parts of the plain. Built chiefly of stone, and whitewashed, as are all the principal villages of Syria, its domes and minarets shone cheerfully in the rays of the evening sun among groves of olive and dense thickets of the prickly pear, while here and there a stately palm towered above the surrounding vegetation, like a relic of the ancient days, sublime, solemn, and exceedingly beautiful. CONSULAR AGENTS. 45 The scarcity of timber of all kinds, in Syria, has led to the adoption of the arch for supporting stone floors and stone roofs throughout the country; and hence the prevalent style of roof is that which consists of small domes, built entirely of stone, of which one covers each small room, and several are necessary to the covering of one large chamber. Thus, a house of ordinary size, will be roofed over with six or eight such domes, and oftentimes with many more. The result is, that a village or city presents an aspect to a stranger totally different from any thing he has before seen. We had, of course, observed this in Jaffa, but it was now especially manifest in Ramleh, looking down on it as we did from the high tower. But our eyes were especially attracted to a sight always welcome, the world over, namely, the American flag floating in the breeze, and lit by the rays of the declining sun, over the domes of much the most imposing-looking building in the place, not even excepting the Latin convent. That this was the residence of the American consular agent was quite manifest; but, I confess, that although my heart beat faster when I saw the flag, it did not warm at all to the house or the people below. A satisfactory experience in the East convinces me that an American consular agent-I speak of such agents as are now found in various parts of the East-is useful but for one purpose: to mislead the traveler, and absorb a certain portion of his money. This is the fault of the system. Natives accept the office, because it affords them full and complete protection against their own government. No Turkish official dare lay his hands on the purse or the person of a consular agent of any foreign power. Receiving no pay from the government they represent, and being really of no earthly use to travelers or any one, they manage to press some service on the unlucky stranger who falls into their hands, for which they ex 46 LYDDA. tract from him a bucksheesh in proportion to the national feeling they succeed in arousing in his mind. Long before this time I had issued strict orders to Abd-el-Atti, that, on entering any place that was honored as the residence of an American consular agent, he should represent me as a Hindoo, Japanese, Sandcwich Islander, or any thing but an American, if so be I might be saved from the annoying demands on my purse, and still more annoying attentions. Therefore, as I said, the American flag did not lead me to desire shelter under its protection, but, rather the reverse, made me fear the usual demand on my temper and charity. But the view of the plain of Sharon was still before us, and we could not, without pain, tear ourselves away from it. About five miles to the north of us lay a little village, which we learned was known among the natives as Ludd, and which there is no reason to doubt is the ancient Lydda. At present it is remarkable only as containing the ruins of one of the grand churches of old times, that of St. George, the saint of merrie England and of stories innumerable, whose birth-place and burial-place were at Lydda, where, in times unknown, they built a shrine, and burned incense over his dust, and where, in later years, the shrine had fallen into decay, and a Moslem minaret was built in the blue air, which was now the chief object visible from the tower at Ramleh. As the sun declined yet more, our eyes followed his rays, and we looked eagerly and longingly to the hills of Ephraim. Right there away, where the path left the plain and entered the mountain gorge, was the road to Jerusalem, and thither our hearts went forth most earnestly. It was hard to wait for the morning, to continue on, and even Miriam, wearied and tired with the first day's travel, MONKS OF HOLY LAND. 47 volunteered to go on that night, and see the sun rise over Olivet. But this was impossible, for various reasons, and at length, reluctantly closing our eyes on the view that had so long kept us on this high point, we descended the steps, and mounting our horses in the court or inclosure, rode out on the east side among the tombs of the Mohammedans. A solitary Latin monk from the convent, walking near the tower and musing in the evening light, directed us in the shortest path. We rode down a gentle slope between dense hedges of the prickly pear and stopped at the door of the Latin convent where we had directed Abd-el-Atti to arrange our beds for the night. Throughout Holy Land the convents are open to the reception of guests, and the hospitality of the monks of all denominations deserves everlasting record. I have heard and read remarks on the subject of this hospitality which many travelers have ascribed to love of the money which all leave in payment for their lodging. But I bear my testimony most cheerfully to the courtesy and kindness of the monks of the Holy Land. I found the Latin monks everywhere noble men, full of good works and humble piety. Nor had I ever occasion to think their kindness to me, often as I experienced it, proceeded from any other motive other than their pure good-will and accustomed benevolence. I paid liberally, it is true, but not till I was leaving them, and it was then a pure gratuity, which was never asked for. I have no doubt that my money, with that of all other pilgrims who were able to pay, went to the sustenance of poorer pilgrims who were fainting on their march to the Sepulchre. The convents are provided with vacant rooms, and many of them with beds and bedding. They are generally kept scrupulously clean, and the Latin convents are 48 HOUSE OF MARCUS. always so. This at Ramleh was positively inviting in its cool clean court-yard and white-washed cells. I envied the monks that were walking up and down in its old shades. We rapped on the gate with our whip-handles. The door opened, but our party were not here, and we learned that they had gone on to the house of Matta Abud Marcus, the American agent, where we had seen the American flag flying. We rode on and found them there, already in possession of Marcus's upper chambers. All the houses in Palestine are built on the same general plan, and doubtless on the ancient plan. The building surrounds a court. The ground floor rooms are used for kitchlens, stables, and general offices. A stairway in the open air leads to a terrace, or a broad platform, which is, perhaps, the ancient " house-top" of which we read so often, and around which the various rooms of the family open. Above the terrace on the house of Marcus, the flag was floating. We entered a large room, thirty feet square, and surrounded with diwans, and sat down to chibouks and coffee. Our host, as American agent, claimed the privilege of receiving us as his guests, and had brought the party there, having gone out of the village to meet them. We yielded with proper grace, though I confess my heart yearned for the clean, cool rooms of the convent, and there was not as much promise of dinner here as would have been if Hajji Mohammed were commander in the kitchen. But to the credit of our host be it said, he did every thing possible to make us feel at home, and we soon accommodated ourselves to the quarters in which we found ourselves. The view from the terrace was exceedingly beautiful when the sun went down. We gathered here to enjoy NIGHT AND FLEAS. 49 it. The flag was taken down, and as it lay on the pavement we found on it this inscription: "Presented to Ahbout Montas, Esq., U. S. Vice Consul at Ramleh, by the officers of the U. S. squadron off Jaffa, as a slight return for his attention shown them on their going and returning from Jerusalem, September 25th, 1836. Abud Marcus, whose name was here written Montas, was the father of our present host, and the flag had been well preserved, being exhibited only when Americans were in the neighboihood. I had one of the bedsteads unpacked for Miriam's bed, to be made up in one of the small rooms, and I threw myself down on my carpet in the corner. The other gentlemen occupied diwans in the large rooms, with blankets and quilts. I fought the fleas all night and caught some interrupted moments of sleep, but for the most part had a wretched night of it. Mark's intentions were good enough, but his hospitality was rather a failure. Long before the morning came over the eastern hills I had left my uncomfortable bed to the fleas that enjoyed it apparently better than I, and throwing open the wooden shutter of the eastern window, which like all the others in the house was destitute of glass, sat in the cool soft air and gazed at the morning-star which, more brilliant than ever before to my eyes, hung in the east above Jerusalem. As the dawn came I heard a commotion in the other room, and Whitely's voice in phrases that left no doubt whatever in my mind that there were fleas in other rooms as well as in mine. In a few moments we were all gathered on the terrace from which our various rooms opened, and the cool air and soft light of the setting moon revived us more than had our troubled sleep. And now a tremendous row in the lower apartments, in which I recognized Abd-el-Atti's voice above all others, 3 50 A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE. indicated that something was out of order there, and that I should very soon have a difficulty of some kind to adjust among my interesting family of Arabs. The voice soon approached the stairway, and at length the Egyptian came up in a small tempest. Abud Marcus had taken us in the night before, and the dragoman insisted that he had done it in both senses. Ie had promised most faithfully to see that all our camels and horses were cared for for the night, and trusting it to him we had given them no attention. This morning five of the camels were missing, with their drivers, and the only answer that he could obtain to his inquiries about them was that, being left in the street over night they had deserted us, a course not unlikely, since they had been paid in advance for the previous day's work and a part of to-day's. But a more diligent inquiry satisfied Abd-elAtti that Marcus had discharged them himself, telling them that they were not wanted any longer and might go about their business. It was, to say the least of it, very remarkable, that on my exhibiting some dissatisfaction on the subject, Marcus declared that he was possessed of just five camels, which were ready at the door, and which were at my service without fee or reward, and whose acceptance he urged on us with all the eagerness of an oriental offering a service for which he is well assured the traveler will repay him more than it is worth. This incident decidedly diminished the cordiality of our parting with our host, and getting into the saddle with no little impatience we rode through the dirty bazaar of Ramleh, and out at the eastern side of the village, where we struck into a gallop for a few moments, hoping thereby to get up our spirits and good temper before sunrise, a hope that was effectually dashed by observing the addition of a pelson to our party who proved to be the EMMAUS. 51 cawass of the American consulate, to wit of Abud Marcus, who accompanied us in full nizam uniform, with jingling sabre, until he had extracted as many dollars fiom the various gentlemen as he could persuade them were due to the dignity of the official he represented, and which, in addition to the gold we had given to Marcus himself "for the servants," made the night's entertainment cost us somewhat more than it would at Morley's in London, and then, to our infinite relief; left us to pursue our way toward Jerusalem, attended by the American agent in Jerusalem, a brother of Mr. Murad of Jaffa, to whose tender mercies I warned Abd-el-Atti in no case to subject me in the Holy City. As the morning advanced we continued to cross the plain of Sharon, but at length entered the wide pass of the mountains of Ephraim, up which the road ascends, and which introduced us for the first time to Syrian horse paths. Of these we had enough before many days were over. Before entering the gorge of the hills, we passed, at about three hours from Ramleh a village on the top of a hill at the right of the path, looking more indeed like a ruin than a village, which is known by the Arabs as Latrone, a name evidently given by the Latin monks, who have long designated it as the birth-plac' of the penitent thief. We remarked nothing here so much as the exquisite blossoms of the white and purple cyclamen, among the rocks at our roadside, which we afterward found in great quantities throughout Syria. Latrone has been sometimes called Emmaus, and was indeed the castle of Emmaus, which latter place we now saw on our left a little way from the road. It is a small mud village, with nothing to mark the deep interest with which all Christians regard it. It is now called Emmouse. 52 VALLEY OF AJALON. The difficulty which others have found in admitting this locality consists in its great distance from Jerusalem. Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century had no difficulty in fixing on this site, and the tradition of the church has been unbroken and invariable since. The opinion seems to have great force that there is an omission in the text of Luke who (Luke, xxiv. 13) describes Emmaus as threescore furlongs from Jerusalem. Some of the manuscripts read "one hundred and threescore," which is about the distance of the site we are now speaking of. (Since I wrote this chapter, Dr. Robinson's last volume has been published. With his accustomed learning and ability he reviews the various authorities and arrives at the conclusion, that the Emmaus of Luke and the Emmouse of this day are identical. His reasoning is such that no one can hesitate to consider his opinion satisfactory.) After we had passed Emmouse, and ascended and descended, climbed rocks and stumbled down precipices, we found ourselves in the valley of Ajalon, at a little distance from Yalo, which retains thus much of the ancient name. I was impressed here with an idea which had frequently before occurred to me, that there is a certain inconsistency in the account of the miracle of Joshua performed over this valley. The direction to the sun, " Stand thou still on Gibeon," would imply that the sun was to the eastward of him, for Gibeon was far to the east. But the time was afternoon, if we may judge from the account of the battle. I believe it has been suggested that the account of this miracle is an interpolation in the text, and a careful reading of it, I think, indicates that it has not the same authorship with what precedes and follows it. Of the perils of that road, I can not sufficiently speak. I had done some rough traveling on foot and in the saddle, but I never had seen the parallel of this. The path, PILGRIMS AT LAST. 53 if so it may be called, lay for many miles up the dry bed of a mountain torrent, filled with round stone and rugged rocks, so that it may be stated as almost literally true, that from the plain of Sharon to the gates of Jerusalem, our horses' feet were never on the soil, and seldom on firm, solid rock. Whitely's horse had one bad fall, and I avoided the same fate by walking over the place where he fell. I kept an Arab on each side of Miriam to catch her in case her horse lost his footing, and we thus had our initiation in Syrian roads. At one point we descended a rocky hill some three hundred feet on the broken rock, the horses often going down steps which no American horse would have ventured on, and which were not a little trying to American nerves. We halted for luncheon at a beautiful spot on a hillside, near a well in a grove of olives on a bank covered with wild-flowers. Pleasantest of all recollections of our journeyings along the way, are those halts that we always made at noonday for luncheon, when we lay down on the grass by the side of a well, or sat under the shadow of a great rock, or selected the highest point of a hill-road, whence, reclining for an hour to rest our weary limbs, we could look off over vast expanses of the holy soil. " Bucksheesh, 0 Hajji!" shouted a group of boys on the top of the next hill. Yea, verily we had arrived at that dignity, and were pilgrims. I straightened myself in my saddle as I felt this new title. I regret that the loss of my notes of this day's journey forbids my locating places accurately here, and obliges me also to pass by without notice a number of cisterns and wells which I examined in the valleys, and among others a large cistern known by the Arabs as the well of Ayub, a name that I found at several other places in Syria, and which is as likely to have been derived from some 54 VALLEY OF ELAH. modern sheik, or possibly the great head of the Ayubites, as from the ancient Joab, or more ancient Job. As we approached Kuriet-el-Enab, a substantial stone village, renowned as the residence of Abu Goash, the former collector of tribute from travelers on this route, and the terror of Jerusalem and its neighborhood, we saw a fine, large church, of ancient Christian times, standing just out of the village, and turning aside from our road, which went along the north side of the wady, we rode directly into its doorway, and sat on horseback in the very aisle of the building. It was a grand old place of Christian worship, with crypts under it, which we examined afterward, and although windows and doors were gone, and cattle occupied it in place of Christian worshipers, yet on the walls were the images of saints, and the memory of the prayers of saints lingered in its lofty arches, and impressed us solemnly us we came from it. Some one told us that this was the birth-place of the prophet Jeremiah. It was formerly the seat of a Latin convent in connection with the church whose deserted walls we invaded. We paused a little while again in the valley of Elah, and gathered a few pebbles in the dry bed of the brook where David found his weapons with which to meet the giant of the Philistines, and then, every thing that was behind and around us faded in interest as we began to realize that from the summit of the hill before us our weary eyes would rest on the walls of Jerusalem. We pressed our horses rapidly up the steep hill, by a zig-zag path, which in our haste we sometimes cut across, and thereby nearly broke our own and our horses' necks in several instances. There was a party of Latin nuns, on sleek and beautiful horses, riding slowly before us. We passed them at a rattling gallop, and hastened on, up the rough path, now over masses of loose, rolling stones, on DEUS VULT! 55 which our horses could with difficulty find footing for a half mile, and as a cold wind swept over the bleak and desolate hills, wrapped our cloaks around us and drew our hoods closely over our faces. The appearance of every thing was desolate in the extreme. For many miles, we had seen no evidences of human existence. Wild rocks were everywhere, ragged and fierce in their utter barrenness, and hill and valley were alike apparently cursed with the curse of God. At length there was a short space where the road admitted of a gallop, our horses plunging over the stones and finding footing as none but Syrian horses could, and here S, and Whitely, and myself pressed forward, as swiftly as the zig-zag path, winding around rocks, and turning short to the right or to the left, or often even in an acute angle backward, would permit. Reaching the summit of the ascent, we beheld a distant view of desolate mountains, lit in the rays of the setting sun, with dark, wild gorges between them, all tending downward to a deep valley, wherein we knew must lie the Dead Sea. But we could not yet see the city of our desires. A few steps forward, our worn-out horses stumbling rather than galloping over the rocky path, and a hill, crowned with a mosk and minaret, was before us in the distance, which my heart knew by instinct was the mountain of the Ascension. I raised myself in my stirrups and, turning to Miriam, shouted, " The Mount of Olives!" and waved my hand toward it-and then, as I looked again, before me, in all their glory and majesty, I beheld, magnificent in the light of the setting sun, the walls of Jerusalem. I had thought of that moment for years, in waking and in sleeping dreams. I had asked myself a hundred times, " What will you do when your weary eyes rest on these holy walls?" Sometimes I thought I should cry out 56 JERUSALEM. aloud as did pilgrims of old times, and sometimes that I should kneel down on the road as did the valiant men who marched with Godfrey and with Richard. But I did neither. My horse stopped in the road, as if he knew that all our haste had been for this, and I murmured to myself, "Deus vult," and my eyes filled with tears, and through them I gazed at the battlements and the towers and minarets of the city. One by one the party rode up, and each in succession paused. There were our Mohammedan servants, a Latin monk who had joined us a little way back, two Armenians, and a Jew in our cortege, beside ourselves, who were Prottesants-and all alike gazed with overflowing eyes on that spot, toward which the longing hearts of so many millions of the human race turn daily with devout affection. We spoke no word aloud. One rushing wave of thought swept over all our souls. I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim eyes sought to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had long before fixed in my mind, but the fast flowing tears forbade my succeeding. The more I gazed, the more I could not see; and at length, gathering close around my face the folds of my coufea, I sprang into the saddle, and led the advance toward the gates of the city. As we approached the northernmost corner of the wall we met a sallying party of Jerusalem hotel-keepers, who were as vociferous in their recommendations of their various inns as New York cab-drivers. We had sent Abd-el-Atti forward to secure a place where we should find clean and comfortable rooms, in the convent of the Terra Santa, or in the Armenian Convent, to the bishop of which church I had recommendatory letters-or, which I preferred, by finding a new and unoccupied house in the city. OUR HIRED HOUSE. 57 He succeeded to admiration, and finding a neat, clean house with plenty of rooms, which Antonio Zammit had rebuilt, and was just opening under the imposing title of "English Hotel," he contracted with Antonio to give us the entire establishment, and install Hajji Mohammed in the kitchen, so long as we should remain in Jerusalem. Before reaching the corner of the city wall we turned to the left, and instead of entering the Jaffa gate, passed under the north wall to the Damascus gate, whose ancient and gloomy arch stood open to receive us. The house of Antonio was on the Via Dolorosa, a few paces from the house of Dives and the house of Lazarus, next door but one to the house of Veronica, and not very far distant from the Arch of Judgment. Dismounting at the doorway, we entered most willingly, for we were by this time well-nigh exhausted, and our limbs were glad in every inch of them to find repose. 3* i e I f a e > a n e ~ THE first morning in Jerusalem was a time forever to be remembered. When the sun came up above the Mount of Olives, I was standing, on the eastern side of the city, without the walls, on the brow of the valley of Jehoshaphat, looking down into its gloomy depths and up to the hill that was hallowed by the last footsteps of Christ. I could not sleep. It was vain to think of it or attempt it. Broken snatches of slumber, dreamy and restless at the best, but mostly broad awake thoughts, fancies, feelings, and memories occupied the entire night. Weary and exhausted as I was by the previous day's travel, I could not compose my mind sufficiently to take the rest I actually required. It was but a little after the break of day that I strolled down to the gate of St. Stephen (so called now, though formerly known as the gate of the Lady Mary, because of its leading to the Virgin's tomb), and finding it open already, passed out among the Moslem graves that cover the hill of Moriah, outside the walls, and sitting down on one of them, waited in silence the coming of the sun. And it came. I had seen the dawn come over the forest of the Delaware country, in the sublime winter mornings SUNRISE OVER OLIVET. 59 "When last night's snow hangs lightly on the trees, And all the cedars and the pines are white With the new glory." I had seen the morning come up over the prairies of Minnesota, calm and majestic along the far horizon. I had seen it in golden glory on the sea, in soft splendor in Italy, in rich effulgence over the Libyan desert. But I never saw such a morning as that before nor shall I ever see another such in this cold world. At first there was a flush, a faint but beautiful light like a halo, above the holy mountain. Right there-away lay Bethany, and I could think it the radiance of the bursting tomb of Martha's brother. But the flush became a gleam, a glow, an opening heaven of deep, strong light that did not dazzle nor bewilder. I looked into it and was lost in it, as one is lost that gazes into the deep loving eyes of the woman he worships. It seemed as if I had but to wish and I should be away in the atmosphere that was so glorious. Strong cords of desire seemed drawing me thither. I even rose to my feet and leaned forward over the carved turban on a Mussulman's tomb. I breathed strong, full inspirations as if I could breathe in that glory. All this while, deep in the gloom of the valley between me and the Mount of Ascension lay the Hebrew dead of all the centuries, quiet, calm, solemn in their slumber. The glory did not reach down to their low graves; yet I thought almost aloud, that if that radiance could but once touch those stones, heavy as they were, the dead would spring to life, even the doubly dead who lie in that valley of tombs. Alas for the dead whose grave the morning radiance from the mountain of the Lord's ascension will never reach! Alas for the sealed lips of earth that will never be kissed to opening by those rays! Then came the round sun; it seemed but an instant 60 TOMMB OF MARY. after the morning-star had sunk into the blue, and then the full sunlight poured across the hills of Judea, on the battlements of Jerusalem. Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in Palestine. I wept when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the starlight at Bethlehem, I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee. My hand was no less firm on the rein, my finger did not tremble on the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand along the shore of the blue sea. My eye was not dimmed by those tears, nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy Land. Miriam and Whitely followed me when the morning was a little more advanced, and found me, as we had appointed. We descended the hill by the path which leads from the gate of St. Stephen to the bottom of the valley, and crossing the bed of the brook Kedron ascends the Mount of Olives by the side of the garden of Gethsemane. The reader can not need to be told that there are no carriage-ways and no wheeled-vehicles in Syria. The roads are but paths, therefore, and the descent of the hills on both sides of the valley of Jehoshaphat would be much too steep for carriages if there were any in the city. The brook Kedron exists only in rainy weather. It was dry during all the time of my visit to Jerusalem, though there was abundant evidence in its bed of the rapidity of the torrent in rainy seasons. Crossing the brook we found ourselves at the entrance of the traditionary tomb of the Virgin Mary. This is a subterranean chapel, the door of which opens in a sunken court, perhaps sixty feet square. In heavy rains the court is apt to be partly filled with water, the drainage not being perfect. Descending into this court, TOMB OF MARY. 61 the stranger perceives the low church or chapel, fronting the south, and the huge black doors opening on the very top of a broad flight of stone steps, which descend into the earth or rock some twenty-five or thirty feet. I have no measurement here, and speak but from recollection. On the left and right of this flight of steps, about half way (down, are two niches, or small chapels in the rock, that on the right supposed to contain the tombs of Joachim and Anne, while in that on the left reposed formerly the bones of Joseph the carpenter. The foot of the steps is the floor of the chapel, fronting to the eastward, and lit with many lamps, not a few of silver and gold which hung from the roof. The shrine or high altar covers the supposed spot of the Virgin's tomb. These were beautifully decorated, as indeed we found all the holy places in Jerusalem, with fresh and fragrant flowers, hyacinth and lavender chiefly abounding. We met a Greek monk who had been celebrating morning prayers alone in the chapel, and who willingly remained and conversed with us about the place, but he was as far from being intelligent, as we afterward found true of most of his church, and we got but little out of him. The monks of the Roman church in the Holy Land were, as a general thing, men of intelligence, whom it was a pleasure to meet, and from whom we derived very much information not to be found in the few books we had with us, while the Greeks, with scarcely an exception, were ignorant and superstitious, having neither learning nor intellect. I had an amusing illustration of this a few days later in this same place. From the court of which I have spoken, opening toward the Mount of Olives, is a long, narrow passage, built up with stone on each side, which leads to a grotto or cave, that is furnished as a chapel in which the Greeks locate the Passion of the garden. 62 A WISE MONK. While I was one day in this chapel the Greek priest in attendance told me it was a Greek chapel of high antiquity; and " there," said he, "is a very ancient Greek inscription," pointing to the roof on which I read two or three words of Latin. "That's not Greek," said I. " But it is," said he. "No, it is not;" and I read it to him. He paused, scratched his chin a moment, and was evidently puzzled. " But it must be Greek." " But I say it is Latin. Can't you read it yourself?" "Perhaps it is Greek written in Latin." I didn't precisely understand what he meant; but I left him not a little bothered; and I presume he referred it to the Greek bishop, to answer how a Latin inscription came to be on a Greek chapel-roof. To say the least, it was profanation in their eyes. The opening of this chapel in the same court with the tomb of the Virgin may perhaps serve to give a hint toward the origin of the tradition concerning the latter, which, so far as I can ascertains has no earlier date than the seventh century. The Garden of Gethsemane is near this spot; and Jerome describes that garden as marked by a church as early as his day, and in the fourth century; but I do not find any mention of the church of the Virgin at this time, although if existing it must have been very near that one. I think it not impossible that this church may have been originally the church of Gethsemane, and subsequently made by tradition to answer the purpose of the tombs of the Holy Family. In the time of the crusades, all the churches had full faith in this locality. We did not long pause at the tomb. A few steps further on-not a hundred yards-was an GETHSEMANE. 63 inclosure, within a high stone wall, recently put up,which contained eight large and very ancient olive-trees. It was on the very foot of the Mount of Olives, yet elevated some thirty or forty feet, perhaps more, above the brook Kedron. We passed around it, to the rear or mountain side, and found a low door in the wall, at which we knocked. It opened, and a Latin monk, habited in the dark robe of the Franciscans, bade us enter, and bowing our heads very low, as all must do perforce, and as all should do on entering a spot like this, we stepped within the hallowed inclosure of Gethsemane. It is a simple garden, laid out in beds, bordered with lavender, among the old olive-trees. An arbor or trelliswork on one side supports a large vine of the passiflora. In the walls are marked fourteen stations for prayer. It was silent, and we were alone. The good father vanished to his cell in the corner, as if aware that we desired no guide to tell us the story that has thrilled the heart of man in every land and age-the saddest and sublimest story on all the rolls of eternity. Verily he was right. The whispering leaves of the olive-trees told us the story; the winds that swept over the lofty battlements of Mount Moriah, three hundred feet above us, told the story; the blue, far sky above the Mount of Olives, the sky he clove with his departing glory, and that shut him away from his disciples' and our longing gaze, told the story; the heavy beating of our hearts-slow, solemn beating-we could hear them in the stillness of the garden, told the story of the bloody passion, and the agony that made the crown of thorns and piercing nails as nothing afterward. "Tu Tu, mi Jesu, totum me Amplexus es in cruce I Tulisti clavos, lanceam, 64 GE THSEMANE. Multamque ignominiam, Innumeros dolores, Sudores et angores, Ac mortem! et hiec propter me, Ac pro me peccatore!" In the blue sky far up above us a solitary eagle floated on the air above the deserted shrines of the temple of the Lord, and on the sides of Moriah, among the Moslem graves, some women, dressed in white, sat by the tombs and wept. But no voice of human grief or human joy reached the deep valley to disturb the profound stillness of the garden of the Passion. The olives on the mountain waved their flashing branches in the gentle breeze, but those within the inclosure scarcely moved. The lavender, that bloomed with the utmost profusion, made the atmosphere heavy with perfume, as we sat down on the ground and endeavored to realize the midnight scene of the agony and the betrayal. That the locality which is now called Gethsemane is identical with the garden in which Christ was betrayed, there can be, I think, no reasonable doubt. That this garden is that spoken of by Eusebius and Jerome, I believe no one doubts, and the locality which is assigned in the Evangelists, certainly very exactly agrees with this spot. Matthew, Mark, and Luke speak of his going out to the Mount of Olives, and to a place which was called Gethsemane, the latter saying that " he went as he was wont to the Mount of Olives." John says he went forth "over the brook Cedron where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples." This garden, therefore, may very safely be taken to occupy a portion of the ancient garden, or to be within a few rods, at most, of the spot. The suggestion of some of the modern residents of Jerusalem, that this is on the high road from the eastern side of the temple and the city, GETHSEMANE. 65 and in this respect does not meet the idea of a very retired spot, appears to me quite groundless, especially as this high road was the way of the wilderness. Any one who visits the greatest of oriental cities will find the very gateways sufficiently retired in the night time, and this deep valley could not have been otherwise in the most populous days of the Holy City. Nor can I perceive any point in the remarks of a learned modern writer who, with no apparent reason other than a design to throw a shadow on the faith of visitors, finds in the passages above referred to some reason for supposing the garden was higher up on the Mount of Olives than it is now represented. I need not say that the garden of Gethsemane was a favorite spot with me during my stay in Jerusalem, and that scarcely a day passed without finding me seated under the old olive-trees within its inclosure. Here, over and again, I read the accounts of that memorable -night, and of the suffering of the Man our God. Here, in phrases that seemed to us to have a new and startling import, we discussed the characters of those who were the actors in the scene, the failure of every disciple's faith, and wondered whether, after all, we had mistaken Judas, and, as some one has argued, it was possible that he betrayed his Master, hoping thereby to compel him to acknowledge his heavenly power, and summon his legions of angels to conquer the throne and kingdom he, the traitor, hoped to share. Here I saw the declining sun go down behind the battlements of Moriah, and here not infrequently the round moon, coming up over the holy summit of Olivet, silvered the leaves of the old trees, and shed that radiance on the spot in which, best of all, I could realize the scene that so thrills the hearts of Christian men. Did the moon shine on that last night of the life of the 66 GE T HSE IMANE. Lord before the sacrifice? Did the full moon, in whose light young maidens love to hear the words of young love, behold that love which would not put away the cup of agony, though countless angels stood ready to seize the chalice and dash it down to hell? I never thought of it before. In all the scenes of all the centuries that I have imagined the moon beholding, and of which I have striven sometimes to gather some intelligence in those cold calm rays, I never before imagined that on that still orb, in the blue sky of Judea, the tear-dimmed eyes of the Lord gazed through the rustling leaves of Gethsemane. 0, fiiend of mine, in your old home by the distant Hudson, where in grand nights of western moonshine, or still, calm starlight, we have sat together on the rocks and asked the hosts of heaven to tell us stories of the Chaldeans that worshiped them on plains of Orient; 0, friend, look out on the sky to-night, the holy sky, the radiant sky whose azure might befit the floors of heaven, and know, of a verity, beyond a doubt, beyond a peradventure, that on those stars, those very shining groups, on white Capella, flaming Sirius, on the brow of Orion, and the cold star of the pole, the weary eyes of the houseless wanderer who was yet a, God, rested in childhood above the ancient Nile, or when as a boy he climbed the hills of Nazareth, or when in those cold Syrian nights he walked the long way from Galilee, or when he slept in the dewy air of Olivet with the stones of the hill-side for a pillow to him who had no other on which to lay his head. Never again tell me it is childish to love the moonlight and the stars. Sole objects in all the universe on which I may look with perfect confidence that he looked on them, yea, and with a longing for the heaven beyond them, which he knew as his home, and which I but GETHSEMANE. 67 doubtingly dare call mine, I will gaze on them in all the nights of my wanderings on earth, and sleep quiet sleep when you shall lay me where they will shine on my covering. 5 IT was noon that first day before we left Gethsemane, and he who has not been at Jerusalem can hardly imagine the difficulty we experienced on coming out of the garden and determining whither we should direct our steps. We were on the side of the Mount of Olives, and a few minutes would take us to the summit, but the valley of Jehoshaphat, with its countless objects of interest, and the pathway to the pool of Siloam, were below us, and the city, inclosing the church of the Holy Sepulchre, tempted us back toward its open gates. While we were deliberating thus at the little doorway of the garden, the old monk who followed us out, and who declined a proffered bucksheesh, pointed out the identical spot, marked by a stone pillar, some twenty feet from the south-east corner of the garden, where Judas offered the traitorous kiss. I bowed silently. I confess that I was somewhat offended at this, the first of the countless traditions relating to identical spots, which I had met with; but, looking up into the mild eyes of the old man, and meeting his kindly gaze, I said, " Shall I believe it?" " I don't know," said he, " that it is so. We have the tradition; and that is all I know about it." MOUNT OF OLIVES. 69 "Do you believe it?" " I do." I thanked him more heartily. Bidding him good-morning, we climbed up the rough path on the hill-side, till we reached a spot where we could sit down and view the city as a whole; the spot which a ruined chapel marks as the place where Christ sat when he wept over Jerusalem. Here, with our whole souls, we drank in the view of the Holy City. The Mount of Olives is much higher than either Moriah or Zion; so that, from its side or summit, the stranger looks down into the inclosure of the mosk of Omar, and can see the entire city in a sort of bird's-eye view. The spot on which we were now seated sufficiently answered the description to enable us to believe that it was the place of the utterance of that melancholy prophecy or lament which is familiar to all readers of the Bible. Resting a few moments, for it is no trifle to climb the Mount of Olives, we read our guide-books-to wit, our Biblesmost diligently, and then resumed the ascent, and at length reached the summit and the little village, conspicuous in which are the minaret of the mosk and the Church of the Ascension. The Mount of Olives is, perhaps, as well covered with olive-trees as it could have been in the days which gave it its name. These are large and thrifty on the summit, except where the buildings are clustered. The village is a small, dirty, and miserable collection of houses, like all the villages of Syria. On the extreme point of the hill is an inclosed court, or rather a yard, the wall surrounding which is octagonal. In the centre is a small octagonal building, within which an opening in the marble pavement discloses the natural rock of the mountain, and in it a depression not remarkable in any way, and not likely to attract attention, but as the alleged footprint of 70 VIEW FROM OLIVET. the ascending son of Mary. So said the Mohammedan guardian of the spot, for this is a MIoslem sanctuary, though in all times open to Christian visits, for a consideration. When I knelt down by the hole to examine it closely, the long-bearded old Arab seemed to fear that I was about to offer some desecration to the sacred footstep. The minaret is on the inclosing wall; and, mounting the narrow winding staircase, we found ourselves in the muezzin's gallery, looking out on perhaps the most sublime view on all the earth. To the eastward the hills went rolling downward, into a deep dark gorge. The descent seemed terrible; as if they had indeed fallen or rolled into it, and lay piled up on its sides. Far down, in serene beauty, a beauty that I had never expected, lay the Dead Sea, and beyond it the dark mountains of Moab. One of the most remarkable ocular delusions that I have ever observed is visible here. I have never seen a person who would believe, on looking at this view, that the Dead Sea was ten miles distant. To my own eyes it appeared not more than five or seven, while it is actually more than twenty. Without other information than such as I would obtain from the view, I should have no hesitation in leaving Jerusalem for a half day's walk, to and from the shore, which is actually two long days' labor. To the west of us lay Jerusalem; the vast court of El Aksa (called the Mosk of Omar), in the south-eastern part of the city, covering Mount Moriah-the great Armenian Convent occupying the south-western part on Mount Zion-the old Church of the Resurrection, covering the Sepulchre, on the western side of the centre-and the long sweep of houses on the hill Akra, extending from Zion quite around the central basin to the north side of the inclosure of the mosk. The view was complete, and WINE OF LEBANON. 71 we lingered on it long enough to impress it forever on our memories. There was no refusal of bucksheesh here on the part of the Mohammedan. It is a strong point in the character of a Mussulman, that he never refuses it. I have more hopes of them from this trait than from any other. Money will reach their substitute for pockets, the loose bosoms of their shirts, and their hearts are close by, if not actually carried there. There was a Greek priest standing near the door as we came down from the minaret, who, with most obsequious politeness, offered to show us the Greek chapel; but I was obliged to defer this till another day, for the simple reason that the tomb of the Virgin and the minaret had exhausted my silver, and we could not raise a piastre in the party. I knew that the Greek would be very far from satisfied with such pilgrims, and, promising him ample attention in the future, we hastened down the hill, re-entered St. Stephen's gate, and passing up the Via Dolorosa, found ourselves at the door of the house of Antonio, not a little tired, and ready for luncheon, which was waiting our arrival. Let the grapes that grow on Lebanon be remembered for the golden wine we drank that day, and always afterward in Jerusalem. It was light, very much like amber Muscat, and, after the heavy Spanish wines we had been using, was delicate and refreshing. Our daily luncheon in Jerusalem consisted of oranges from Jaffa and that wine of Lebanon, with a cake of white bread, known always as the Jews' bread, exceedingly fine and delicious. It was three in the afternoon when we went out to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I had shrunk from this visit, because I had expected to be shocked by the stories I should hear and the scenes I should pass through. Having thoroughly devoted myself to the elaborate 72 CUCHURCH OF THE SEPULC HRE. volumes of Dr. Robinson as a preparation for Syrian travel, and brought them with me as the best guide-book aside from the Bible, I had yielded myself entirely to the views of that learned writer on all subjects relating to the Holy Places, so that my mind was at rest on the subject of the reputed localities of the Sepulchre and Calvary. I did not think there was the slightest possibility of their being authentic, and in the morning when I was ascending the Mount of Olives, I had pointed up the valley of Jehoshaphat to the broad basin-like swelling of the valley near the north-east corner of the city, and remarked to Whitely that it was an amphitheatre, the centre of which might well have been selected for a public execution, affording ample room for thousands to look on, and being near many rock-hewn tombs now open and abandoned. It was therefore with an involuntary sneer of derision that I found myself among the crowd of cross and rosary-venders, beggars, priests, children and Arabs, that thronged the court in front of the grand old doorway of the church, and saw within the door the stone of unction, surrounded by pilgrims, who were kissing and pressing their foreheads to it in passionate attitudes. By referring to the ground plan of the church, the reader will have no difficulty in following me through it. Approaching the entrance, I saw more plainly the tapers that surrounded this stone, which is in fact a slab of the ordinary stone of Jerusalem, worn smooth with myriads of kisses, and situated at about that intermediate distance between the cross and the tomb at which the body of Christ might be supposed to have been laid when Joseph prepared it for temporary burial. The Turkish guardian of the door, who sat at its left, looked with stupid, unmeaning gaze at the devout who entered on their knees. "Ah, mi frater!" exclaimed a musical voice, as I was - -------- CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. - ~-~ CALVARY. 73 about to enter the ancient and massive doorway, and the next instant two hands were laid on my shoulders, and a pair of dark, lustrous eyes of exceeding gentleness and tenderness looked into mine from under the cowl of a Franciscan. With more pleasure than I can well describe, I recognized my old friend, Fra Giovanni, whom the reader of my Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia will remember I had met in the south of France, and with whom I had traveled to Malta. An Italian, young, wealthy, educated, and of excellent family, he had, for some reason that I knew nothingof, unless I ascribe it to his sincere piety, joined the Franciscans, and devoted his splendid abilities to disseminating the Catholic faith wherever his feet might lead him to teach and preach. By what chance he had wandered to Jerusalem I did not ask him, but having parted with real sorrow on my side, and I have faith to believe, on his also, we met with the more pleasure from the total unexpectedness of the rencontre, as well as the eminent sanctity of the place. c" See, now-I am leaving Jerusalem to-morrow at daybreak, and I shall see no more of you. Where is it you are going? To make the stations? Ah, no-you are a heretic; but I will turn with you, and we will talk as we walk, and I will show you the holy places. Take my arm -this is the way to Calvary." We turned short to the right as we entered the great doorway, to the foot of a flight of steps leading up to a marble-floored platform, erected so as to bring the visitor on a level with a top of a spur of the natural rock of the hill, which rises some twelve or fifteen feet above the floor of the church, which is in a great measure the solid rock also. "This is the Latin stairway. Our Greek fiiends will not mount to Calvary by the same steps we use. Is it 4 74 SOCKET OF THE CROSS. not strange that men can not consent to approach the cross of the Lord by the same road? Yonder is their stairway." And so we ascended and were on the platform, overhung with lamps of gold and lamps of silver, swinging from the roof by long chains, and especially numerous at the eastern end, where a taper burning dimly under a marble altar, resembling in some measure a pier table, disclosed a golden plate on the marble with which every thing was cased. So low was the altar that no one could approach that golden plate without kneeling, and we knelt, as men may do whether believing or not, when approaching the spot which for fifteen hundred years has been believed to be the socket in which the cross of Christ was fixed. The plate, when pushed aside, disclosed the hole in the rock. One peculiarity of the state of affairs at Jerusalem, where all the rival churches claim equal rights, is, that the pilgrim who is a stranger, may touch and handle all the relics. No one forbids, for no Greek dare forbid a Latin or an Armenian or a Copt, nor, vice versa, dare either of the others forbid one not of his own faith and church. Therefore I had no hesitation in lighting a pocket candle which Egyptian experience had taught me to carry always with me, which having placed in the hole in the rock, I looked in. It was a hole two feet deep, and six inches square, nothing more. Close by it a long narrow strip of gold covered a slit in the marble which disclosed a rift in the rock. Going under the platform afterward we saw in the chapel below, this same rift widened into a curious hollow, which is called the tomb of Adam. Brother Giovanni was kneeling with his face toward Calvary when I retired backward, as one necessarily must in coming away from the spot which he has approached on his knees under the slab of an altar, but rose and looked with me at the rift in the rock. TOMBS O:.RU SAD ERS. 75 "Curious —I have not:seen that before." " You have been here often?" "All day long for ten days; but I confess that I have knelt longest at the Sepulchre and have but prayed a few moments each morning here." "That is the way with you always, brother John; I told you so at Arles and Avignon. It is well enough to be religious, but why let your religion be so absorbing as to forbid your observing the common occurrences of life?" "I came here to pray." " Yes, I understand that, but interrupt your prayers a little to use your eyes. Think how strangely it would have appeared to leave Jerusalem not having seen the rift in the rock which the tradition of the churches ascribes to the earthquake on the evening of the crucifixion." " What will it matter fifty years hence when I shall be in the new city of the Lord?" "There is something in that, my friend." By this time we had descended to the level of the church floor, and entering a doorway under the platform, approached the rock of Calvary on this lower level. On the right and the left of the. passage once lay those stern and magnificent guardians of the Holy Cross, Godfrey and Baldwin, who in turn, having fought valiantly as brave knights without fear and without reproach, slept in their armor at the foot of Calvary. Their graves are still pointed out, but whether the dust of the mighty is still within their sepulchres is considered at the least very doubtful. Around them once lay the other kings of Jerusalem, men whose swords flashed along the hills from Ascalon to Nazareth, whose heavy mail rang along the walls of Jerusalem, and who, having fought for the Holy Cross, lay down with content and joy at Calvary. Passing through this chapel we approached the grating behind 76 T HE SEPULCHRE. which a dim taper revealed the tomb of Adam. I again made use of my candle to light the dark hole in the rock, at which brother John glanced a moment, as I did. But we hastened toward the great point of attraction in the church, the Holy Sepulchre. I pity the man who can approach irreverently this shrine. I have already said that I did not believe in the authenticity of the spot. I approached it as I would a great curiosity, but I approached it with profound respect and awe. Around it for eighteen centuries men have knelt with beating hearts and throbbing brows. Toward it for eighteen hundred years men have yearned with unutterable longing, and in distant lands, have turned their pale faces and fast dimming eyes before they died. Millions who have gone to God, pious, humble, holy men, believed that on that rock the ineffable form of Christ dead once lay, and millions, foot-worn with long travel, knelt just here and sanctified the place with the burning incense of devout prayer. Beyond all bigotry I place that of men who find idolatry in worshiping God before the tomb in which he lay, or who condemn all forms and ceremonies of religious worship, even to forgetting their belief that the holy sacraments of their church are but forms themselves. There is mummery enough among the Christians of every name who crowd this church, but all the mummery was not sufficient to forbid in my heart the sympathy it felt with the poor pilgrims from distant countries who knelt before the door of the tomb, or to drive back the thrilling memories that crowded on my mind when I found myself at length standing on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre. Nor alone then, at my first visit, but afterward, as I began to understand better the evidence and the locality. THE SEPULCHRE. 77 Foremost of all, I saw the queenly form of the old mother of the Roman emperor, seeking, over the hills of rubbish that were once the garden walls and kiosks of Jerusalem, the heathen fane on the spot to which the persecuted Christians of those times led her, and which they pointed out as covering the sepulchre in which the Saviour lay, hewn in the rocky hill-side, close by Golgotha. There was no tradition related of it, no " thus saith the story," but they knew the spot even as they knew Mount Zion, and the pool of Siloam, and Olivet, and Bethlehem. From the day of the crucifixion to this, there had been no time when any other place was called Golgotha, any more than when any other city has been called Jerusalem, and the queen-mother, a humble pilgrim, listened to the old man who said, " My father's father knew many who saw him crucified, dead, and buried in this tomb." Then the long line of patriarchs, bishops, priests, and kings, who had done homage here, followed in swift procession, even to the valiant Omar, who would not kneel lest his followers should on that account claim a right to the spot for future worship. And then, with flashing arms and ringing tread, the valiant Kights of the Cross and Sepulchre, and their followers, a countless array of men who died for Holy Cross on the plains of Holy Land, with eager eyes to the hills that hid Jerusalem, and, last of all, the pilgrim hosts, who, laden with sins, came here and laid them down, from their consciences if not from their souls, on this small floor of rock, six feet by three! What kingly and what lowly hearts have hushed their throbbing pains within this little rock-hewn chamber! In the centre of the rotunda, at the west end of the church, under the open dome, stands a small building on the solid rock which is the floor of the church. This building is of elaborate construction, chiefly consisting of fine marbles. It has but one entrance, on the eastern ~T8 EEETHE SEPULCHRE. side, over which hangs a sloping canopy, painted blue and studded with stars. The building contains two chambers, the outer one known as the Chapel of the Angel, and the inner as the Sepulchre. I shall devote more space elsewhere to a discussion of the construction of this building and of the Sepulchre, using in this description the conclusions to which I afterward arrived on careful examination and study, without pausing here for arguments. Entering the Chapel of the Angel, which is a small apartment, some ten feet by six, in the centre of which a stone, raised on a pedestal, does duty as part of the stone that once closed the small doorway before us, we stooped to enter this, and found ourselves within the " new tomb which Joseph had hewn out in the rock," the " sepulchre wherein never man before was laid" until the day of redemption. Even on that first visit, as I stooped down and looked in before I entered, there was a sudden recollection of the attitude of that other disciple who accompanied Peter on the morning of the first day of the week when he thus stooped down and looked in, which forcibly impressed me, and I might have been pardoned for a flashing thought, a momentary expectation, that within I should see the angels. But within I found a simple excavated tomb, on the right side of which, elevated from the floor, was a shelf, or bench, of white marble, extending from end to end, and occupying all that part of the floor which was on the right hand of the door. The floor, sides, and roof of this room, are the solid rock out of which the tomb is hewn, and the marble slab probably covers a bench of the rough stone left in the hewing to receive a single body. Such is the custom in nearly all the tombs around Jerusalem, and the traveler who has become familiar with the form TH E SEPUL H RE-,:'79 of these sepulchres, will recognize the exact similarity. The roof is perforated with a round hole, through which escapes the smoke of the gold, silver, and brazen lamps, which hang over the marble slab. The latter has across it, about half way its length, a singular fissure, which appears like a wide crack, but does not extend quite across, and is thus evidently not a crack. It appears more as if a thin stratum of softer stone had crumbled out and disappeared, but the eye can not see any thing through it. I have somewhere seen it stated that this fissure was artificial, designed to give the slab a broken appearance, and prevent its being appropriated by Mussulman rapacity. I doubt this. Brazen lamps most abounded, and in this I was disappointed, as also in finding that many of the ornaments of the church were of brass. The reason for this I subsequently learned, and it will appear hereafter when I shall have occasion to describe the splendor and magnificence of the royal gifts to the holy sepulchre which I saw elsewhere. A Greek monk stood at the head of the tomb, reading prayers with an inaudible motion of his lips, and I never visited the Sepulchre afterward without finding him or his substitute in the same place and the same attitude. The length of the entire excavated chamber is six feet two inches, the breadth about six feet, of which breadth three feet one inch is occupied by the shelf. I pause here a moment to direct attention to the perfect manner in which this rock-hewn tomb meets the various descriptions of the evangelist. It was a tomb " hewn out of a rock." The door was so low that one must stoop down to look in. When they laid the body there, they went in and saw how it was laid. It was on a level along which a stone could be rolled or moved against it so as to close the entrance. When they 80 THE SEPULCHRE. came to seek him on the morning after the Sabbath, they entered in and saw a young man sitting on the right side, and afterward, when others came, Mary saw two angels, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain, that is on the spot, shelf or whatever it was, from which the body was now gone, but which it had occupied. Obviously these, and many other striking points of agreement (without one, so far as I know, of disagreement) may be accounted for by saying that they who originally selected this tomb for the Holy Sepulchre, were shrewd enough to select a tomb that would answer all the description, but he who attributes this adroitness to them, must not falsify his argument by supposing them at the same time so stupid and destitute of shrewdness, or even of common cunning, as to select a spot within the walls of Jerusalem, and thus entirely unfit to answer the description. A few moments sufficed for that first visit to the Sepulchre. I found Fra Giovanni kneeling at a little distance from the door. We then proceeded to visit in succession the various spots of interest in the church whose vast extent is scarcely to be comprehended in America, a land of no very large religious buildings. The reader who remembers that the tomb is located by the evangelists, in the same place with the cross, will not be surprised to find the two under the same roof. In ancient times this was not so; but the church which originally covered the Sepulchre has been so extended as to include Calvary also, which was formerly in an outer chapel. From the dome, running eastward, the grand nave of the church is an inclosed chapel, in possession of the Greeks, splendidly ornamented with costly, exquisite OTHER HOLY PLACES. 81 paintings, and elaborate architectural details, at the expense of the Emperor of Russia. This extends from a point not many feet west of the Chapel of the Angel to a point beyond the location of Calvary, which lies south of it. Within this chapel, a stone in the pavement marks the Greek centre of the world, an idea I found some difficulty in getting an explanation of, and which I do not yet understand. Returning on the south and outer side of this chapel, passing the stone of unction and the steps of Calvary, we found the several Chapels of St. Longinus, of the bonds of Christ, of the Mocking, of the Casting of Lots and Dividing the Garments, and reached a broad flight of steps which led down into the Chapel of St. Helena, now in possession of the Armenians, from which other steps led down into a chapel in the solid rock, which is said to be the spot where Helena found the true cross, and is known as the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. This is a dark cavernous room, presenting the appearance of a chamber dug out underneath projecting masses of rock, and roofed over from the sky. Hence we went back on the other or northern side of the Greek chapel, and visited the Chapel of the Apparition to the Virgin, which is now the Latin chapel, and one of the most beautiful parts of the building, possessing a small organ, whose music is exceedingly offensive to the Greeks, who are not possessed of a similar instrument. While we were here, a loud noise, much like miniature thunder, startled us. It was the rapping on a board swung near the door, which is the oriental substitute for a bell. It resounded through the aisles and arches of the church, warning all visitors and worshipers that the building was now to be closed, and they must depart. There was much yet to be seen, but we had ample time before us to see it, and we hastened out, with pilgrims, priests, and beggars, the latter a motley and pertinacious 4* 82 THE SEPULCHRE, crowd, who followed you even into the Sepulchre itself, when we entered, and now to the very outlet of the great court, where we could scarcely escape them through the doorway that leads to a street of filthy tanneries, once the street of the grand hospital of St. John. A daily visitor to the Sepulchre after this, I became familiar with all the passages of the building, and spent many hours each day in its shadowy aisles. Whether it were or were not the true sepulchre of Christ, the place which has been regarded as such for fifteen hundred years is not to be regarded with other than earnest, even tearful eyes. Around it holy men had prayed for many generations since Eusebius, and Macarius, and Jerome, and Sabas, and many other worthies who have long since gone to see the ascended glory of the crucified son of Mary. Clinging with stout hands to its marble adornments, thousands of martyrs have perished under the sword of the enemies of the cross. Many thousand dying sinners and dying saints in all countries and all times have looked to it with the last straining gaze of their dim eyes, and died with smiling countenances turned toward the tomb. Stout men have fought around it, and died for Holy Cross on the threshold of the Sepulchre. Pilgrims from far lands have laid their burdens down on its rocky floor, and prayers and tears have hallowed it; so that, if it were the tomb of Judas himself, it is redeemed and sanctified as the memorial of more earnest faith and adoration than any other spot of ground on this side the pearl gates. It was my custom, and a daily pleasure, to stand at the entrance of the Latin Chapel of the Apparition of Christ to Mary after the Resurrection, and look toward the Sepulchre, and watch the kneeling pilgrims of all lands as they looked to the little building which once contained the Hope of the world. TH E CRESCENT. 83 I could laugh there at the petty pride of Turks who sauntered around the rotunda, with ill-concealed sneers on their faces, for the Christian dogs that knelt here and there on the pavement. I could laugh, for I beheld the visible evidence of the grandeur of our holy faith. In that little tomb, one sad night, when the stars were over Jerusalem, there lay the worn and wasted body of One who had suffered an ignominious death. Here, where I stood, Roman soldiers sat on the rocky floor, and clashed their armor rudely as they passed the night in alternate jest and brawl, rattling the dice on the rock by the light of a dim taper, and cursing each other by the gods of Rome, while they recked nothing who or what was the dead body they were set to watch. And somewhere within Jerusalem a few men and women were weeping the long night through in hopeless agony, the scoff of a nation who had rejected the claims of their master as king and Messiah. But the scene is changed. The Saviour is risen. The religion of the Cross and Tomb has become the religion of the world. The nails that men believed were the nails that pierced his hands were wrought into the proudest crown of human grandeur; and the fragments they supposed to be of the wood on which he hung are shrined in palace-cathedrals of unknown wealth and gorgeousness. From the little handful of disciples, the followers of the Nazarene have grown to be a host more than any man can number, of every nation under heaven. The standards of Christian powers are triumphant on every battle-field; and the day has arrived in which there is no nation of the earth able to say that it can stand and be other than Christian. It was easy to laugh at the haughty Turk, who sneered at the poor pilgrim, ragged and dirty, who had but now arrived within the Jaffa gate, and 84 THE CROSS. rushed to lay his load down at the Sepulchre. He was the master here; but that poor pilgrim was the representative of the religion of that tomb, by the suffrance of whose followers he was permitted to lord it a little while in Jerusalem, but who will ere long-God grant it be soon!-sweep from the face of the earth every vestige of the religion of the camel-driver of Mecca. 4/! ki~ - fl~li~.'',' 6. S64ol Sooi q00P Bc0 lio-p^a iL. " YA FERRAJJ!' IHow soon one learns to dispense with bells. The win, dow of our dining and sitting room opened out over the broad court. The kitchen, which was always filled with Mukarri and Bedouins, was on the opposite side of it. When we wanted a servant we thundered his name, with, out leaving our seats by the table or the fire. "Ya Ferrajj!" The sentry on the wall by the Damascus gate could hear me, for the night was clear, moony, and calm, and all was still and death-like over sleeping Jerusalem. A dozen dogs howled as my voice went out and disturbed the silence, which instantly resumed its solemn dominion when they ceased their howling. The Nubian entered. "Wine and chibouks. Let Antonio find a bottle of Lebanon. Have the horses ready early in the morning for the road. We go to Bethlehem. Fill a chibouk for Father John. Now go to bed and keep that infernal crew of Bedouins still in the kitchen. If I hear such a row again as last night, I'll send six balls from my revolver down through the kitchen door, hit or miss-do you understand?" "Aiowah." We were scarcely settled in our chairs when there came up from the kitchen such a confused clamor of 86 A REVOLVER. voices as none but an Arab crowd can get up. I threw open the window and cracked away with my revolver, taking good care to hit the flagging of the court each time, while Whitely ran down to see the effect. At the first shot the silence was instantaneous and profound, and at the sixth he threw open the kitchen door. No sign of life was to be seen. Twelve Arabs of various sorts were there, but you might have thought every man of them shot six times through the brain. Packed away under the benches or table in the corner furthest away fiom the door and out of range, there they lay, a mass of silent, horror-stricken wretches. When he ordered them out they seemed to think he was Azrael or the angel of judgment, and that they were dead and only waiting to be damned.. No man of them dared stir hand or foot. Ferrajj and Abd-el-Atti were in bed in their own places, but Hajji Mohammed, tolerably well soaked in arrakee, was at the bottom of the heap, most scared of all, and Betuni, more like a monkey than ever, Betuni, who was the companion of my wanderings over holy hills for a long time after this, was on the top of the pile, recognizable only by his red morocco boots, which stood out in the air like signals of distress, while his head was buried out of sight among the limbs of his Arab companions. After that we had silence for a long evening's talk with. Fra Giovanni. The night was cool and the fire blazed brightly in the open stove piled full of stumps of old olive-trees (I know it was sacrilege to burn such wood). Our long chibouks, with fresh sticks of lemon-tree, were fragrant with Latakea, and our glasses filled with that delicious wine of Lebanon, the memory whereof is aromatic. Then we talked, and listened to the low, pleasant voice of Fra Giovanni till the midnight moon looked down to the very depths ofJehoshaphat. We spoke of pilgrims to the Holy PI L GRIMS. 87 Land, a subject replete with a thousand stories of the faith and endurance of man. " Think you there was really any virtue in it, then, my friend? Are you so far a believer in the doctrine of good works as to suppose, of a verity, that they who made the weary pilgrimage thereby expiated the sins they carried with them?" " Doubtless on the way they had much of opportunity for thought, reflection, and repentance, and here they had abundant subjects for holy consideration and motives to humility. I think the pilgrimage was not wholly in vain." 6 Strange men." "Yea, strange beyond what we can well appreciate or understand. And yet it is a well-known fact, that of all the thousands of thousands who made the pilgrimage to HIloly Land before the time of the Crusades, there is not recorded one act of wrong committed on the way, though powerful knights and robber barons made the pilgrimage with full forces. Even the Moslems themselves said of them,'Non quzcerutnt mcdct, sed legem eorzcu aclimplere czpiunt.'* Many a time have I, poor sinner that I am for a servant of the Lord, when I have been reading the noble deeds of the order of St. Benedict, found myself admiring the valor of the pilgrim more than his faith, and my soul thrilling when I read of the might of his strong arm more than when I read of his penances and pain. How I have lingered on the story of Frotmond of Brittany, who, with ashes on his brow and chains on * VITA SIVE HODCEPORICON S. WILLIBALDI. (A. D. 165.) Sec. VIII. The Saracens having captured Willibald and his seven companions, took them to an old man to learn who and what they were, "et ille senex respondens ait, Frequenter hue venientes vidi homines de illis terrm partibus istorum contribules: non querunt mala, sed legem Deorum adimplere cupiunt." Thus in the Thesaurus, etc., Canisii; elsewhere it is printed eorum. 88 FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. his arms, clothed in the shroud that marked him dead to man until his vow was accomplished, twice performed the pilgrimage to the Sepulchre, and twice returned to the far land of France. You must have heard the story of the lord of Anjou." " Which of the lords? for there are many on the rolls of history." "Foulque Nerra, count and pilgrim." " No, never." " Never? It is one of the saddest and the strangest stories on all the records of the pilgrims.* The crimes he sought to expiate are, many of them, unknown, many too hideous to mention. " In those old days there was no fairer inheritance in the land of Gaul than fell to Geoffrey and Foulque, grandsons of the mighty Count of Anjou. Nor was there a nobler heart than that of the younger brother in all of France, Geoffrey was gentle and very lovely in disposition; Foulque was fierce as a lion, and as noble too. Sometimes, in your own land, Signor American, you have seen women whose beauty was so pre-eminently above that of others, that you could, in some measure, appreciate what men have meant who talked of women that were angels. * Michaud and other historians give the principal facts of this curious story as here related by my friend, whose account I have, in substance, followed. An examination of the ancient chronicles of France leads me to think that Foulques IV., commonly called Le Rechin, and not his grandfather, Foulques III., known as Nerra, or Le Noir, may have been the Count of Anjou who killed his brother Geoffroi le Barbu. Foulques Nerra was unquestionably the count who was thrice a pilgrim to the Holy Sepulchre, and who died at Metz, A.D. 1040. Michaud and others may have confused the two counts, or it is very possible that other authorities, not within my reach, may confirm their version of the history. I have not been able to find in America the Chronicles of Anjou, an examination of which would settle the question. FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. 89 "You smile. I am a Franciscan and a priest, but I was a layman, and I am a man. I thank God that I do retain a love of the beautiful wherever I find it, and I am not ashamed to admire one whom he has made lovely. But it is true that I have known days when my heart throbbed, as I trust it never will again, at the presence of a fair woman. "Foulque, the young count, was a man, and when he saw that lady he was mad with love of her. Their first meeting was in one of those forays for which his age is better known to history than aught else. He had led his retainers to the sacking of a castle on the banks of the Rhine, and when the bloody fray was over, and he was reeking from the carnage in which his soul took delight, he was startled by the vision of a lady, who suddenly appeared in the hall where he stood among the slain. Her story was brief. She was a captive herself, released by his arm. A wife indeed, but she knew not if her husband lived. She was the last of her race, all murdered by him of whom the Count of Anjou had so completely avenged her. " To the young count the lady was like a vision of heaven. He had never seen, never dreamed of such beauty, such magnificence. His by right of conquest, his because there was no living man to dispute his claim, for neither he nor she named her lord, and his by her own manifest will, for she threw herself into his very arms for protection against his fierce retainers who had opened her prison-doors, what was left for him to do but take her to his embrace and heart? There was no thought of the curses of holy church in those days when' a soldier captured defenceless women, nor was she one to remind him or herself of the crime they committed. She was all passion, and I have said she was gloriously beautiful. It were vain to attempt any description of the 90 FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. manner in which she wound her way into his heart, and became possessed of its most hidden springs of motion. A thousand times men have died for women not half so fair as she. " She demanded castles for presents, and he conquered them. She would have men's heads, and he brought them by scores; she bade him bring maidens' breasts, and he put to shame the torturers of Holy Agatha. There was no form of cruelty, no depth of horrible crime into which she did not plunge him, and yet he loved her with a love that grew on the very horrors that her life disclosed; and he made her queen of a realm that trembled at the glance of her brilliant eye. "Patient and gentle, beloved of all his people, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, ruled in the old halls of his father, while his brother's wild career was the terror of all the western world. Ever kind, the beloved father of his county, he was almost revered by those who saw in him a noble and kind master, a gallant defender, and a faithful friend. "The tempter did not long delay to whisper in the ears of Foulque Nerra that he was the most powerful of the two, and that it was fit that his brother's retainers should serve him. His castle-not his, but one which he had captured, having utterly erased from the rolls of the living every name which could claim adverse title to his ownwas not sufficiently large for the lands he now ruled, and which actually surrounded his grandfather's ancient county, now held by his brother, whose grand old halls were more fit for his court and queen. The suggestion of even this horrible crime did not open his blind eyes to the true character of his beautiful destroyer. "The deed was rapidly planned and swiftly done. The guards of the old castle shrank in horror from the unnatural fiay, and he obtained almost peaceful possession of FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. 91 the towers of his fathers, even before his brother woke from sleep, to find himself a prisoner. "Geoffrey died horribly, of woe and torture, in the dungeons of the castle. The unnatural brother gloried in his accomplished crime, and crowned his mistress, now more gorgeously beautiful than ever, in the halls that had always before been honored among men. "But Geoffrey died not unavenged. "A year swept on, and the count woke one morning in his halls, alone. His wife was gone, fled, with an unknown servant of the house-a base slave-gone, and forever! " With her his soul departed. Black agony took possession of him, and remorse indescribable. It seemed as if she were his courage, his strength, his very life-for all were gone, from the very hour he heard of her flight. "Nor was that all. Geoffrey, his murdered brother, was in her place, and thenceforth never left him; nor did he come alone to curse the sinful man, but behind him were all the maidens he had outraged and butchered, all the dead he had sent unshrived to God-a ghastly train, innumerable, and of horror beyond description-all fixing on him their pale wild faces of reproach and pain. He could not live, and God forbade him to die. He wandered, restless, up and down his halls, with open eyes fixed on the visions that would not leave him. At length, hopeless of relief elsewhere, as was the custom of the age he set out for the Holy Sepulchre. They went with him. All the way he saw his ghostly persecutors, and they followed him to the gate of Jerusalem, whereafter he saw them no more. Drawn on a hurdle, with a rope around his neck, through the streets of the Holy City, he rent the air with his cry for mercy,' Ayez pitie, Seigneur, du traitre et parjure Foulques!' "Once more the mighty Count of Anjou raised his 92 FOULQUE NERRA9 THE PILGRIM. head, and, though the cord of shame was around his neck, and he wore the sandals of pilgrimage, nevertheless the pavement resounded to a firm tread as he walked each morning up to the Sepulchre, and in a voice more accustomed to the shout of battle, chanted his miserere. Despise it as you will, you Protestants, there is nevertheless an atmosphere in Jerusalem, and around the Sepulchre, that humbles human pride, and softens the heart of sinful man. I will not pause here to explain it, though I think I can do so without giving you cause to say that I am a believer in the present miraculous efficacy of pilgrimage. "His vows accomplished, the dust of the outer world shaken off from his feet and his soul, as he entered the gates of the city, he knelt for the last time at the Sepulchre, and, with a light heart and calm conscience, mounted his steed on the hill of Zion, and rode proudly homeward. " In the fairest valley of Switzerland, under the shadow of the Jungfiau, there was a hamlet through which the Count of Anjou passed on his journey to his own castle. He slept peacefully in the night now, and no ghosts haunted his waking hours. Peace, the peace that God giveth the penitent, was on his soul, and so he went all the way homeward, chanting brave psalms or praying aloud. "' But that evening, before he slept, be walked out in the village and toward a castle that stood on an eminence near by it; and, as he approached it, he saw a lady slowly walking up the hill toward the great gateway. There was something in that form that sent through the heart of the count a thrill of such emotion as he had long been a stranger to, for it was one such as the false prophet has promised to the embraces of his followers in Paradise. And as she entered the gate and turned back, he beheld his faithless mistress, even as she was when he first beheld FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. 93 her, beyond all words beautiful, her eyes filled with that old enchantment that invited him to sin and shame. " Overwhelmed at first with wild emotions, he knew not what to do. But, as he sat alone in his chamber that night, his dim candle shining on a fragment of the true cross that lay upon the table before him, the only relic he had brought from Holy Land, the arch-fiend, in the guise of that fair lady, knelt on the other side of the cross, and with smiles and becks tempted him to damnation. "Men said the lady was not unwilling, and others that her wails rang through the village in that midnight fray when at the head of his band he bore her on his saddle from the castle down the steep descent that led into the village, fighting every step with the retainers that surrounded their lord. But Satan, who had tempted him, forsook him in the hour of utmost need. The next night, clasped in her white arms, he lay at a village on the bank of the Rhone, and in the solemn hours of the darkness once more those ghostly visitors surrounded him, and once more he woke in terror to see with waking eyes more fearful visions than when he slept. "A band of robbers from the Alpine passes had surrounded his wearied troop, and though they were brave as lions, not one save he and his old squire escaped to remember the horrors of that night, in the midst of which she had vanished. In vain he searched for her for months among those mountain gorges, which are now crowded with pleasure-seeking travelers. She was lost to him, and at length, no longer praising, no longer chanting, he rode homeward, forever by day and by night accompanied by those ghostly appearances, hearing all along the way the same sad voices of agony and woe. "Again his sin had found him out. Weighed down with remorse, and desirous to keep forever before him the memory of the Holy Cross and Tomb, he devoted himself 94 FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. to erecting at Loches, near his own castle, a monastery and church, wherein he deposited a piece of the true cross, which till late years have been known by the name of Saint Sepulchre. Here he wept and prayed, but wept and prayed in vain. Still his brother's ghost haunted him. It was in his chamber when he would sleep, it sat at table with him when he ate, it walked, it rode with him; it laid its cold hand on his bread, and his bread mouldered; it dipped its white finger in his wine, and the wine froze his heart when he drank it. "'Human nature could not long abide this, and once more, penitent and humble, he stood barefooted before the gate of Jerusalem, and walked with ashes on his head and anguish in his heart to the blessed tomb wherein God hath permitted man to lay all his sin, and again the ghostly followers of his footsteps left him at the gate, and he approached the Sepulchre alone. "Of his long vigils, night after night kneeling motionless by the tomb, of his penances innumerable, his alms and good deeds, the record remaineth somewhere. At length, once more relieved and pardoned, as he trusted (and so let us trust), he departed for the land of his birth and sinful life, sailing from Jaffa to Brundusium in Italy.' He had scarcely set foot on the land, when he heard a story from all men's mouths of terrible outrages and wrongs done on the children of our holy father the Pope by a bandit who, inhabiting the Apennines, was nevertheless omnipresent from the straits of Charybdis to-the Po, and of whose deeds no tongue could sufficiently relate the horror. "The pilgrimage had not so changed his nature but that the sound of battle was glorious to Foulque Nerra. It reminded him of that day when his own arm had struck down the stout Count of Brittany. He girded on his armor once more, and with the trusty band of retainers FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. 95 who had accompanied him to Jerusalem, penetrated the fastnesses of the Apennines. Hisi heart beat with its old fire, his hand was strong as in youth, and his soul was full of daring and of joy, for this was the Lord's work, and he fought in a cause of which he never before had felt the glory. He won the very fortress of the chief; captured his stores of treasure, but the man himself was not there. "Reposing after the victory, sleep such as in former years he did not know, visited his eyes. But the clasp of warm arms awoke him to find himself in the embrace of her for whom he had twice sacrificed his soul's salvation. It was a madness that possessed him, that he did not then and there strangle her as he had countless women for her. But there was a power in her supreme beauty that forbade the holy influences even of his pilgrimage. He opened his eyes to meet her large brown eyes full of delight and love, and the sweet temptation once more damned him. "In that mad clasp, the cross and promised crown, the tomb and resurrection that he hoped, and had faith to believe he had won, were alike forgotten, and there was joy in hell over the sin of the great Count of Anjou. "I can not tell whence she came. If her own whispered story were true, she was the captive of the robber chief, since the night she last saw him in Switzerland. But it was verily insanity that he did not think strange of her brilliant youth and unchanged beauty, though he had grown old since he first saw her, and that he did not recognize in that some evidence of the presence of the fiend. " He fell asleep with his fair sin locked close in his stout arms, and then, once more, the pale face of Geoffrey de Barbu looked within the canopy, and the sleeper shuddered as the vision of unutterable woe again possessed his soul. 96 FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. "He hurled her from his embrace, sprang to his feet, and seized his sword to plunge it in her bosom; but she was gone, and the shouts of battle now rang around him. "The robbers were on him in force. He rushed out, mad with the ghastly company that kept close beside him, and plunged into the fray. "Right valiantly did Foulque then fight. His broadsword made sweeping circles of mangled dead along his furious path. But every flashing sweep of the sword passed through the form of his murdered brother who would not leave him, and every dead man at his feet cursed him, as he fell, with the same look out of his dying eyes. "Wounded, well-nigh dead, but victor over his slain foes, the Count of Anjou was carried to the feet of the holy Father, and there, hailed as the saviour of Italy in a triumphal procession, he received full absolution of all his sins from the lips of the grateful Pope. "People thronged in crowds around him, to see the great count who had twice prayed at the Holy Sepulchre, and with whose deeds of arms the world resounded. His approach to his own country was an ovation. His retainers crowded the way, and the air rang with the shouts of welcome that hailed his return. "But the old count, for he was old now, had a stern and unforgiving conscience, nor could all the intervening time shut out the distant past. " Even when the words of pardon fell on his ears from the lips of the holy Father, he saw that cold, calm face beside him, and after that he was no more alone, but always Geoffrey was with him, clanking his chains to drown the psalm in the morning service, and with that face of woe scaring the pious visions, that he sought to cherish, from his soul. " Once more, weary, heart-broken, forever haunted by FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. 97 his spectral brother, the valiant Count of Anjou went to the Saviour's Sepulchre. Three pilgrimages he had accomplished, and the third in agony that he almost dared compare to the agony of his Lord. And once more, out of his exhaustless fountain of love, the blessed Lord forgave the sinner's crime, and he arose, and stood, and walked a pardoned man. Thrice damned, thrice forgiven, thrice dead, thrice raised to life, the soldier of a hundred fields, the victor in all, marched slowly homeward, desiring only to die. He was very old now. His hair was whiter than the snow of Lebanon, but his arm was strong as of old. History tells not what valiant deeds the old man was led to do, what enemies of the cross he vanquished, what mighty valor was yet left in that great right arm. "IHe never reached his home. On a lonesome couch in the old town of Metz, the giant form of the Count of Anjou lay stretched in the weakness of dying. Around him now, blessed be God, there were no visions of woe, but angels made glad the road up which his clear old eyes gazed. Once, ere he died, a form of almost seraphic beauty passed across the way and intercepted the light of heaven that was shining down it on his brow. They who stood around him saw the shadow. He sprang to his feet, as the fair form again and for the last time came between him and his God, and now in all her young and glorious beauty he knew that she was but a fiend, an angel, but a fallen angel, a star lost out of heaven. BNow he felt how all his life long he had been tempted of a devil, and in a flood the old sad years swept over all his memory, as the blue sea sweeps over the huge form of a fast-sinking vessel, and out of the depths he cried to God aloud, with his strong arms uplifted and his old sword flashing once more in his strong grasp. His voice rang down the old streets of Metz, and was heard by the holy 5 98 FOULQUE NERRA, THE PILGRIM. men who were praying at the altar for the passing soul.'Deus meus, Deus meus non dereliquisti me!' and the sword fell clanging on the marble floor. So died Foulque Nerra, Count of Anjou, thrice a pilgrim to the Sepulchre of the Lord. " His heart was kept for many centuries at Metz, but his body lay buried in his church at Loches in his own county of Anjou." Oman~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ —-~~~~. Tow ar bout i wi eehle o THAT part of Syria which lies between the lower Jordan and the Mediterranean, and which surrounds and includes Jerusalem, may be generally defined as a vast assemblage of hills and intervening ravines, scarcely wide enough in any instance to be called valleys. There are, occasionally, tracts of elevated table land, but the cultivation is chiefly either in the bottoms of the ravines, or on the more gentle slopes of the hill-sides where the rains of centuries have not washed away the soil. On the upper parts of the hills, and on their sides, everywhere, the bare rocks are visible, with scarcely sufficient thin soil between them to afford subsistence to the flocks of sheep and goats which the Bedouin children lead from place to place. The curse of God appears to rest on all the country, and the desolation of the land of Israel could scarcely be more total and complete. It is entirely impossible that the country around Jerusalem should afford sufficient products under even the most skillful cultivation, to sustain a population equal to the present, if it were not for the simple habits of the people, and that their few wants enable them to preserve life on food that would starve a man from western Europe or America. If the restoration of the Jews were effected at this time the entire provision of the city would be im 100 SITE OF JERUSALEM. ported by Jaffa and brought on camels from the sea over the rough path I have described in a former chapter, nor would any amount of industry succeed in restoring the soil to the barren rocks that now receive the sunshine which once gladdened the gardens of Canaan. It is indeed a somewhat remarkable fact that the ancient words which were used to characterize the country should still be accurately true, "a land flowing with milk and honey." The great flocks of sheep and goats that are on all the hills afford to the wandering tribes and to the villagers their chief support in leben, or soured milk, which they eat morning and evening, while wild flowers, clinging in crevices of the rocks and blooming among utter desolateness in grand profusion extract from that ancient soil the delicate food of the bees, and grow as if only to assert the former richness of the Land of Promise. These rugged hills, bleak and desolate as I have described them, are intersected by numerous gorges and ravines, which wind and unite with each other, sloping always downward to the Mediterranean or to the Dead Sea. The traveler from Jaffa crosses the ridge of highest land shortly before arriving at Jerusalem, on the west of the city, and hence these wa&cys descend in both directions. Indeed, if the ancient city extended as far to the northward as some are disposed to think it may have reached, it is probable that the drain of the extreme north was toward the Mediterranean, although the entire wash of the present city runs toward the Dead Sea. No streams run in these numberless wadys. One, and only one spring of living water, flows down the hill-sides around the Holy City. This runs through Siloam. It is only after severe rains that the beds of the brooks are filled, and their waters rush rapidly down the steep descents to their respective destinations. SURFACE DESCRIPTION. 101 Jerusalem stands one thousand three hundred feet above the Mediterranean, and three thousand nine hundred feet above the surface of the Dead Sea. From its heights, eastward, every thing rolls downward, so that from the top of the Armenian Convent, on Mount Zion, the view eastward is like looking down into a deep, dark basin, toward which, from all directions, the hills and valleys tend. If the reader will accompany me a few moments, and take a position north-west of the city, on the rising ground, near the point where I have spoken of my first view of the city, I will endeavor to give him a topographical idea of the location of the Holy City, which must serve his purpose until he can see a model, or, better still, can visit it with his own feet and eyes. The land on which we stand is sloping gently eastward and southward, as we advance south-east, continually descending. On our left, a broad depression in the table land isvisible, the bottom of which is not more than a hundred feet below us, and this falls off slowly to the eastward, and then bends as it narrows, until its direction is nearly north and south. On the right, a similar basin extends to the southward from us, so that we may be said to be on a gentle undulation of the land, which may be in breadth a mile and a half from basin to basin. The depression on the left continues to descend until it reaches a point east of the north-east corner of the city wall, when it suddenly deepens in another basin, and that narrows into a deep ravine, descending rapidly almost due south. The basin on our right also descends, but more slowly, passing the north-west corner of the city, and now narrowing like the other, continues due south some distance and then bends to the south-east in a deep ravine, and at length joins the one we have described, on the left, and 102 THE HILLS AN'D VALLEYS, the two form one deep gorge that goes plunging down to the Dead Sea. On the point of land we have thus seen formed between these two water-courses, stands the Holy City. But yet another depression is observable, as we approach it from our original position, commencing in the centre of the undulation near the north wall of the city, and descending gently through the very middle of the city until, as it approaches the south, it falls suddenly and deeply to the level of the two former, and thus divide the point we formerly made into a fork, of which the lefv hand or eastern tine is much longer than the right or western. These two tines (if I may use the homely illustration) may for the present be understood as maintaining their level almost to the very points where by abrupt hills they descend to the bottoms of the ravines which inclose and form them. We will call them hills hereafter. The western hill is Mount Zion, and the eastern is Mount Moriah. On the former stood the city of David, and on the latter the Temple of Solomon. The entire hill which we are descending as we approach the city, and which is the handle of the fork, I suppose to be the Akra of Josephus. The ravine which we followed on the left is known to all readers as the Valley of Jehoshaphat, while that on the right is the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, and the intermediate valley which divides the hills is in its lower part the Tyropceon of Josephus, but not mentioned by name in the sacred writings. Outside of these ravines are hills, the mountains that are " round about Jerusalem." Behind us, on the northeast, is the Mount Scopus of Josephus. The Valley of Jehoshaphat divides the city from the Mount of Olives, which lies due east of the centre of modern Jerusalem, and this hill is separated, by a depres POP-U LATION AND GOV ERNMENTo 103 sion, from the next on the south which is the Mountain of Offence. At the foot of this, the valley formed by the united valleys runs to the southward, and this part of it is supposed to be the ancient Gehenna, the place of sacrifice to Moloch. West of the principal valley, and overlooking the point of junction, is the Hill of Aceldama. Rising still higher to the south-east is the Hill of Evil Counsel. West of the city are no prominent hills known in history, and it has already been seen that on the northwest we approached the city by a long, gradual slope of the land. This fact is important, and the reader should bear in mind that from the north-west corner of the city the land steadily rises toward the north-west, sweeping around the basin of the upper Pool of Gihon, and there is no spot within miles where the wall of the city could have been built unless on this slope, so that it is plain that the land outside was always higher than the land within the walls. The population of Jerusalem is to be gotten at only by guess-work. So near as I could ascertain it, it is made up of about seven thousand Mohammedans, five thousand Jews, and rather more Christians-making the total between seventeen and twenty thousand. Much of this must be mere guess-work, however, and it is not at all impossible that a census might take four or six thousand off from this estimate. The city is now under the direct government of the sultan, who appoints the pasha. During my stay in Jerusalem this functionary was invisible, having gone to Nablous, where rumor said he was obliged to remain, fearing an attack from Bedouins if he attempted to return. The city is dependent for its supplies of water chiefly on the rains of heaven. This subject has been a fruitful source of discussion to oriental travelers, and it is very 104 SUPPLIES OF WATER. certain that as yet little progress has been made in explaining where the immense population that once inhabited Jerusalem obtained their supplies of this necessity of life. The upper Pool of Gihon, in the valley north-west of the city, with its conduit running down to the Birket el Hammam in the city, near the Church of the Holy Sepul. chre, is the only known supply on the west side. There are two or three deep wells within the city walls-one of which, near the great mosk, has been examined by several persons, but it is wholly inadequate even to modern demands. The fountain of the Virgin, running into the Pool of Siloam, is the only steady supply on the east of the city. This is perennial, and was evidently highly prized by the ancient inhabitants. Immense cisterns abound in the city, and every house has its smaller reservoir, which supply the wants of the scanty population of these days. The aqueduct from Solomon's Pool is irregular in its supply, and belongs exclusively to the great mosk. The support of the city is its holiness. Pilgrims sustain it entirely. In Easter week their number is immense, and all the year round it is considerable. The great convents supply them lodging, and they provide their own food from the bazaars. Mohammedans and Christians alike regard the city as holy. The Koran abounds in this doctrine. The mosk of El Aksa in the temple inclosure is the third holy place in the Moslem world, Mecca and Medina alone preceding it. The Moslems know Jerusalem only by its Saracenic title, El Khuds (the holy). A very good idea of the description and character of its population could be had any morning from the window of our dining room, which looked down into the court. Here we were accustomed to watch the group that gath GENERAL ASPECT. 105 ered to await our exit. There were venders of rosaries and pearl shells, Dead Sea stone, and similar curiosities, sitting with their wares before them; boys with old coins in bags by the hundred; women -chaffering with Hajji Mohammed about eggs and chickens, one or two Bedouins waiting for engagements for the Dead Sea, a Jew, Mordecai, whose business was stone-cutting, another who sold us wine, and a half-dozen muleteers and mukarri (horse dealers) waiting commands. Prominent among them was always visible the janissary of the American agency, who was as useless and as much of a nuisance as possible, for the purpose of extracting out of us all the fees he could, and who would hang around the muleteers a fortnight for a dollar at the end of it. The general aspect of Jerusalem is very melancholy. There is no such thing as cheerfulness about it, even in a sunny, spring day. It is a mass of old stone houses, cold, sombre, and sad, presenting only blank walls to the street, many of them in ruins. Portions of the city are gardens, or thickets of prickly pear and weeds. Not more than one half of the inclosure within the walls is occupied by houses. The entire hill of Moriah, nearly half of Zion, and all the valley between them, the north-eastern part of the city, and detached spots elsewhere, are either open courts, gardens, or desolate and deserted places. Outside the city walls there is no habitation, except the buildings on Mount Zion, and a coffee-shop near the Jaffa gate. The hermit who lives in the Cave of Jeremiah is the solitary exception on the north and east of the city, unless there be a monk regularly sleeping in Gethsemane. I think there is not, for I was unable to obtain entrance early in the mornings, and the attendant Franciscan always came away with me in my evening and starlight visits. 5* 106 MEANS OF LOCOMOTION. The ways and means of locomotion are various. No wheeled vehicle is known in Syria. The ways are therefore execrable, and I am compelled to add, the means equally so. The streets are narrow, and the pavements, many of which date from the Crusades, if not a much earlier period, are, as one might imagine, out of repair. Originally large square blocks of stone, they frequently lie scattered along the street, the holes they should occupy being filled with mud. In some places the street has an elevated side-walk on each side, the entire street being perhaps ten or twelve feet wide, of which six or eight feet is occupied by the trottoir for men, and the rest by the trottoir for camels, donkeys, and horses. The latter, however, is in such cases always filled with intensely filthy mud and water, frequently a foot or eighteen inches deep, so that a misstep on the slippery sidewalk entails the risk of a plunge into it, not to say of drowning; and in meeting animals or passing them (a constant occurrence), one is necessarily plentifully sprinkled with the mixture. I walked everywhere; frequently estimating a day's travel in and around the city at from ten to fifteen miles. For Miriam I procured a donkey immediately on arriving. But Jerusalem donkeys are not to be recommended. The first one that I tried was so dainty of his feet that he always waited at a mud-hole till she dismounted and walked around it, and in the streets of the city would never attempt the fording of the rivers of filth that I have described, but, waiting till she walked along the side-walk, would follow her like a dog, and stop at the end of the mud to be remounted. This would not do at all, and I tried another. This one had a weakness in his hinder legs, manifest especially in climbing hills like the Mount of Olives, which sometimes resulted in their actually giving out, and slipping the rider off behind-a prac VIA DOLOROSA. 107 tice not consistent with her dignity or comfort. The last one that we got would bolt off to the right or left, seeming to have an insane desire to mount impracticable places by the road-side, or plunge down into all sorts of holes and ditches, any thing, in fact, except to go ahead; but with Whitely on one side and myself on the other, armed with olive-wood sticks, cut on the mountain (I have mine yet), we succeeded in getting along after a fashion; and this was the style of our locomotion in and around the Holy City, until we found horses to suit us, of which I shall speak directly. It was not strange that the shopkeepers in the bazaars soon became acquainted with us, and that the venders of relics about the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who with the crowd of importunate beggars make the court a veritable den of thieves, learned to recognize our party. We lived in our own hired house on the Via Dolorosa. Above us the street was arched over, and yet beyond this was the Porta Judiciara, the Arch of Judgment. Many of the narrow streets of Jerusalem, as well as other eastern cities, are thus covered with the upper floors of houses extending across them. The Via Dolorosa is not a street, but consists of parts of many streets, and a line drawn through some houses. This is the traditionary line of the way which Christ walked from the house of Pilate to the place of crucifixion. Parallel with the eastern part of it is another way, in a narrow street, which is supposed to have been traversed by the Virgin Mother at the same time. The Way of Grief commences in the street which leads up from the gate of St. Stephen, on the east side of the city, at a point near the site of the ancient tower of Antonia, where it is probable that the Roman power in Jerusalem was concentrated, and Pilate held hisjudgment 108 VIA DOLOROSA. hall. One of the most tasteful and beautiful chapels in Jerusalem (of the Flagellation), stands on the north side of the way, opposite the entrance to Pilate's house. The latter is the present residence of the Turkish governor, and opens, as did Antonia, into the temple inclosure. Coming up from Gethsemane one evening I stopped a few moments at this chapel, and found an intelligent monk in attendance, with whom I fell into conversation, and who accompanied me as far as the house of Antonio, along the Via Dolorosa, pointing out the various places of traditionary interest. The Arch of the Ecce Homo, a quaint old archway, with a room on the top, covers the street just here. Whether this stood in the times of Christ it is at present impossible to affirm, but I see no reason to doubt it. The great age is certain, both of the supporting buttresses and the central arch. The street here runs between deep walls, which, as well as the arch, are of ancient times. My companion affirmed nothing of the various places which he pointed out. " They say," was his constant remark; and on asking the evidence, he replied, "It is the tradition: I believe it on that; I don't know it any other way." The reader will please take it on this authority. Close to the arch is the spot where Christ fell the first time, and a breach in the wall made by the beam of the cross. Just here he said " Salve, mater," to the weeping Mary, and a little further he fell again. Before reaching the corner of the street that comes down from the Damascus gate, a slight bend in the street takes place, on the spot where Simon the Cyrenian was compelled to take the cross, and, notwithstanding this relief, the Saviour fell again, just at the corner. As I am speaking of this street, I pause to remark that the right side of it was, at the time of my visit, remarkable for several ancient archways on which the earth of ' " ~ ~'~....~'~-~";"~';~'~'i-~L~n~ -J' —"~m~ll~~ ~ —~-~ —~-:~1,!_ -'_ i Ii_;_,'_'_ ";: —'_; "....~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1_ __~ 1~ I~ < II ~_ ~..,,.. ~-._'i' i;'""'%i ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?..~ ~ 3 r ~.~ ~' I i'"'):~~~~ iL~~~~~';~'s ~'~i~.~ ~i itt~~inlPI#61 ~ 1111 1I HOUSE OF VERONICA. 109 the hill of Herod's palace (erroneously so called), had slidden down and accumulated, making them actually subterranean caverns. They stood up but a little above the level of the street, which is here much filled up above its ancient level, being apparently crypts or vaults under some ancient building. The chambers were, of course, dark and damp, the entrance to them being a sharp descent of eight feet or more from the street. I mention them here to remark that they were stables for all sorts of animals-camels, horses, donkeys, goats, and sheep, which were driven down into them night after night, and, being public to all, were never out of use. Mr. Pierotti, the architect of the Terra Santa, commenced digging them away while I was in Jerusalem, to lay the foundations of a new Austrian hospital. Turning the corner to the left, we were in the street which leads from the Damascus gate into the heart of the city, but continued in it only a few steps. The building on the right here is the house of Lazarus, while that of Dives is a little beyond; and, turning to the right, again facing westward, we pass our residence, in the house of Antonio, on the left, and shortly after that of Veronica, who came out of it to give the Saviour her handkerchief to wipe his brow. He returned it to her with the impression of his countenance on the linen, and the handkerchief is one of the four great relics which now occupy the four balconies under the great dome of St..Peter's at Rome. Beyond this is the Arch of Judgment, the way now ascending the hill Akra, and thence it turned to the left, some distance along a street, and thence through the blocks to the Church of the Resurrection, entering that in the Armenian Chapel of the Cross, east of Calvary. The streets of Jerusalem have no names, and the reader will, at times, be puzzled to trace the traveler's 110 CAVERNS UNDER JERUSALEM. course about the city. There is no help for this, since a map or plan without street names is of no general use, and the stranger to Jerusalem must be content with acquiring a knowledge of the principal great divisions of the city and the gates. Of these, there is one on each side now in general use. I shall call them by their most common names, that on the north, Damascus, on the east, St. Stephen, on the south, Zion, and on the west, Jaffa. Beside these there is a small gateway on the south side, open every morning for the vegetable women coming up from the valley below the Pool of Siloam, and closed after noon. This is by some called the Dung gate, but without authority. It is known to the natives as the gate of the Moors, Mograbbin, and such I shall style it if I have occasion to mention it. Most visitors to Jerusalem have mentioned the story of vast caverns under the north-eastern part of the city, but few have found their way into them, and the statement is, by many, regarded as apocryphal. Moses, servant in the house of Antonio, had, at some time, visited them, and volunteered as a guide. We formed a party one afternoon, and sallied out of the Damascus gate, near which, on the east, is the entrance to these subterranean halls, which in extent, height, and depth, surpass all that has been hinted at concerning them. I am not aware that any book-writing travelers have hitherto found this cavern, and I do not know of any extant description of them, or theory about them. Turning short to the right as we left the gate, and following the city wall to the point where it crosses a high precipitous bluff of rock, we found a small, dark hole under this bluff itself. A remarkable fact in this locality seems to have escaped the notice of writers on Jerusalem. The hill on CAVERNS UNDER JERUSALEM. Ill which the north-east part of the city stands terminates abruptly at the north wall, but this is an artificial termination. I shall hereafter mention my reasons for supposing this hill to be a part of the Akra of Josephus, and I pause here to remind the reader of that historian's statement, that Akra was cut down by the Asmoneans so as to reduce its height. I shall speak of this again when I discuss the topography of Josephus. This hill has been cut in two by a broad passage, some hundred feet in width, running across the hill firom east to west, and leaving two high perpendicular walls of rock facing each other. In the face of the northern hill is the so-called Cave of Jeremiah, a manifest ancient quarry, and not a natural cavern, while in the face of the opposite or southern wall, over the top of which the north wall of the city rises, is another quarried cavern, of extent and magnitude surpassing the most extended quarries which I have seen in Egypt or in the world. This immense cavern was formerly open to the outer world by an entrance not less than two hundred feet broad, and probably forty or fifty in height. The accumulation of earth, in the cutting between the hills, has filled up this opening, so that immediately under the bluff of rock it is, in some places, quite closed with earth, and, in others, by a loose stone wall which excludes visitors, and which gives to the ordinary passerby the idea that the wall of the city, on this northern declivity, is carried over a solid rock ledge, reaching down indefinitely into the ground; although the fact is, as I have stated, that the wall passes over a great arch left in the natural rock. Lying on my face, and entering, feet first, the narrow hole, just large enough to admit my body, I pushed myself in some six feet, and then found my feet unsupported, so that, advancing slowly, I at length bent my legs down 112 VAST EXTENT OF CAVERNS. ward, and with due discretion dropped into the arms of Moses, who stood ready to receive me. Having helped in the other gentlemen, and Rev. Dr. Bonar of Scotland, who had joined us at the Damascus gate, we advanced a few steps, when we found ourselves on the edge of the earth which I have described as filling up the mouth of the cavern. It now fell off, at the natural angle of earth accumulated in such a manner, and we planted our feet in it, and slid rather than walked down the sharp descent of thirty or forty feet, and found ourselves in a mighty cavern, with a magnificent roof far over us, and vast pillars of unhewn rock supporting it. Without pausing to describe our slow and admiring passage through the ]abyrinthine halls of this cavern, I may state the results at which I was able to arrive without the aid of compass or measuring line. Nearly or quite all that part of Jerusalem which lies north of the Via Dolorosa and east of the street of the Damascus gate, leading therefrom to the old bath at the corner of the Via Dolorosa, stands on arches or pillars of rock in this subterraneous cavern. Moses assured us that it had an outlet somewhere near the Garden of Gethsemane, but this is impossible from the nature of things, and I verified its impossibility by a strict examination of the entire circumference of the excavation, finding everywhere the outer line of the cavern and leaving no gallery unexplored. The floor is irregular, often having deep pits out of which blocks of stone have been taken. The total descent in the deepest part must be at least a hundred and fifty feet. There was one deep excavation, in the white stone, the deepest in the whole cavern, at the bottom of which we found the bones of a skeleton, the remains of a man who was missing for many years from his home in the city, and who was at length found here, where he had evidently ORIGIN OF TIHE CAVERNSo 113 fallen from the lofty side which hung a hundred feet above the pit, and where his bones are still permitted to lie. In one place, nearly under the line of the street of the Damascus gate, we found water, clear, limpid, and bright, trickling drop by drop from the wall into a sort of rock basin. But I have seldom tasted a more vile stuff than it was. Although filtered as clear as crystal, it was the wash of the street, if not a worse drain from above, and in no sense a living spring. That the whole was a quarry was amply evident. The unfinished stone, the marks of places whence many had been taken, the galleries in the ends of which were marked out the blocks to be cut, and the vast masses cut but never removed, all showed sufficiently the effect of the cutting. But date or inscription we looked in vain for, and conjecture is left free here. I wandered hour after hour through the vast halls, seeking some evidence of their origin. One thing to me is very manifest. There has been solid stone taken from this excavation sufficient to build the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon. The size of many of the stones taken from here appears to be very great. I know no place to which the stone can have been carried but to these works, and I know no other quarries in the neighborhood from which the great stone of the walls would seem to have come. These two connected ideas impelled me strongly toward the belief that this was the ancient quarry whence the city was built, and when the magnitude of the excavation between the two opposing hills, and of this cavern is considered, it is, to say the least of it, a difficult question to answer, what has become of the stone once here, on any other theory than that I have suggested. We remained in the cavern some hours, and when we came out the sun was setting behind the hills near Neby Samuel, and we strolled slowly along toward the Damas 114 OUR HORSES. cus gate among heaps of earth which boys and donkeys were bringing out from the excavations for the Austrian hospital. I picked up a half dozen coins of the Roman empire among this rubbish, and I have no doubt that it would pay an antiquarian for a careful sifting. Who can say that the cavern which we explored was not the place where the hammers rang on the stone, which were forbidden to sound in the silent growth of the great Temple of Solomon? I have described our ordinary locomotion. We improved this after a time. I knew very well that gold would not buy an Arabian mare; that princes had tempted Bedouins with incredible sums to part with their royal animals, but that the blood of the desert birds is not to be purchased. Nevertheless, with months of travel on horseback before us, it was out of the question to attempt it with the ordinary horses of the country. I was not willing that Miriam should ride to her grave on any hack that an ordinary mukarri would furnish her. I had therefore told Abd-el-Atti, within a few days after our arrival in Jerusalem, to order all the purchaseable horses in and around' the city to be examined, and a proper selection brought to us for our inspection. The scene, when they presented themselves, was worth an artist's presence. Seven of the sorriest sore-backed animals that a New York omnibus company's stables could furnish would have been ashamed to be seen in company with these miserable ghosts of horses. Those we had seen at Jaffa were elegant beasts in comparison with these. " Are these all that are to be found?" "These are the best of them." "What in the name of heaven are the worst?" "Bismillah!" and a shrug of the shoulders that was almost French. ARABIAN HO RSES. 115 I shouted for Miriam's donkey, and we trotted off in disgust down the Via Dolorosa out of St. Stephen's gate, while we laughed at the melancholy end of our plans of purchasing horses. But further efforts on the part of my worthy dragoman resulted more satisfactorily, and in the end we found ourselves provided with the very animals we wished. Whitely's brown horse was a clean-limbed, active, and strong beast, while Miriam's chestnut was the perfection of a half-blood Arabian. Easy, swift, intelligent, and surefooted, he went up and down steep precipitous hillsides where I feared to follow with my dark bay Mohammed. That same Mohammed was a magnificent friend; the companion of scenes and adventures that will insure his being remembered so long as I remember the Holy Land. He had a devil in his eye that I was sometimes afraid of, but from the day I first Ibestrode him he served me faithfully, and no two friends ever became more thoroughly attached to each other than did I and the bay steed Mohammed. We had an excellent mount, altogether. Our horses were not of pure Arab blood. In this connection a few remarks may not be ill-timed on the subject of Arabian horses, to which my attention was drawn by this and by former incidents in my journey. There is but little Arab blood in any horses out of the Arabian country. Among the Bedouins themselves, it is so rare and valuable that the remark is literally true, in general, that gold will not buy a mare of pure blood. The attachment of the Bedouin to his mare, however, is not that affection which has been so fiequently the subject of poetry and prose. On the contrary, there is no sort of affection existing on the side of the man, and the beast receives only just so much care and attention as will insure her against illness and death. Seldom cov 116 ARABIAN HORSES. ered and never housed, it is often a subject of the utmost astonishment that the Arab horses do not perish from exposure. But for their incredible powers of endurance, they would undoubtedly do so. After a long day's journey, or a sharp ride of hours over precipitous paths, without food or water on the way or at the halt, the horse is left standing in the air, the saddle is not removed, being a substitute for clothing, as well as a preservative against sharp stones if she rolls, and while the rider lies under the shelter of his black tent, or on the ground wrapped in his boornoose, the steed shivers in the desert starlight; but she is no less ready for the road in the morning. Thus, day after day, enduring deprivation of water with almost the ability of a camel, the horse travels, and, if wounded, endures the pain and fever of the wound until actually exhausted; so that, frequently, a wound that would lay up any other animal, and that almost hopelessly, is disregarded by both horse and rider, until the end of a long forced march, when the steed, her work accomplished, sinks under the pain and exhaustion consequent on the long suffering. I have used the female pronoun always, because, as almost every one knows, the Arabs prefer the mare to the horse, and this I believe on account of the superior powers of endurance of the former. The khamsa (five) breeds of Arab horses are renowned in the world. But it would puzzle any one in this day to name them or tell their origin. The favorite tradition is, that they are descended from the five mares of the Prophet Mohammed, and that these came originally from one come mon stock, to wit, the Kohailah. Bedouins from the Hejaz give the names of the breeds as follows: the Tauaise, Mannikia Yulfa, Saklawee, and Kohailah; while the Annazee tribes, east and south of Damascus, who are much better informed, and from FINEST BREEDS. 117 whom the finest horses are obtained, say that the Merjoub, Mannikia Hedredji, Obeyan Sherakh, and Hedba, are the original khamsa. Other tribes omit one or two of these, and substitute others. There are numerous lines of mares derived from these; the Arabs tracing the genealogy by the mother, and not, as we do, by the sire, while there are thousands of crosses with common breeds that are of no special value or importance. The value of an Arab mare is literally not to be estimated in gold, since no amount of money will effect the purchase of one of the pure blood. This fact arises from causes that are manifest to one who knows the Bedouins. In the first place, money is of no use to an Arab. He needs very little for his ordinary purposes, and more would be an incumbrance-to be buried, given away, or lost. His mare is his life. With her he is free to travel on the desert, to fight or fly, to rob his legitimate enemies and protect his friends. If he should exchange his mare for gold he would be a fair subject of plunder, without the means of defence or escape, and having no home, would be at a loss to bury his treasure where it would be of practical use to him. In my work on Egypt (page 236) I have related an anecdote illustrative of these facts. The finest breeds of horses are to be found among the Annazee and Shaumar tribes east and south-east of Damascus, extending quite to the Euphrates. But it is only by accident that an Arab horse of pure blood is ever obtained from among them, so that out of hundreds of horses imported to England and America as Arabian it is not probable that until within the last year one horse of pure blood was ever brought into either country. I met a gentleman in various parts of Syria, who was from New Orleans, and whose object in visiting the East was to obtain these animals. He had by a fortunate oc 118 ARABIAN HORSES. currence obtained one mare, a noble animal, and when I last heard of him he was about to go down among the Annazee to look for others. I have already remarked that gold will not buy an Arab mare. The inferior horses, not of high blood, are always for sale, and bring prices, in the desert, varying from $150 to $750. The color of the Arab horses varies, but is most frequently white or light chestnut. They are not large, rarely above 15 hands high, and while at rest none but an experienced horseman would observe their points. But when in full motion they are glorious animals. " A high bred mare should hide her rider between her head and tail," saith the Koran, for the Koran is not silent on the subject of horses, and many of these animals nearly perform this duty. I had no expectation of purchasing one of these mares, and was, therefore, content with two fine animals of a low breed, possessing the qualities which I most desired for the road, gentleness and sound health. Once only had I any fault to find with the bay horse Mohammed, and this was but a trifle, for when I was riding, half asleep, over the plain of Esdraelon he lay down on the ground very quietly, so that I found myself standing when I was a moment before sitting. The chestnut never stumbled with Miriam but twice. Riding into the gate of Damascus he made a misstep on the pavement, a pavement that would have excused any horse for a misstep, and fell, luckily not harming his mistress, who did not lose her seat. He threw her down in the mud of the great plain of Baalbec, in a terrible storm, when death on the dismal wild was before us, and we were pressing on for dear life to some shelter. Of that I shall speak hereafter. 8. olOH10, 1io10o, Ziop, q1ib#^. IF I possessed a veritable portion of the dust that once was the right arm of Peter, or of Paul, I should be strongly tempted "to burn a fragrant lamp" before it. But since this might not be, Miriam has, all through our travels there, gathered flowers that have grown from the holy soil, and whose petals were once, perhaps, the dust in the red cheeks of the Magdalen or the pale calm face of Martha. I had scared up an old Jew, Mordeceai by name, who had considerable skill in carving stone into various shapes, and having, in my wanderings about the city, repeatedly seen fine pieces of marble and antique stones, we thought it desirable to collect some of these and have them cut into paper-weights and other shapes, for preservation. In the wall that bounds the temple inclosure on the east, and which overhangs the valley of Jehoshaphat, there are built many pieces of columns, laid on the wall with the round ends projecting like cannon and built in as the wall was laid up. Three of these are side by side not far from the tower and projection, known as the Golden gate, and from their character and location there is no reason to doubt that they formed a portion ofthe walls of the temple. The commonly-received idea is that they were columns 120 MOUNT MORIAH. of the gate which was called Beautiful. Travelers have hammered at these until the ends are mere projecting globes, and without hammer and chisel it is impossible now to procure pieces. The Vandalism that thus destroys relics of the ancient days none can more thoroughly detest and condemn than do I-but where I find such antiques fast disappearing before the hands of the Vandals, I am not so foolish as to refuse to take what I can, and I therefore borrowed a hammer and chisel of Antonio, and went out one morning and scaled off some pieces of them for a memorial. One column is a very fine porphyry and the other two are verde antique. The Mohammedan women, who sat on tombs around us, looked up, as the sharp sound of the hammer and chisel awoke the silence that always lies with the sunshine on the valley of Jehoshaphat, but cursed us without moving toward us. Three or four wandering Arabs looked on from a little distance and seemed to wonder whether we were attempting to break a way into the great inclosure of the mosk, but no one interfered with us. I found one course best everywhere in the East. It was to do whatever I had occasion to do as if I had a right so to act, and no one would dream of interfering. On this principle I made thorough examinations of many places ordinarily supposed to be inaccessible, inasmuch as the Moslems took it for granted that I had full right to look, measure, dig, or do as I pleased. Beyond this place, on the slope of Mount Moriah, where, since the fall of Jerusalem, the hill has been a mass of broken stone and earth, the ruins of the glorious buildings that once crowned the summit, we frequently loitered; and this day longer than usual, selecting pieces of colored marble, porphyry, and other stone, which to have polished by Mordecai for the purposes I have mentioned. After this, when within the inclosure of the great mosk, POOL OF SILOAM. 121 I found other pieces lying on the ground, scattered here and there, as they have lain in the earth for centuries. Passing down into the valley, I now sought out the fountain of the Virgin in a deep excavation under the pile of rubbish, which you reach by a descending flight of steps through an arched passage, and of which the peculiarity is a regular increase and diminution in the flow of the water, which some have taken to be an indication that this is the Pool of Bethesda which an angel disturbed. I see no evidence of this. Of the antiquity of the fountain there can be no doubt, since Dr. Robinson's wonderful exploration of the subterranean channel, connecting it with the Pool of Siloam. This channel passes under the hill, called by Josephus Ophla, the southern extremity of Mount Moriah. Following down the valley of Jehoshaphat, turning around the point of the hill Moriah, and coming a little way up the valley between it and Zion, I found myself standing by the Pool of Siloam, and descending into it, we bathed our eyes in its soft waters. The pool is an excavation about fifty feet long by twenty wide, and as many deep, walled up with stone, and having several columns lying in and around it, as if they once supported an ornamental building. The subterranean passage from the fountain of the Virgin enters the upper end of it, which is dug in the side of the hill Ophla. There was about two feet depth of water in the pool. It ran out below into a canal, cut in the rocky point of Ophla, around which it flowed, with a musical gurgle not often heard about Jerusalem, and watered the gardens in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where it was quite lost. In regard to the antiquity and genuineness of this pool there is no doubt, inasmuch as Joseplus locates it at the extremity of the valley of the Tyropreon, where we now find it. The early fathers, and all history, have contin- 122 M OUNT' ZION. ued to call it by the name first used by Isaiah, and the termination of the rock-hewn aqueduct, which Robinson so perseveringly and successfully explored, is sufficient evidence of the precise location. Not far below this pool, is an old tree, which was old three hundred years ago, and is said to mark the spot of the martyrdom of Isaiah. Turning up the valley of the Tyropeon, by a road that can be likened to nothing out of Syria, while the loose stone lay a foot deep in the path and rolled under our feet at every step, we crossed the valley near the Gate of the Mograbbin, and followed up the road directly under the south wall of the city to Mount Zion. Outside the walls, Mount Zion is occupied by the Christian burial-places and a small collection of houses, one of which is a mosk, and the seat of curious traditions. The basement of the mosk is generally unaccessible to Christians, and is said to contain the tomb of David. Many Christians have entered it, and say that there is nothing to be seen in it worthy of description. We paused for a few moments at the grave of Cornelius Bradford, an American who died in Jerusalem, and lies buried among the Latins, on the hill. Turning then toward the houses, we observed, on the western side of them, some women kneeling and kissing a stone wall, and weeping bitterly. I did not then know, as I afterward learned, that this was a traditionary site of the house of Mary, the Virgin Mother, and the place where she died. Beyond it was the spot now known as the Coenaculum. This building, said to contain the tomb of David, and also the room in which Christ instituted the Last Supper, is one of the oldest in Jerusalem, and deserving of much more regard than it has yet received. Cyril mentions a building on this spot where the apostles were said to have been assembled on the day of TOMB OF DAVID. 123 Pentecost, and this may be the building to which he refers. Later than that it was called the Ccenaculum, and said to contain the pillar to which Christ was bound when he was scourged. This pillar is now shown in a building near by. The story of the tomb of David is probably of Mohammedan origin. The reader who has consulted Benjamin of Tudela, will remember the strange story told him by Rabbi Abraham of certain Jewish workmen, on Mount Zion, digging for the governor, who opened a vast hall of magnificent proportions and decorations, containing the tombs of David and Solomon, with all their riches. A voice of thunder and a storm of wind drove them back from entering it, and it was closed up and never reopened. This fable is in keeping with a tradition still held by the Jews of Jerusalem, that the tomb of David is on Mount Zion, and that his coffin is unapproachable for the glory that surrounds it. The belief that David himself is the Messiah who is to come and reign, of course adds to their faith in this tradition. Many of them believe that this building, of which I now speak, covers his tomb, a belief not a little encouraged by the fact that the Moslems forbid their approach to it, and they are totally ignorant of its contents. We found an imp of blackness in attendance to prevent our descending into the lower part of the building, but we had free right to look at the large upper room, called the place where Christ celebrated that last sad ceremony. It is a large, cold room, dingy and melancholy, with no furniture; having a mihrab, or niche, in the south side, to direct the faithful toward Mecca, and another on the east, around which the Christians sometimes assemble for worship. Near the Zion gate we entered a large isolated building, which is an Armenian convent, and interesting only as containing in its court-yard the tombs and monuments 124 AMERICAN JEWS' HOSPITAL. of the Armenian patriarchs and bishops of Jerusalem. Within a little chapel, a rock, which is built into the altar, is called the stone that closed the Sepulchre of the Lord. They also pointed out to us the spot where Peter stood when the cock crew, or where the cock stood when he (the cock) crew, I am not now quite certain which-and showed us a pillar, which claims to be the pillar to which Christ was bound for flagellation, in opposition to one in possession of the Latins in the Chapel of the Apparition, and sundry other relics which are probably of quite modern origin, It had been my intention to return to the house from this place, but I wished to linger awhile among the tombs on the hill; and accordingly, sending Betuni for our horses and luncheon, we came out of the convent and sat down on the western edge of the hill of Zion, looking down at the lower Pool of Gihon, where tradition says David saw Bathsheba bathing, and across the valley at the new works going on for the building of a great Jewish hospital. The credit of this work is due to American Jews, and especially to the late Mr. Touro of New Orleans; but as Sir Moses Montefiore is the agent of the disbursement of the money, the fact that it is an American work is entirely concealed from travelers, and not even the resident English missionaries to the Jews appeared to be informed on the subject. In conversation they always spoke of it as " Sir Moses's new hospital," and it was only by an accident that I learned what it really was. On the arrival of the horses, we rode up the valley of Gihon to the upper pool, a large square pool, walled up with stone on its four sides, doubtless ancient, which lies north-west of the city, and was now about half full of muddy water. Hence, striking across the ridge to the Jaffa road, we devoted the afternoon to tracing out the line of the ancient third wall, and then to a long, invigor JERUSALEM OF OLD. 125 ating gallop down the valley of the Terebinth, whence, in the twilight, we found our way back to the Jaffa road, and approached the walls of the city. Jerusalem is inclosed in high and stately walls. I know no more reverend scene than it presents to one approaching its closed gates at night, for then it seems like the Jerusalem of old times, a spectral city, to whose mighty heart he demands admission. Darkness had settled on all the land as we now approached the north-west corner of the walls. Doubtless, in old times as now, the closed gates shut in the inhabitants, and without all was calm and still in the hush of the night. Itwas an involuntary imagination that then and there made me for an instant forget that I was a cold modern man, of these faithless latter years. I was a traveler approaching the Holy City, in the day of its great glory. Those dim lights here and there, faintly visible, marked the spot, and yonder, indistinctly above the dark mass, I saw the towers and battlements of the temple. A silence, profound as that of death, except when broken by the wail of a dog that lay outside the gates, reigned everywhere. Within were the throbbing hearts of thousands, and men's souls were moved as never before since God made man. For in the afternoon there had been sudden darkness, when it should have been broad sunshine in Jerusalem, and men had met, walking in the gloomy streets, the dead men of other days-the men whom they had wronged, and whose graves they had believed contained under eternal seal the stories they now heard hissed from their thin and shriveled lips, along the marts they once frequented. There had been, too, on the outer side of those walls a scene, the like of which had not been known in all the history of the sons of Jacob. One of their fellow-men, the son of a poor carpenter in a remote village, who had from time to 126 JERUSALEM OF OLD. time startled their ears with words of sublime import in the temple, had, by the influence of the chief priests and others, been seized, tried, and summarily condemned to death, and in the very hour of his condemnation led out of the walls and crucified. Such scenes were indeed not uncommon, but there were circumstances attending this which made it of extraordinary interest. For those who were present related that, when in the agonies of death, he had cried with a loud voice; that then there was the earthquake which all had felt, and then the profane gaze of the multitude penetrated to the holy of holies of the temple, thenceforth no longer sacred, but now forever common; and then the dead arose, as if to signify that his death had power to give life to man. All Jerusalem rang with the startling story. Men talked of it, as it was said the commander of the Roman guard had talked, saying that certainly this was a just man, certainly a Son of God. But within a secret place in the city there were gathered a few, men and women, humble and unknown among their fellow-men, whose names were destined to go down the rolls of time, and to be forever on the lips of men in eternity. Of the agony and pain of those sorrowing hearts no human hand can paint the immensity. Each sound in the street startles them-each passing footfall sends a shudder of fear through every frame; and yet with intensest interest they crowd around and hang upon the lips of Mary of Magdala, who relates how the cold hands lay passive as she wrapt them in the clothes, how the weary feet were done with long, sore travel, and she bound them up in fragrant linen, what divine lustre, what a smile of glorious hope rested on that ineffable countenance when they hid it away, and lifted him for the Sabbath rest to his rocky couch in the garden sepulchre. Alas, that he who had JERUSALEM OF OLD. 127 not where to lay his head, at length had found a pillow of rock for everlasting repose. I looked up at the walls as I approached them, but the warder had left his station, and in the tower below was talking with his fellows of the day's scenes, and of his own emotion when he thrust his spear into the side of the dead victim. And then my eyes swept down the gloomy shadows east and west, and I saw one spot where there was the darkness as of a clump of trees, and I knew that within it, in the rocky ledge that ran near there, was a tomb, but the door was closed with a great stone, and a guard sat near it, and one with another wondered who he was that lay within cold, and pale, and dead, nor did the crowding myriads of angels make themselves visible to men, but gloom, and silence, and profound repose were around the sepulchre. The scene was visible before me. This was the Jerusalem, changed indeed, but still Jerusalem of the mountains, Jerusalem of the sons of Israel, of the disciples of the Lord. The vision swept by me as we advanced at a gallop down the slope to the Damascus gate, and made the old walls ring to our voices as we shouted for the guard. "Hush," said Miriam, and then she shouted. Her voice went ringing in the Cave of Jeremiah and along the northern wall, and died away down the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then the solemn silence again took possession of every thing, and we stood in respectful attendance, I had almost said awe, before the frowning walls. Then Whitely hammered with his whip-handle on the doors, and I made a shrill hunting-whistle ring in the old gateway, and at length the sleepy guard awoke, and heard the magic word bucksheesh, and the great valves swung on the silver hinges that we made for them, and we rode into the dark streets of the city. 128 THE VIRGIN'S FOUNTAIN. I remember the dreams of that night with the utmost clearness and distinctness. Going down that morning into the fountain of the Virgin, I had found at the bottom of the steps an old woman, filling a huge jar with water, which I had helped her lift to her head. All night long her face haunted me, for she was Christian, and I had seen it plainly in the light that came down the gallery. She was like an old housekeeper, who in my childhood was wont to hold me on her knee and tell me stories out of the Arabian Nights; and all night unconscious that I was Braheem Effendi in Jerusalem, I was a boy again in the old house by the river, and troops of genii, and black servants of Haroun El Raschid, were surrounding me at the call of my old nurse, who now wore a plain cap as of old, and now with streaming hair and a water-jar on her head, was the old woman of the Virgin's fountain. I _____~~~~~i~ 9. dJLiece Sle dI)Jpf. SILENT and thoughtful in the Sepulchre, lingering in the garden of the Passion, under the old olives, or climbing the steep sides of Olivet and pausing to look back on the holy Jerusalem that lay behind us; standing on the summit of the minaret and looking into the gorge of the Dead Sea, whither the hills went rolling downward, or, pleasantest of all, loitering along that pathway among the olives, and along the ridge of the hill that extends from the Church of Ascension to the village of Bethany, the path that he often walked in the mornings and evenings going to and returning from the house of Martha and Mary; in one or the other of these spots, every tree, and stone, and flower of which told us stories of his daily life and human affections, his final sufferings and his triumph, we found ourselves either in the morning or evening of almost every day. I first went to Bethany on foot, by the path around the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, and having no guide, found out for myself the reputed tomb of Lazarus. Bethany is on the eastern slope of a spur of the Mount of Olives. It is not, strictly speaking, on the Mount of Olives itself, unless we are to understand that this hill extends more than a mile and a half, and includes all the 6* 130 BETHANY. numerous spurs and ridges that go from it to the eastward. The village is now a collection of half-ruined stone houses built almost on top of each other, and in a shady pathway among the buildings, or rather behind them on the hill-side, we found the opening of the so-called tomb. The tradition which makes this the spot where one of the greatest miracles of Christ was performed is of a very early date. The skeptic who delights in disbelief has only to say that there is no satisfactory evidence of the authenticity of the spot, and turn away in disdain. Not so I. This was the village of Martha and Mary; and, somewhere here, the Lord of heaven, with human heart and human eyes, for the comfort and joy of mourners in the weary world thenceforth forever, bowed his head and wept. Yea, there are pomewhere here, stones that the tears of Jesus fell upon; and, in the silent sunshine that lay like a dream of glory on the hill-side, I heard the echo of his sigh. Here that voice was heard, in tones which men thought intended to reach the ears of Lazarus who slept, but which rang on the distant hills of heaven, and called him back from those sublime abodes. Yea, just here. We have read the story together often in our old home, my friend, and we have talked a hundred times of the scene when they rolled back the stone, and Jesus said, " Come forth," as calmly as if his voice were not intended for those infinite distances to which Lazarus had departed. We have seen the pale Martha and the loving Mary, gazing with starting eyes and countenances of intensest anguish on the open sepulchre, and we have heard the wild cry of joy unutterable with which they sprang to his arms, and clasped him close, and kissed back the stammering questions of astonishment wherewith he again looked on the men and the hill-side of Bethany. I was there! Again the scene was before me. GRAVE OF LAZARUS. 131 I was content to believe that this was the tomb wherein he lay, and this the spot where the Lord welcomed him back to earth and human endurance for yet a little while longer. I say I was content to believe it; for I felt little interest in fixing on the identical spot, since it was enough for me to believe that this was Bethany. Inasmuch as it was somewhere here, and it did no harm to believe that it was just here, I was willing to believe it. The steep hill-side is walled up with stone around and over the doorway, to keep the earth from falling and closing it. The doorway is supported by large stone, and on entering we immediately commenced the descent of twenty-six steps, which took us down to a chamber twenty-two feet below the level of the doorstep. This measured eleven feet by nine, with an arched roof seventeen feet high in the centre. Descending three feet more by a door at the side of this chamber, we were in a small sepulchral room in which doubtless some one of old times has rested, and I see no objection to saying that this some one was the brother of Martha and Mary. Coming up from the cold and damp chambers of death we rejoiced in the sunlight and the blue sky that overhung the spot. So we sat down on stones, or on the ground; and, while one read aloud the thrilling story, the others, without difficulty, recalled the persons and scenes. A group of villagers gathered around us, and stared with curious eyes, and listened with curious ears, to our strange language. A little girl, not ungraceful in appearance, brought to Miriam a cup of cold water. The incident was scriptural, and we marked it so; but, when Miriam had touched the cup to her lips, all scriptural notions were astounded to flight by the old sound, " Bucksheesh." Across the road from the tomb, I found a ruin which appeared to be an ancient Mohammedan 132 C HURCH OF THE ASCENSION. wely, or tomb; and the earth had accumulated around it so that it was ten feet under ground. This led me to a closer examination of the tomb of Lazarus; and I became satisfied that the same increase of ground had taken place here, possibly from the level of the roof of the first chanmber; but pious care has constantly kept the stairway clear, and increased the number of steps as it became necessary. The doorway must necessarily be modern; that is, of some period within the later centuries. In these old lands, the Crusades appear events of modern times; as in Egypt, the infancy of Christ there appears as a thing of yesterday, in comparison with the relics of the days of Abraham. Again, and yet again, we walked that mountain path to Bethany, and gathered flowers along its sides, to be lifelong memorials. It was there that he talked with his disciples; there, the fig-tree withered at his command; it was on that path that he mounted the ass, and rode triumphant into the city, amid the acclamations of the people; the very people, perhaps, who, a few days later, shouted, " Crucify him." It was somewhere along that path that he led his disciples, when the bending heavens opened to receive him, and the angels of God conducted him to his White Throne, Every inch of it was hallowed ground; and there was a sanctity about it, that, in my view, surpassed all other places around the Holy City, and made it second in interest only to the Holy Sepulchre. The Church of the Ascension, on the Mount of Olives, is of early date; not later than the period of Constantine. Of course, no one of reasonable mind connects the footprint in the rock, which the Mohammedan keeper of the mosk shows you for a consideration, with that event which the church was built to commemorate; but I see no reason to doubt the truth of the tradition which locates the ascension on this spot, PLACE OF CHRIST'S ASCENSION. 133 The objection offered to it is, that the expression of the Evangelist, who says, that he led them out "as far as to Bethany," is not met by a location on the very summit of the Mount of Olives, over Jerusalem, more than a mile from the present village, and probable site of the ancient village, of Bethany. But I think nothing can be more clear than the probability that Bethpage and Bethany were villages with extensive tracts of land around them, reaching to and adjoining one another. Bethany may well have included the entire Mount of Olives, or have approached so near it, as to be virtually the same. This, I think, is rendered certain, by the account of the riding into the city on an ass's colt, which is given in Mark, xi. 1, and onward. The expression here used is, "They came nigh to Jerusalem unto Bethpage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives;" quite sufficient to establish the fact that Bethany was actually at the Mount of Olives. But the statement in the 12th verse of the 1st chapter of Acts, describing the disciples after the resurrection of their Lord as returning " unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey," sufficiently settles that the ascension was from this mountain, and leaves open only the question how far does the mountain called Olivet extend, for the evidence of all history is abundant that the hill directly over the valley of Jehoshaphat is and always was so called since the days when "David went up by the ascent of Olivet and wept as he went up," and all the people "went up weeping as they went up," for the rebellion of Absalom. The hill, on the slope of which the ruined village of Bethany now stands, is no more the same hill with this Olivet than MIoriah is the same with Zion. The distance from ope to the other is more than an English mile, and the continuity of the ridge is broken by deep depressions, 134 PLACE OF CHRIST'S ASCENSION. interlocking valleys and all the ordinary obstructions which would cause the hill to be called two, three, or four hills. But the ancient Bethany of Martha and Mary and Lazarus was located fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem, as far as the present village, and yet Bethany was at the Mount of Olives. It appears to me that we can reconcile these facts well enough, and only, by supposing that Bethany as a locality included farms, country seats and grounds, which extended quite to the summit of the Mount of Olives, while the village and the residence of the friends of our Lord was located as we now find it. At all events, if Bethany was at the Mount of Olives, and that mount "nigh to Jerusalem," and Christ led his disciples out " as far as to Bethany," I see no reason to dispute the assertion of any man who tells us that this church marks the spot of the ascension, since it is on the very summit of the Mount of Olives. The voice which declares the spot to be such is of the third century, for the church was built before A.D. 330, as even the most skeptical Orientalists agree. I shall elsewhere speak of the absurdity of men of the nineteenth century disputing on sacred localities with the men of the third, whose grandfathers had heard the preaching of Peter, and knew men who saw the crucifixion, and had heard from the Eleven the story of the ascension. If there be one spot on all the earth's surface where man's devotion would hallow the very clods, and patriarchs lead their children to tell them the solemn story of its sanctity, it is the spot where the disciples, just wakened to the grand idea of their Lord's resurrection, and the mighty achievement of a world's salvation, beheld him last as the white wings of his angels enfolded and hid him. The Christians of the early centuries were less than human if there was a day when they were not found kneeling on that spot. The heart of every man, not to AROUND JERUSALEM. 135 say every Christian, tells him that the very promise of the angels in white apparel that this same Jesus should so come in like manner as they had seen him go into heaven, would keep them ever after on that spot " gazing steadfastly" toward the heaven that had received him. I can not admit the possibility of an error in that locality within three hundred years after the ascension of the Lord. It was on our return from Bethany one Friday afternoon on horseback that we made a complete circuit of Jerusalem. Whitely proposed to try our horses on a steady run, with only such interruptions as the ground would make necessary, and this " encompassing of Jerusalem" we accomplished. We started from the tomb of the Virgin in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where the bridge crosses the dry bed of the brook Kedron, at the corner of the wall of Gethsemane. Miriam sat on a rock under the shadow of the wall of the garden and waited our return. The pace was easy as we ascended the slope of the hill toward the gate of St. Stephen. Turning off to the right we increased our speed as we surmounted the ridge, and passing among, and, I am afraid I must say, over some Moslem tombs, rounded the north-east corner of the walls at a rattling pace, which we kept up till we passed the Damascus gate, in the middle of the north wall of the city. lere the gentle rise and hard road toward the north-west corner gave us a chance for a fair run. We went neck and neck across the highest point of the ridge and turned down the valley of Gihon into the great Jaffa road. Arabs and Christians cleared the way as we approached the Jaffa gate, and we made a terrible scattering among a group of Greek women who sat on low benches in the sunshine that warmed the western wall. As we passed the gateway the guard turned out to see the race, 136 LEPERS. and we went up the slope of Mount Zion in grand style, Mohammed leading a full length, and both horses doing gallantly. As we turned the south-west corner I was for a moment puzzled as to a path through the Christian cemetery, not knowing which would take me by the Zion gate, and as I hesitated Whitely went by me like a whirlwind, cleared the rocks that lay in front of the new Protestant cemetery at a flying leap, and led the way in a short turn around the "house of Caiaphas" and by the gate of Zion down toward the Bab el Mograbbin. Here the speed necessarily slackened. The sharp turns and uncertain paths through the valley of the Tyropceon and over the point of Moriah bothered us both. We rode on side by side, without breaking the run, and turning the south-east corner of the temple wall and of the whole city, had a long slope down to the second bridge over the Kedron near the tomb of Absalom. Here the speed became tremendous and Jehu's ghost might be pardoned for rising to behold us as we crossed the dry bed of the brook, passed the monolithic tomb, and drew up at the wall of Gethsemane, where Miriam had waited just twenty-eight minutes since we started in the other direction. It is therefore possible to ride on horseback around the walls of Jerusalem without breaking a canter, but I must add, not without some risk to your neck. The horses were not blown. We mounted again in a few minutes, and riding back to the Zion gate entered the city there, our object being to see the small community of lepers who inhabit an isolated collection of huts just within that gate. The disease now known as leprosy may be the same that was so known in Scripture, but does not answer our ideas of it. These lepers intermarry only with each other. The children seem healthy and grow to maturity without disease. It shows itself in adult life, and at length limbs JEWS' QUARTER. 137 become distorted, bones disappear, features vanish from the face, and a horrible object, a mass of loathsome disease and deformity lies in the street or the gate to demand, by its silent horror, the charity of the well and strong. I met often, in Egypt, with cases of a disease more like what I imagined the ancient leprosy to be, but I saw none of it in Syria. This was a drying and whitening of the skin usually commencing on the breast and progressing over the entire body, resulting in painful sores and entire prostration of the system. It is considered incurable by the natives, and they have great apprehension of it, but no aversion to persons who have it. The lepers of Jerusalem are a distinct class. It is a subject of wonder that they do not run out, totally isolated as they are from all the other population. Sending our horses homeward, we walked through the Jews' quarter, which is on Mount Zion. Many pretty faces, bright black eyes, and olive complexions, looked out on us from the doors and windows as we went by, but we saw no men. It then occurred to me that it was Friday and they would, doubtless, be found at the place of wailing. I was never more thoroughly lost than now in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, and, the men being all absent, I could not find a person who understood Arabic or any European language that I could speak. The women were nearly all Polish or Russian. At length I succeeded in getting a boy to understand that I wanted to go to the Jewish place of prayer, and he led us into their principal synagogue. It was not what I wished, but it was worth the incident to find myself in a place that was the legitimate successor of those of old times in which the Saviour was accustomed to speak on the Sabbath day. But as the sun was going westward, and the Sabbath day rapidly approaching, we hastened toward the place of wailing. I found my own way, up one street, down another, 138 JEWS' PLACE OF WAILING. through narrow alley after alley, and at last emerged suddenly in a small paved court or place, seventy or a hundred feet long by twenty broad, the east side of which was the high wall of massive stones on the west side of the mosk inclosure, which is without doubt the same wall that stood here, inclosing the temple in the days of its great glory. In this place the Jews are accustomed to assemble, and with low murmurs of prayer to bewail the desolation of the holy places. Moslem rule forbids their nearer approach to their once holy hill. But this little spot, for many centuries, has been hallowed by their adoring grief. The impression made on my mind by the scene here witnessed will never be effaced. Men, women, and children, of all ages, from young infants to patriarchs of fourscore and ten, crowded the pavement and pressed their throbbing foreheads against the beloved stones. There was no formality of grief here. We waited till the crowd had thinned away and only a dozen remained. These were men of stately mien and imposing countenances. Their long beards flowed down on their breasts, and tears, not few, ran down their cheeks and fell on the pavement. There was one man of noble features that we especially noticed, whose countenance for more than half an hour seemed unmoved by any emotion of earth, saving only that of deep grief, too deep for expression. I approached close to him, but he did not look up at me. He sat on the pavement, his back to a wall of a house or a garden, and his face to the wall that once inclosed the shrine of his ancestors. I looked over his shoulder and saw that he was reading the mournful words of Isaiah, nor did I then wonder that he wept for the mockery that now occupied the place of the solemn services of the daily sacrifice, and the senseless Moslem traditions which, in vain, essayed to cloud the glorious history of the Mountain of the Lord. JEWS' PLACE OF WAILING. 139 Evening came down, and with the sunset the Sabbath commenced. Still some old men lingered, and still we lingered too, for the scene was one not to be witnessed elsewhere on all the earth, the children of Abraham approaching as nearly as they dared to the holy of holies and murmuring in low voices of hushed grief, and sobs of anguish, their prayers to the great God of Jacob. Some kissed the rocky wall with fervent lips, some knelt and pressed their foreheads to it, and some prayed in silent, speechless grief, while tears fell like rain-drops before them. I was deeply moved, as one might well be in the presence of this sad assembly; the last representatives, near the site of their ancient temple, of those who once thronged its glorious courts and offered sacrifices to the God who has so long withdrawn his countenance from the race. A more abject race of men can hardly be imagined than are the down-trodden children of Israel in the city of their fathers, except when they assemble here where the majesty of their grief demands respect from every human heart. The English mission to the Jews which is located here, is, I believe, in a measure successful. We met Bishop Gobat and several other gentlemen connected with the mission, at the residence of Mr. Finn, the British consul, where we passed a pleasant evening. Travelers have frequently expressed their obligations to Mr. Finn, for his courtesy and kindness which they have always experienced, especially American travelers, who have long felt the want of an American consul at Jerusalem, who can speak English and understand Americans.* The condition of the Jews intheir ancient city is abject * Since this was written I am informed that an American gentleman has been sent out as consul to Jerusalem. 140 JEWS IN JERUSALEM. in the extreme. Vast numbers of them are exceedingly poor. They have a custom which allows these to beg of other Jews two days in the week. They are limited in their demands to one para, about the eighth part of a cent. It is a remarkable fact, that in no country in the world, America, Europe, Asia, or Africa, have I ever met a Jew who begged of me; and I have no doubt every reader of this will be able to say the same of himself. The Jews take care of their own poor. There is one hospital for Jews in Jerusalem, established by a Rothschild, which has eighteen beds. There is, I believe, another, connected with the English mission; and there are some smaller of which I know nothing. The American hospital will be the noblest work by far yet accomplished for the benefit of the Jews in Jerusalem. Before it was quite dark we visited another part of the western wall of the area of the mosk and ancient temple, which is now very properly known by the name of its discoverer as Robinson's Arch, and with which the name of that distinguished scholar will be, I hope, forever connected as a monument of his learning and research. The huge stones which form this broken relic of a great arch were often noticed as doubtless portions of the ancient temple walls, but no one, till Dr. Robinson's visit in 1842, imagined them to be what he immediately named them, the remains of the great bridge, which Josephus describes as connecting Zion and the temple. One of the stones is crumbling to pieces; and a broken piece of this, which I added to my collection of relics, I think myself safe in believing, without doubt, a part of the identical walls of the ancient temple, possibly of the temple of Solomon. In closing this chapter I may add, by way of answer to the repeated queries that all men make about Jerusalem, that there are many portions of the wall that inclosed the ANCIENT JERUSALEM. 141 temple courts now standing; and there is no reasonable doubt whatever that they have never been moved since they were originally laid. On the eastern side of the inclosure, the wall that overhangs the valley of Jehoshaphat is largely composed of immense blocks of stone, some of which I found to measure twenty-three feet by five and a half, and their thickness, that of the wall, from five to seven feet. These stones are evidently of ancient times and in ancient positions. Of the relics of those times within the sacred inclosure I shall speak in another chapter. When I come to speak of the topography of ancient Jerusalem, I shall remark on the common error which supposes that Jerusalem was overthrown and demolished by Titus. For the present, it is enough to say that the prophecy of Christ, which is often referred to, of the total demolition of the stone structures of the temple, if at all literal, had reference only to the buildings themselves, which are now gone; but parts of the inclosing walls, and the crypts that formed the foundations of the southern parts of the temple, remain to this day. I./ o0. The 0oi1}P q10 fie 1 0o4b6 COUNT all the years of your life, my friend, and if you are any thing less than a century old, I will pledge you my word you have not lived in all those years so much as I lived in the short time I was in the city of David. To rise in the morning early, and go along the Way of Grief to the gate of St. Stephen, and out on the brow of Moriah, there to see the sun rise over Olivet; to go down and wash your eyes, heavy with sleep, in the soft waters of'Siloam, that they might never ache again; to climb the sides of Mount Zion, and come in by Zion gate, and so up the streets of the city to the Holy Sepulchre; to visit Calvary and the Tomb; to press your knee on the cold rock where the first footsteps of the risen Saviour were pressed; and then, as the twilight came on, and the moonlight fell softly in the valley, to go down to Gethsemane and pray! Think of days thus spent, of day after day of such hallowed life, varied with morning walks to Bethany, or an afternoon canter over the hills of Bethlehem, or two days' journeying down the way of the wilderness to wash off the dust of life in the Jordan! Think of all this, and tell me if I did not live years in hours while I called it my home, in the house of Antonio on the Via Dolorosa! It was always pleasant to visit the Convent of the Terra MONKS OF TERRA SANTA. 143 Santa, where I found a welcome from the excellent Superior and the Procurator-general, which added to my convictions of the genuine hospitality and kind feeling of Latin monks of the Holy Land. The convent occupies a large space in the north-western corner of the city, and furnishes abundant accommodation for Latin pilgrims, who, although once by far the most numerous of the visitors to the sacred places, are now, perhaps, the most rare. The immense processions that in old days poured down the banks of the Danube and, crossing the Bosphorus, came, foot-worn and weary, to the gate of Jerusalem, there to lie and wait until some wealthy pilgrim, like Robert, father of William the Norman, should arrive and pay their tribute or toll-money, without which they would perish on the very, threshold of their desired resting-place, have long since ceased to be known. Armenians, Greeks, and even Copts and Abyssinians, still throng the holy places about the week of Easter, but the Latin pilgrims from Europe are "few and far between." Circumstances that no human power can control have brought about this change. The poor pilgrims who have no means to pay their passage across the sea, can not now, as formerly, traverse the land. Greece, Austria, and Turkey offer impassable barriers to the wandering pilgrim from Italy; and men who attempted the barriers of the kingdom of Vienna, on the plea of being pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, would, especially if in any force, find their way to dungeons nearer home. But, to the credit of the Convent of the Terra Santa, be it said that no religion is a bar to the hospitality of its walls, and no man is forbidden to rest in it by reason of being Protestant, Infidel, or Jew. Before the establishment of hotels in Jerusalem, all travelers were in the habit of going to one or the other of the religious houses. In anticipation of such a necessity, I had provided my 144 LATIN CONVENT. self, at Cairo, with a letter from the Armenian bishop there, to the Wakil, or agent of the bishop, in Jerusalem, asking him to provide me rooms in the convent, on Mount Zion, of which I shall speak hereafter. I have already related that I took rooms elsewhere. I made an appointment one morning, however, for a special visit to the Latin Convent, to see certain things not often exposed to the gaze of travelers, and for the pleasure of seeing which, I was indebted again to my friend Mr. Pierotti, through whom I had become acquainted with the Franciscan brothers of the Convent of the Terra Santa. The war which has so long existed between the Greek and Latin churches in Jerusalem, is unhappily rivaled by an intestine trouble in the latter church, of the merits of which I had full explanations in repeated conversations with my friends at the convent, but which I have no space to go into, nor my reader the desire to hear. The result of it, however, has been, that for many years the treasures of the Holy Sepulchre belonging to the Latin church, and which formerly adorned the Sepulchre in Easter week, are now strictly concealed in the Convent of the Terra Santa, and the approach of the Patriarch, or any of his division, is most sedulously forbidden. The wealth of Europe has for centuries been lavished on the Sepulchre. As I have before remarked, I had been greatly disappointed at the brass and trumpery which I found there in place of the richness I had expected. The fact is, that each party, being desirous of retaining those treasures, and the Franciscans having possession of them, they are no longer exhibited to the public, but are kept in a concealed part of the convent. I entered the room of the venerable Superior, a noblelooking man, with whom I had had not a little pleasant intercourse. Seated in his diwan, I drank a glass of rosolio, and another of arrakee, and after chatting a few LATIN CONVENT, 145 moments, went up to the room of the Procurator-general, where I was accustomed to look at a splendid Murillo, a picture of St. John in the Wilderness, which adorned its wall, and in front of which we usually found much better tipple than John had in the wilderness. Indeed, I may remark just here, that it requires a very hard head indeed, to escape sober from an eastern convent. The excellent Fathers keep most capital wines and liquors, which they themselves use very temperately, if at all, but which they press most hospitably on their guests. At the Convent of the Terra Santa, in Jerusalem, after drinking with the Father Superior, and afterward with the Procurator-general, we seldom escaped except through the medicine department, where the reverend Father who had charge of the immense store of drugs and medicines for pilgrim use, always had a bottle of rare old arrakee, that flowed like oil, and of which he always insisted on your taking one of those small glasses that whet the appetite for a second and a third, so that, on my faith, it was a difficult thing to refuse the rosolio with which he gave you the coup de grace, and you had need to look to your brain if you would not lose command of it. I had a strong temptation always before me in the miserably disarranged library of the convent, which consisted chiefly of old Spanish theological books, but in which there were piles of unknown stuff that I much desired time to finger. It was some consolation, however, to reflect that, beyond a doubt, a hundred manuscript-seekers had been before me in the search, and it was not likely there was any thing to repay the labor of looking. We were led into a remote room where was nothing to attract attention, nor would a stranger have supposed that it contained such treasures as we found in drawers, and cases, and closets. In the drawers were the robes of 7 146 CONVENT T EASURES. the Patriarch, gorgeous with jewels and gold. I had no means of estimating their value, except by comparing them with some which I had seen in the Crystal Palace at Paris during the previous summer, and in comparison with these I had no difficulty in believing the monks, who stated the several costs of each dress as it was produced. " This was a present from the King of Spain. It cost a hundred thousand francs of France. This was given by Napoleon the Great. It was worth a half million. This was from the Emperor of Austria, this from the King of Naples;" and thus they continued until they had shown us something like twenty of those splendid gifts of royalty to the service of the Church of the Ascension. These robes were accompanied, each by its own proper suites of other articles of dress, which I am not able to name technically, nor the general reader to understand any better if I were. In a closet, fitted up expressly for it, were hung, pendent from the top, a number of lamps, of superbly-chased gold and silver, with which in former times it was customary to replace the brazen lamps of Calvary and the Tomb on important occasions. In drawers below these, were the jewels of the patriarchate, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, flashing on superb croziers and heavy rings. The Patriarch has obtained possession of the most valuable crozier, but the two which I saw here were estimated at thousands of dollars, how many I have quite forgotten. Indeed, I became puzzled with the splendor that surrounded me, and after coming away, found it difficult to recall the different articles I had seen, so many and similar in value were they. In one corner of a large room, lay a huge pile, which appeared like the corner of a tinman's shop, and had not my attention been especially directed to it, I should have thought it a collection of old tinware, pans and water CONVENT TREASURES. 147 leaders, gutters, spouts, and such chandeliers as I remember to have seen in old times in the church at Liberty, in Sullivan county, when I was taking trout on the Willoweemock. This proved to be a heap of solid silver, more in weight we believed than a half ton, consisting of various church ornaments, and especially of huge candelabra, standing over seven feet high from the floor, wrought in beautiful shapes of the solid metal, and heavier than one man could well lift. Near this, some rough doors, on a temporary closet being opened, disclosed an altar, or a shrine, of the same white metal, pure, rich, and elegant, more than six feet high and four in breadth, wrought in gothic and other forms, beautifully chased and finished. It was a present from some crowned head in years long past, and it has been treasured in a garret chamber of the convent fiom the day it was received. Whether it will ever see the light is a question I can not answer. It may lie there a hundred years, to be seen only by such chance travelers as father Stephano shall be induced to guide to the treasure room. The wealth contained in this chamber I have no means of estimating. Taking the value of the articles at their original cost, I have no doubt there were many hundred thousand dollars' worth; but in the present state of the faded robes, of which the value of many consists only in the jewels with. which the cloth of gold is studded, and the massive silver candelabra, and shrines, and altar furniture, which are to be estimated only by weight, I am totally without the means of giving even an approximate guess at the wealth of the Convent of the Terra Santa. I should not call it theirs, for they regard it strictly as the Lord's property, and the evidence of this is, that for years these heaps of gold, and silver, and jewels have lain untouched in the custody of the Franciscan brothers, and 148 RELICS AND ROSARIES. there is no one on earth to call them to account for any appropriation they might see fit to make of the value. Returning from the chamber of treasures, I wandered along the great gallery of the convent, where every little cell, appropriated to the pilgrim guests, had on its door a skeleton picture, by way of a memento mori, and at length arrived at the relic and rosary chamber, where the great trade in rosaries and articles of Jerusalem and Bethlehem manufacture is carried on. The shelves were covered with beads of every color and shape, wrought from the hard fruit of the Dom palm, which is in fact a variety of the so-called vegetable ivory; figures of the Saviour and the Virgin, and other holy characters, carved on the mother of pearl shell of the Red Sea; cups and crucifixes of the common stone of Jerusalem; paperweights and images in the black bitumen stone of the Dead Sea; rosaries, crosses, and various articles, made of the olive-wood of the surrounding hills. The store of these articles seemed sufficient to supply the world. They are wrought chiefly at Bethlehem, where, I may remark, in passing, the traveler will find the most skillful carver of shell, in the shape of Esaiu, a Christian under the protection of the Convent of the Nativity; but I may add, the traveler will find him much sharper than his illustrious namesake, and wholly disinclined to sell any thing for a mess of pottage that is not worth at least twice as much. Mindful of a number of friends in America who would prize these memorials, as well as of those who would not value them the more for having been laid on the Sepulchre and in the socket of the Cross, but who would use them as bracelets and similar ornaments, whose value would consist in the mere fact that they were made at Bethlehem, and sold in the Convent of the Terra Santa at Jerusalem, I purchased a pile of these curious beads, ARMENIAN CONVENT. 149 which, I am happy to say, the taste of my American friends has loudly approved, and I do not perceive that their reputed sanctity is any bar to their acceptance in good society at home. It is very certain that no one who possesses one of the olive-wood rosaries hesitates to relate to any one who sees it where it came from, and I have not seen any who desired to conceal the fact that it had been laid on the Holy Places. I went the same day to visit the Armenian Convent, and make a formal call on the bishop. The building occupies a large portion of Mount Zion, and the gardens run along the south-western wall of the city, almost from the Jaffa gate to that of Zion. Entering the gloomy archway of the convent, and lingering for a few moments- in the church, which is much the most rich and elegant in Jerusalem, we went up at length to the grand hall of reception, where we were informed that the bishop was engaged in the afternoon prayer in one of the chapels, and we sat down on the diwan to wait his arrival. lie at length came, a venerable man, with white and flowing beard, attended by four of his clergy, all simply dressed in plain black gowns, and all exceedingly polite and affable. The bishop insisted on giving Miriam his own seat in the cushioned corner of the diwan, where some shawls indicated the place of honor, while he took a seat at my side and talked in a very low tone of voice, and in the manner of a kind old man. There was a warming of the heart that I can not well describe whenever I approached those old guardians of the sacred places, and more perhaps toward this man than to any other, for the venerable appearance which he presented. He asked me about the bishop in Cairo, and then the news from the war, which, as late comers from the sea coast, we were likely to know of.' We inquired about the 150 SOAP. statistics of Jerusalem, of the number of Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews in the city, and on these latter subjects I found him abundantly well informed, and willing to give me the information. Moreright, who accompanied me, or whom I accompanied, for the appointment was his, engaged the old man, while I talked with one of the other clergymen. The talking on their part was carried on in Armenian, but the interpreter was able to speak very little English, and the conversation lagged. At this moment it seemed suddenly to flash through the mind of the bishop that we were from America, and he laid his white hand on my shoulder and said (I understood that of course by his tone, and needed no interpreter) "You are American?" Of course I assented. A smile passed over his fine old face as he spoke, and the interpreter gave it to me. "He says he has heard of America." " I am glad to know it. It is a great country." He wouldn't know that I was not original in that remark. But his next rather staggered me. I was watching his words, as was my custom when a man spoke in a language that I knew nothing about, and I distinctly heard a word I knew. "The bishop say, good soap in America." " Ye-es," thought I, as I looked in perfect amazement at the old man's black and deep still eyes. He couldn't be quizzing me. What the deuce could he mean by soap. I asked Murad, the interpreter, what he said. "He say soap." "Ye-es-don't he talk Arabic?-ask him to speak Arabic." It wasn't to be mistaken-the old man looked at me patronizingly as he said in pure dialect of the Hejaz, " You have good soap in America." IHe said so-sabone ARMENIAN CONVENT. 151 is soap ill every oriental tongue, and I had heard the word in his Armenian. But I looked in horror to Whitely and Moreright for help; and as for Miriam, she was absolutely buried, face and eyes, in the cushions, and I couldn't catch a sympathizing look. "Tell him, Yes"-and he told him yes, and then I added that we were celebrated for the article, but we did more in the soft soap line, importing our best of the hard sort from France. And then the good old fellow related to me how he had once in Stamboul bought some soap that came from America and found it capital. It wasn't soft, but it made his hands soft-and-and on the whole he agreed with me that America was a great country in the article of soap, and I didn't endeavor to enlighten him further on the subject of our magnificence. But as we came out of his room we received his farewell blessing, kindly given and thankfully received, for he was a good, simple-hearted old man. We brought with us very pleasant recollections of him. We climbed the staircase to the roof of the convent, and there beheld a view that I shall forget when I forget Jerusalem. Far down in the south-east was the deep gorge of the Dead Sea, and a storm that had been pouring its floods on the city had gone down there, and was sweeping through the hollow, where the rays of a crimson sun, just setting, were shining on it. It was as if the cities of the plain were consuming before our eyes, and the splendor of their burning were going up to heaven as we gazed. And then the storm went on, and the red light, that was not shining on Jerusalem at all, fell on the mountains of Moab, and they stood like hills of gold beyond the black chasm in which for so many thousands of years the executed vengeance of God has lain. The convent grounds are surrounded by dry walls of stone, which will attract the traveler's eye and cause his .052 CH A MP AG NE. wonder. A story is told thereof; that not long ago the Armenians having been long desirous to build a new convent and guest rooms, and having been refused permission, at length devised a plan to accomplish their desires. They invited the pasha to a feast, and when they had gotten him tolerably drunk on Champagne, which some Mussulmans do not think is wine within the prohibition of the prophet, he found a large pile of gold in his plate, and in the depths of his good feeling granted the desired permission to erect walls and inclose a building. The next day they commenced work, but he, now sober, unwilling to recall his permit, thought to render it useless by forbidding them to use mortar. They proceeded, nevertheless, with so much success, in building dry walls, that the prohibition was revoked, and they were allowed to go on in the usual way. The dry walls remain, as far as finished, a monument of their industry. So saith the story, which Armenians and Moslems agree (for once) in saying is a slander. I think it was on the morning after my visit to the Armenian Convent that we were seated as usual after breakfast in the dining room of our house on the Via Dolorosa, and I interrupted Whitely's reveries. " Wake up, Whitely. Rouse yourself, old fellow. You will vanish in a cloud of smoke some pleasant morning in Jerusalem." "What pleasanter apotheosis could one desire or pray for, O Braheem Effendi? Let me rest here in hopes of such blessed evanishment." He was seated in front of-no, he was all around the stove in the dining room, and he had piled in the olivewood stumps till it roared and blazed furiously. His chibouk was redolent of delicate Latakea, and Dr. Robinson's three volumes, Eothen, the Crescent and the Cross, Dr. Olin, and a Bible, were on his lap. TO THE TOMBS. 153 "I say, Mr. Whitely," asked a traveler, who by chance had come in for a call that morning, being one of a party that were up at the Mediterranean hotel, " can you tell me, Mr. Whitely, in what part of the Bible I can find that passage, that' Jordan is a hard road to travel?' We think of going down to the Jordan to-morrow, and we were trying to look up the passages in the Bible about it." "Reckon you'd better look in the Lamentations of Jeremiah," said —, who was seated in the deep window, bargaining for Bethlehem beads with a man in the court below." "For Jerusalem's sake, shut that window," shouted Whitely; " I should think the wind was fiom Lebanon this morning. Where are you going to-day, Braheem Effendi?" "To the tombs." " What tombs?" " Samson's and Gideon's, Jael's and Solomon's, John's and Mary's, and Salome's and Ruth's, and all the other women, and-" "Hang the women." "Unrighteous infidel! Well, then, the tombs of the Prophets." " Hang the prophets." " Scoffing unbeliever." Whereupon he threw the first volume of Robinson at me, and it went through the glass window behind me, and struck Ferrajj precisely between his white eyes as he stood looking up to Miriam, who was giving him some orders about her donkey. But it did not disturb the Nubian's temper, prince of good servants that he was, Ferrajj the trusty. He shook his head, picked up the book, and a moment later stalked into the room with a grin on his countenance, and handed it to Whitely, who was meanwhile puffing furiously at the end of his chibouk7* 104 TOMB OF HELENA. stick and flourishing an unopened bottle of claret, with which he threatened me if I dared approach him. " Ferrajj, get the donkey ready." " It's raining, sir." " Well-what if it is-are you afraid of wetting your skin? You would do well to take the donkey into the kitchen and get him ready there, then." Five minutes later the rain was over, and we found the donkey actually in the kitchen by Hajji Mohammed's fire, for the Nubian never could appreciate irony or a joke, and had taken my remark as serious. The tombs around Jerusalem have been so frequently described that I do not propose to devote any large amount of space to them in the present work. The most extensive and, perhaps, the most interesting, is that known as the Tomb of the Kings, but which is, without doubt, the tomb of Helena, widow of Monobazus king of Adiabene, who died in Jerusalem (having adopted Judaism) in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and with which all readers of works on Jerusalem are familiar. It is situated on the table-land north of the city, and is excavated in the rock, having a portico, from which the columns are broken away, looking out into a sunken court cut also in the rock. At some distance beyond this-a much greater distance, I very well remember, than we had imagined, for Whitely, Moreright, and I walked, while Miriam rode, and we were not a little fatigued by the expedition-we found the so-called Tombs of the Judges, a name perhaps derived from some one's idea that there were seventy niches in the tomb, that being the number of the Judges of the Sanhedrim. This is an extensive tomb, containing many chambers, each having rows of niches for bodies. But no indication whatever can be found of its date, and the interest connected with it is necessarily purely imaginary. The V A RIO S TO M BS. 155 same may be said of hundreds of rock-hewn tombs in the hill-sides, north, east, and south of Jerusalem. They abound everywhere. Whenever an upright rock was found for a doorway, they hewed into it a resting-place for the tired sons of Jacob. Here the men of those old times were accustomed to find that rest which all men, in all ages, have needed and found. It was at least a melancholy interest that I took in looking into these now empty chambers, and peopling them with the living forms of those whose dust had gone to dust within them, and was scattered afterward on the surrounding soil to become part thereof. In one I ventured the imagination that the stout arm of Joab mouldered, and in another I even dared fancy the presence of the beautiful Shunamite. Here those who had heard the wisdom of Solomon, who fought with Rehoboam, who saw the crucifixion of the Lord, slept after life. Somewhere, in the valleys, on the hill-sides around the Holy City, is even now the precious dust of such men as blind Bartimeus, who, though healed at Jericho, might well have followed his Saviour to the Cross, and wept his old eyes blind again at the Sepulchre; Lazarus, whom there was none to raise when he, old and weary, slept a second time; and of such women as Martha, and Salome, and Mary. Coming down the valley of Jehoshaphat and passing by the so-called tombs of Absalom, of Zacharias, and the Cave of James, and, on the hill-side near the village of Silowan, the monolith that is called the tomb of Solomon's Egyptian wife, we sought the hill of Aceldama, which lies south of the valley of Ben Hinnom, and opposite the extreme point of Ophla, which is the falling off of the hill of Moriah. The point where the valley of Ben Hinnom runs into the valley of Jehoshaphat is in many respects interesting. 156 AC ELD A MA. The Pool of Siloam lies on the inner side of Ophla, a short distance above the point of junction. The Well of Job, as it is called, lies in the broad valley below the junction. Its interest consists in the undoubted fact that it is the En Rogel of Scripture mentioned in Joshua xv. 7, and xviii. 16. Its present name Ayub is possibly from the founder of the Ayubites. The tradition which makes the slope and top of the.southern hill the Aceldama of the New Testament, dates from a very early period, but my reader perhaps feels as little interest as I in determining its truth. More engrossing was the present aspect of the hill, the slope of which is almost honeycombed with tombs, some of considerable architectural interest. The principal one of these is a tomb discovered not many years since, and barely referred to by modern travelers, who appear to have but glanced at its front, or only entered it to come immediately out. All these tombs were in fine positions. For there is taste in selecting the spot to rest. Could the men who slept here have realized their desires, it would have been the grandest spot for the morning of awakening on all the surface of the earth. Jew and Mohammedan alike believing that the Judgment would occur over the valley of Jehoshaphat, these sleepers, could they realize their hopes, would have come from the rocky doors of their graves, and beheld before them Mount Zion and Mount Moriah in all their stately grandeur, and the footsteps of the Judge on the Mount of Olives. It was a grand place to lie and wait the Judgnent. The first tomb that struck me as of special interest was one which opens with a plain front. The second room in this tomb was square, but the ceiling was dome-shaped, with a round spot in the centre, and radiating lines from INTERESTING TOMB. 157 it, the spaces between the lines hollowed out like the fluting of a column. The resemblance between this and the subterranean arches in El Aksa struck me forcibly. In the third room were two side niches with arched tops, and four graves. The three rooms constituted the tomb. The first or outer one being roofed with a pointed arch, hewn in the rock, and the front walled up. This tomb is now used as a stable, as indeed are all which are accessible to cattle. That touching and beautiful custom of the ancients, of visiting the tombs of the dead, and passing many hours of the day near them, is evidenced in this tomb by four small square windows opening from the outer into the second room. Visitors could sit in the outer chamber, and from the open doorway look up to the city, while they were not wholly separated from their dead who lay in the inner chambers. The next tomb which I shall speak of was to me by far the most interesting of those around Jerusalem, and I am confident will hereafter possess still more interest when it can be cleaned out and thoroughly examined. It is approached by a steep descending passage through the earth. The terrace of the rock on which it was formerly opened being now covered deep with earth, and the excavated passage admitting an entrance only by lying down and crawling in on the face, or sliding in, feet first. Within this tomb, hundreds, and I am safe, I think, in saying thousands, of the ancient dead yet lie in solemn repose. The first chamber measures eleven feet by eleven, and has the plain dome roof, twelve feet high in the centre, which is found in very few tombs, and which I think indicative of a cotemporaneous taste, not very remote from that of the tomb I have just described. From this room, two doorways on each side, except 158 INTERESTING TOMB. the front, six in all, each six feet high, open into as many chambers. Each doorway is carved with a plain moulding at the sides and over the top. Between the two doors on each side is a round half pillar left projecting; of one of which the upper part is cut off, as if to leave a niche for a lamp. Entering the first room on the right, I found the two sides of the doorway occupied by two couches left in the rock, as long as the human body, and deep enough to hold numerous skeletons which lay in them, where they seem to have been rudely scattered about by visitors. Over each couch the ceiling was arched; a style that is prevalent in the tombs about Jerusalem. Originally, I think, each couch was intended for one body, to be inclosed by a lid. This is the style of the Holy Sepulchre. The second room was precisely similar to this. The third, opening from the second side of the principal room, had couches on three sides, arched as described, and all full of bones. Under the rear couch an opening descended into a pit leading into a large chamber full of the dead, which I could not get into on account of the mud and slime. The fourth room has three couches, as the third; behind and over one of which, a square niche, eighteen by twenty-four inches, opened into a chamber whose size I did not measure, but which was piled up to the ceiling with the dead, as they had lain there and decayed, bones and earth; the earth that had been men, mingled in a dense mass, and apparently with lime. This niche is so high, that I could look into it only by standing on the couch over which it opened. I managed to climb into it, with great difficulty, and dug out enough of the bones to see that the room was shaped as Nos. 1 and 2, with two couches; but couches and room are filled with bones and earth. Room No. 5 was like Nos. 1 and 2. THOUSANDS OF THE DEAD. 159 Door No. 6 opens into a room once like Nos. 1 and 2; but the rear of it opens by a breach into several rooms of which I could get little idea, from reasons that will appear. Three of them were very large, and into them I crawled on my hands and knees, close to the ceiling, over piles of bones and earth; one dense mass, that crushed and crumbled under me as I advanced. I sat down on the pile in one room, and counted skulls that I picked up and threw into the most remote corner; I stopped at one hundred, and I saw no diminution. The passages leading from these chambers to others were filled to the ceiling with the same piles of decayed humanity. The most singular thing in all this was the perfect whiteness of walls and ceiling in this corrupt place. I attributed it to the probable fact that great quantities of lime had been used here. They looked as if white-washed the day previous. Who these countless dead were, is a question not to be answered until that day when every man will answer to his name and deeds. A natural suggestion to my own mind was, that this ancient tomb had been used in the middle ages to bury pilgrims, or, perhaps, the dead in the battles of the Cross. It had the appearance of a place in which they had been heaped at one and the same time, and the mass had settled a few inches from the ceiling in the process of decay. I sat, with pencil in hand, for some time in this dark abode of death, Miriam holding a candle for me to make notes; and I had scarcely finished when Whitely darkened the entrance, as he slid down feet first, and demanded how long we proposed to keep company with the old Jews. The idea was startling. Were they verily men of the times of the Lord? Was that skull the very skull of the man that walked the streets of Jerusalem the evening of that awful day, having been roused from his grave by the 160 PILLAR OF ABSALOM. earthquake? Why not? None answered me; none could answer me. Imagination had free rein here, and I was at liberty to believe them the followers of David, of Titus, or of Godfrey, as I thought best. Musing thereon we came to the modern Aceldama, a building that occupies a large space on the side of the hill, not far from this tomb, and which has been now long abandoned, and is empty. It is a deep excavation, walled up and arched over; but openings in each end of the top enabled us to look down in and see the fallen stone that once composed the walls, and here and there a bone; but no evidence of its ancient purposes-the burial of pilgrims who died in Jerusalem. From this spot the earth that is met with in the curious old Campo Santo at Pisa, and various other places in Italy, is said to have been carried. Returning up the valley of Jehoshaphat we now visited more carefully than before the tomb or pillar of Absalom, and others near it. We had often passed them, throwing a stone each time, in obedience to the custom, which thus expresses the detestation in which all good Christians and Moslems hold a disobedient son. The tomb of Absalom is a monolith, made by hewing a passage into and around a piece of the great rock wall on the east side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and then hewing into shape the piece left standing. The upper part of it is built up. The front is terribly battered; and what was once a square window is now a rough breach. Of the real date and object of this structure no one can affirm any thing, and the same is true of the tomb of Zacharias, a short distance from this, and of similar description. I should much like the time to excavate about this latter tomb, into which as yet no opening is known. It is probably below the earth which has accumulated about it. The tomb of St. James, or, as it is more properly called, ANCIENT COINS. 161 the Cavern of St. James, is a cave hewn in the face of this same rocky wall, the front being supported by two pillars, which derives its name from a tradition that the apostle lay hidden here during that time of terror which followed the scene in Gethsemane. These three, the most celebrated of the tombs around Jerusalem, are alike subjects for imagination. No inscription, definite tradition, or history affords any aid in determining their origin. Behind the tomb of Absalom is a subterranean tomb, called that of Jehoshaphat, which is kept closed, and in which the Jews of the city are allowed to claim a certain proprietorship. Of its contents I was unable to learn any thing; and I regretted much arriving one day a few minutes after it was closed by a Jew who had entered it. The common story is, that they keep here concealed a book of the law, and sundry valuable relics; but in a situation so exposed to night robbers I scarcely think this probable. The tomb, however, is closed, and the front heaped over with earth. It is described as having a fine pediment front, opening in the niche or trench around the tomb of Absalom. On the hill below, near the village of Silowan, is another monolith, hewn as the tomb of Absalom is, and said to be that of Pharaoh's daughter, who married Solomon. It contains two simple rock-hewn chambers, of no interest whatever. As I finished my examination of the tombs, and turned to go up the hill of Moriah, it occurred to me that the boys of Silowan are celebrated for picking up coins around Jerusalem, and I shouted to one of them, who sat perched on a rocky bluff, to inquire if he had any. The prospect of a purchaser brought down all the youth of the village; and I soon had literally hundreds of coins offered me, which I bought en masse, having then no time for examination to select those of value. The number of these 162 CATACOMBS OF OLIVET. found around Jerusalem is enormous. I have found many myself; and that day, having exhausted the supply at Silowan, I proceeded up the side of Mount Moriah, and looking on the ground as I climbed the steep ascent, I found a half dozen before reaching the top. There remains but one more tomb to be specially mentioned, outside the walls of Jerusalem, and this we visited on another day. We had been at Bethany, and returning over the Mount of Olives we paused on the summit to take that view of the east and the west that so often met the morning and evening gaze of the Saviour, on his accustomed walk. Having once more filled our eyes and our souls with the prospect, we descended the minaret-for it was from it that we had gazed-and paying the usual bucksheesh, were about to go down the path by the garden of Gethsemane, when the idea occurred to us, that somewhere on this hill-side was a cavern of curious construction known as the tomb of the Prophets, and by others as the catacombs of the Mount of Olives. An Arab boy offered to guide us, and descending south-west from the minaret, we found the opening of the cavern in an olive orchard, half way down the slope. The descent into it was through a hole in a rock which let us into a semicircular chamber, from which a passage-way entered the hill-side. This passage ended in a gallery which described an arc of a circle around the first chamber, and was crossed at half its length by a similar gallery between the chamber and the outer gallery. There was an irregular winding passage which left the chamber at the right and joined the end of this smaller gallery, and again proceeded from the opposite end of it in a long winding passage through the hill ending in the loose earth. One or two cross passages and three or four irregular small chambers com TO MBS. 163 pleted the excavation, of which no full idea can be given without a plan. These are the celebrated catacombs of the Mount of Olives, and seated in the remote part of the long winding gallery with Whitely and Miriam, a dim light in our hands scarcely shining on each others' faces, we for a moment thought them somewhat of an approximation to the accounts we had heard of them. I suppose them to be a sort of public catacomb, perhaps excavated for speculation purposes. But here as everywhere around Jerusalem, among the tombs, conjecture is our only course, and the mind and the body turn from these unknown tombs with unutterable emotions toward the Sepulchre of the Lord. Before leaving them, however, it is proper to remark that the descriptions of travelers have much exaggerated the splendor of them. That of Helena is described by grave and learned men as a monument of royal magnificence. The fact is that they are, one and all, very rude excavations, with some few ornamental carvings, but none possessing any great beauty or indicating either skill or taste, and as compared with the tombs of secondary class in Egypt, very inferior in all respects, while they are not at all to be compared with the tombs of the kings at Thebes, or of the priests and princes at Beni Hassan. ON one of those still and quiet evenings, when the sun had just gone down behind the city, we rode up the valley of the Kedron by the well of Joseph, returning from a long canter toward Bethlehem and down the way of the wilderness to Saint Saba. Miriam's horse was fresh, and champed the bit with as much spirit as when we started. Mohammed was pretty well used up, and the rein lay on his neck, while I myself, somewhat more tired than usual, drooped a little in my saddle and rode with my eyes fixed on the ground, every inch of which was sanctified by footsteps of patriarchs and apostles in the sacred ages. The valley of Jehoshaphat lay deep in gloom, although the last rays of the sun had scarcely left the summit of Olivet, and the minaret of Omar gleamed yet in the crimson light of the west. The tombs of the old Jews were silent in the darkness, and as we passed under the rocky heights of Siloam it appeared before us as if we were entering the valley of the shadow of death. The pathway winding under the tomb of the wife of Solomon and then crossing an open space opposite to the south angle of the temple wall, enters directly among the graves of the Jews, marked each with a heavy slab lying prostrate on the tomb, carved in Hebrew characters with BEN ISRAEL. 165 the simple story of the son of Israel. The steep slope of the eastern side of the valley is filled with these graves, where, for thousands of years, the children of Israel were accustomed, and are still accustomed, to seek that deep sleep that the weary always find. Miriam-was a little in advance, and the chestnut was setting his dainty feet down and lifting them up as if he, with true Arab feelings, despised the dust of that valley, when suddenly he threw his head up in the air and sprang out of the road, almost into the bed of the Kedron. Mohammed looked on in surprise, but was too cool to follow the young horse's example. A moment later the cause of the fright was manifest in a form that rose slowly from a Jewish tomb, directly by the road-side, and which a cooler head than Hassan's might have been pardoned for thinking a spirit. Betuni, who was close behind, rushed forward and began to pour out Arabic curses on the stranger, which I stopped as soon as I could get an audible word into the storm. I was passing on again in silence, when the stranger sank suddenly down on the grave with a moan that seemed verily as if life had gone out with his breath. I sprang from my horse involuntarily. I had seen enough of misery and pain in the East to make a woman's heart callous, but there was something indescribable in that form, and the moan of anguish, that impelled me to the man's side, as I had never before been moved. But when I approached him, he appeared to be past all sympathy, and I believed that the soul had verily sought the open arms of Abraham, those arms wherein so many of his world-worn children desire earnestly to find repose. "Run, Betuni, to the fountain of Mary, and bring water." I gave him my leathern pocket-cup, and he was gone in an instant, leaving me with the dead Jew, while Mir 166 3BEN ISRAEL. iam sat on her horse, by this time reduced to quiet, and patiently waited the result of my examination. Already the short twilight was ended, and the stars looked down into the valley, but it was dark and silent, nor could I see a gleam of light from Silowan to the gate of St. Stephen. Betuni returned with the water, and diluting a little brandy, which my pocket-flask always contained, I poured it into the mouth of the old man, while Betuni rubbed his hands and arms with the brandy itself, damning him in his mind all the while for a Jew, though he dared not whisper a curse in my presence. At length returning consciousness was evident, and he began to speak, as if to himself, broken words, in Italian, and in a few moments sat up and looked around him. " Not dead yet," said I, as cheerfully as I could speak, and smiling, too. He looked at me with his piercing eyes, and spoke, in a voice that I shall not soon forget, " I shall never die." I can not well express the thrill of astonishment with which I listened to those words. Doubtless you understand why. All the wild legends of that consciencespurned, soul-cursed man, who from the morning of the crucifixion to this day, has wandered hopeless, and prayed in vain for death and oblivion, rushed across my memory. He answered well the description, or the imagination of that man. He was very tall, even stately in his form, and he wore the loose flowing robes which eastern old men always wear. His face was thin, his features sharp, but noble, his beard long on his breast, and white as snow; his eye flashing, but melancholy, and his forehead high and white, but written all over with the sorrows of existence. I looked at him as he spoke, and for an instant, spite of reason, thought that I verily beheld that man. pBEN ISRAEL. 167 The next instant, I smiled again, at my own folly. "And why not?" "Because I have wished it so long and it has never come, and I despair of rest now. I can not die." "You are an old man." "My children's children are asleep below this spot, and I remain." "Do you live in Jerusalem?" " I live where God leads me-sometimes in Jerusalem, sometimes in Germany, sometimes in Russia. I am a Jew." " But not homeless therefore?" "Yea, homeless therefore. Where have the children of Jacob a home, except here?" And he pointed sadly to the ground by the side of the stone on which he sat, and fixed his eager old eyes on mine as if he thought I could tell him of another resting-place for the " tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast." I asked him his present intentions. It appeared that he had remained in the valley by the graves of his children until the gate of the city was closed, and of course he was denied entrance. For some unexplained reason, the soldiers of the guard at the gate of St. Stephen had closed it before sunset, and he had walked back to the spot that was dearest to him on earth, the only dust of all this broad world in which he claimed a special proprietorship, and had lain down there to pass the night under the sky. It was not the first night he had passed there, by very many. He could count them by years, the nights he had had no covering from the dew, no shelter from the wind. But the dews of this land he loved, and the winds of the hills around Jerusalem were like the winds of Paradise to him, and he was content to sleep there, and only longed to sleep there forever. I know not what it was that drew me to that man so closely. Probably I shall never know. There are secret 168 EENI ISRAEL. cords drawing our affections which we know nothing of, and can never explain. lie was too weak to walk, and I led my horse np to the side of a tomb-stone near the road, where Betuni held him, while I helped the old man into the saddle, and fixed his feet in the stirrups, and then walked by his side, while Betuni, growling occasionally, led the horse, and so we passed the tomb of Absalom, and the wall of Gethsemane, and the grave of the Virgin Mother, and soon shouted our demand for entrance at the gate of St. Stephen. Money opens the gates at all hours of day or night. The sleepy guard turned out at the sound of bucksheesh, and stared, in as much surprise as could be expected from half awake Arabs, at the old man riding on the horse of the Christian pilgrim. So we walked up the Via Dolorosa, dark and dismal at this time of the evening, and I parted with my old fiiend, at the gate of Antonio's house, whence I sent Betuni with him to his own quarters, which I had learned were near the Zion gate, and whither I despatched Moses with a basket of provisions, and a liberal supply of the wine of Hebron. The next morning, as we were taking our usual walk, we met him on the same spot. He rose as we approached, and expressed his gratitude with the utmost feeling, but I made him sit down and tell us somewhat of his story. It was so much of an illustration of the life of many of the weary children of Abraham that I can not forbear giving a sketch of it. He sat on a tomb-stone. The reader knows already that these tomb-stones are masses of the native rock, hewn smooth on one side, and laid on the grave. The ancient law forbade Jews to erect a tomb above the ground, or place a slab standing upright. On one of these he sat, and Miriam close by him on another, and I stood in front of him, and watched steadfastly his fine countenance as he spoke. BEN ISRAEL. 169 High over head, before his face, but behind me, was the temple wall that once inclosed the glory of Solomon, and high over head as well, before me, but behind him, was the hill where our Saviour wept over the city of David, and where the dust fell from his departing feet when he ascended to his throne. Fit emblem of his faith and mine. His eyes were to the crumbling walls of the temple, mine to the blue sky above the Garden and the Mount. " I lived, when a young man, in Frankfort on the Maine, in the old Judenstrasse, which perhaps you have seen. My house was the third on the right as you enter the street. Opposite to me was the house in which afterward the mother of the great barons lived, whose names are better known among the nations of the world, I verily believe, than are the names of their glorious ancestors, the patriarchs of old time. I was born in Italy, but I married a young German girl in Venice, and went with her to Frankfort. I labored there for many years as a teacher of music, an art wherein I had much skill. " Troubles arose, and with our children we commenced that life which seems to be the inheritance of our race. From Frankfort to Basil, fromBasilto Geneva, from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence and to Rome, pausing one, two, or three years in each place, and even longer in Geneva, where we were happier than elsewhere, we at length settled, as we hoped for life, in the city of the Pope. "There for twenty years I lived, simply, frugally, and perhaps with as much of happiness as we can expect, who are persecuted and forsaken of our God. But one morning, when the Christians of Rome celebrated the feast of the Corpus Domini, as they are wont to call it, I, in a fatal hour, wandered into the precints of the great church of the crucified fisherman of Galilee, and leaning on a wall in the rear of the assembled crowd, asked myself solemnly what all this could mean. 8 170 BEN ISRAEL. "I was an old man. Three-score years weigh more heavily on me than on others, and my wife, Miriam —" " My name is Miriam," said one of his listeners, interrupting him an instant. " The God of Abraham bless you," said he, fervently, and his old eyes sought her slight foirm, and he seemed to marvel why she had made this far pilgrimage, as he continued, " and take you to your distant home! Why came you to Jerusalem, my child?" It was the second time in our wanderings that her;eyes had won her such a blessing from the old and feeble. Once before, in Nubia, an old woman, to whom' she threw some bread and money from the boat, blessed her with uplifted hands, and prayed that God would take her safely to her mother. The old man looked a moment silently at her, and continued: "Miriam was as slight and small as you, but her face was different. She had the features of Rachel, I used to think, and now that I was old, she, as old in years, was younger by much in spirit, and she would sustain and cheer me when I was fainting. She walked with me that morning in the late spring, and had spoken often on the way, of the bright looks of our youngest child, and of/ every thing cheerful that she could think of to rouse my drooping spirits. " I leaned against the wall of an old house, and then I asked my heart what all this was, and whether, after all, I were mistaken, and my hope was vain. It behooved me to be looking around for some certain hope beyond the grave. I could not live long, I thought, and perhaps this pomp and grand procession, after all, might not be so mere a pageant as I had thought it. "' Miriam,' said I,'what think you of this? Can it be that our Messiah was the Nazarene? "My wife's eyes looked reprovinglyat me. I had never EN IS R AEL. 171 seen them look thus before; they were always beautiful, but now I thought them glorious. "' And yet old men, and learned, and valiant soldiers, and good men too, believe it. See them kneel, side by side, with peasants and servants. There must be something, of tremendous power, in this thing that we despise.' "But Miriam laughed scornfully, and, as the Host passed on, I stood erect, and she beside me, and her flashing eyes caught the gaze of the crowd around. One and another sought to pull her down. Even I, weak and frightened, fell on my knees; but she stood firm, and said aloud that she would worship none but the Lord our God, and when a barefooted friar, with a rope girdle and a hempen gown, said,' That is our Lord,' she replied aloud,'That! that!' and laughed scornfully again. The friar said to her, in a solemn voice,' Whom you despise, may the God of Abraham reveal to you!' At that moment there came across the grand square, mad with fury, the horse of one of the guard of the pontiff. His flying hoofs dashed through the mass of living men. They pressed and thronged, and the crowd swayed to and fro, and I heard my wife wail aloud, and the blood rushed from her lips in a red torrent, and she fell to the ground, and the trampling feet of thousands went over her. "That wail rings in my ears to-day, as I have heard it every day in all my sad life since. "I, too, fell on the pavement, and clasped her body, and sought to shield her with my feeble arms, but alas! in vain. One moment only I saw the rushing crowds-I heard their yells of fury-I threw my arms around my wife-I saw the red blood flow down her face from a fierce wound in her white temple, and after that I saw nothing. " When I became sensible of this miserable existence she was lying by me in the corner of the street, dead, and I 1.7 2 B1EN ISRAEL. wished that I too were dead with my wife and our first child Miriam. "After that, gathering together what money I was possessed of, and taking my young children by the hand, I came to the land of my fathers and lived in Jerusalem. My daughters married here, and had children, and my daughters and their children are here-just here. I am alone. No human heart beats with kindred blood to mine. WVife, children, little ones, all gone, I went out into the world, and wandered all over it. I sought rest everywhere, but my heart was never calm, and I came back to die under the shadow of the hill of the temple. But I can not die. I am almost a hundred years old, and I am-you see what I am. The charity of the monks of the Terra Santa supports me now. I sometimes listen to them when they talk of the crucified son of Joseph, and I sometimes wish I too could believe that the Messiah has come, and has builded already the other Jerusalem that our footweary race so long to reach." So the old man ended his story. He caught my eye as it swept rapidly back and forth from the hill of the temple to the hill of the ascension, and he divined my thoughts, but shook his head sadly, and stooping down plucked a flower, a delicate blue anemone blossom that grew near his feet and handed it to Miriam. "There is not so much difference between us after all. We are all alike wanderers and travelers; we seek another land, and sitting in this valley I sometimes am able to hear the voice of the Lord as he spoke to Daniel, saying,'Go thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy place when the end of thy days cometh.' That flower grew from the dust of one who was beautiful as the morning over the Mount of Olives. Take it with you, dear lady, and when you pray, ask God that before an BEN ISRAEL. ] other spring's flowers bloom in the valley of Jehoshaphat the old man may be at peace." Many times since then I have seen that old wanderer in dreams. Many times I have heard his melancholy voice, and have wondered whether he is yet at rest. . 0The o14 0 of OU s. THE Mesjid el Aksa, the central building in which is commonly though erroneously called the mosk of Omar, has for many centuries been barred to the entrance of Christians. From time to time, travelers visiting Jerusalem with firmans of the sultan have obtained admittance to the Haram (sacred) inclosure and have seen portions of it under strict surveillance. Mr. Catherwood effected an entrance by representing himself as authorized by Ibrahim Pasha during the march of that valiant soldier toward Jerusalem. Since that time the English and other resident missionaries have obtained admission on divers pretexts, but not to make thorough and careful measurements and plans. During the past year the Moslem religion throughout the East has undergone a perceptible relaxation in its exclusive character, and numerous places are now open to'hristians in it, which were not so a brief space of time ago. Thus St. Sophia at Constantinople is now free to the entrance of any stranger, and the mosk of Sultan Achmet is open to the intrusive gaze of all who visit the sultan's city. The mosk of Omar is not yet open to such visits, but the pasha of Jerusalem has taken the responsibility of admitting one or two parties of travelers, and had overcome or forbidden the usual demonstrations of disrespect MOSK OF OMAR, 1.7 in which the Turks are wont to indulge in the presence of Infidels on holy ground. Having heard of these instances of liberality, we thought it not improbable that we should succeed in obtaining a similar order from the pasha for our own party, especially as we had in the party our well-known consul at Alexandria, whose popularity is great in the Levant, as well as a near relative of the United States minister at Constantinople, whose dignified and manly representation of American interests during the recent troublous times has won him a name in the East not inferior to that of any foreign minister at the court of Abdul Medjid. Upon sending the request to the pasha, we were informed that he was absent at Nablous. The American agent at Jerusalem undertook the management of the affair, and brought back for answer that the request had been forwarded by an express messenger to the pasha and an answer might be expected the next day. I had reason to doubt whether this had been done, and subsequently learned that it had not, but that difficulties were thrown in the way for the purpose of making the favor appear greater and proportionately increasing the bucksheesh. A party of American gentlemen had arrived in Jerusalem a day before us, and were still there, and these gentlemen we had invited to join us in the visit should our demand be successful. We had previously learned that the bucksheesh paid by the parties of English travelers who had been admitted had amounted to one pound for each person, and we had expressed to the agent our willingness to pay the same amount. Hints that four or five pounds each from distinguished travelers was not too much, were intended to move our pride and open our purses, but we were old hands at flattery and bucksheesh. We had not been five months in Egypt without cutting our wisdom teeth. i76 MOSK OF OMAR. The second day came, but the messenger from the pasha had not returned, and the next morning was the last which some of our friends could remain in Jerusalem. Early in the forenoon they assembled at the house of Antonio, and great was the fuss and fury of the agent, and greater still of the cawass of the consulate, who had suddenly swelled from a piastre and a half bucksheesh expectant, to the full size of a silver dollar a-piece demander. At ten o'clock, as we were taking our last chibouk full of Latakea on the diwans in our dining room, and laughing heartily at the grotesque costumes and appearance of a dozen American gentlemen, whose friends would certainly never have recognized them, while they certainly would not have known themselves in a respectable New York mirror, in rushed the breathless agent of Uncle Sam, and with a mixture of broken English, bad Arabic, and Armenian spoiled by the mixture, assured us that although the letter had arrived from the pasha granting full permission of entry, and the kahir, the governor pro tem., would admit the two American gentlemen who had official character, but was unwilling to take the responsibility of so large a party, especially as the blacks, the servants of all great mosks (for the Turks guard their holy places as they do their women, with eunuchs), were in a state of uproar and excitement, and would inevitably kill if they did not actually devour every mother's son of us. I had been all along fully prepared for this result, and while the disappointed party were discussing the question of increasing the bucksheesh, which was the object of the whole affair, I slipped out of the room and down into the court-yard. [My dragomnan, Abd-el-Atti, had been a calm observer of all the operation for three days, and had several times MOSK OF OMAR. 177 hinted to me that it was not likely to be a successful negotiation. But he had not interfered at all, though I saw that he was perceptibly annoyed at the predominance we were allowing our Christian agent to take in the matter. I found Abd-el-Atti in his favorite employment, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar in his mouth, cursing the market-men, and relic-venders that filled the courtyard. I knew that it was not in vain to set him at work, for as yet he had never failed me. I directed him to go instantly to Hashim Aga the Bim pasha-the commander of the soldiers in garrison in Jerusalem-and inform him of our dilemma, and tell him as delicately as possible that there was a very easy way of his pocketing ten or fifteen pounds by way of bucksheesh, while the immediate secretary and agents of the governor were trying to make it larger for their own loose shirt bosoms. The idea proved lucky. In ten minutes he returned, and with him again the American agent, who had joined forces with him, to his intense disgust, and informed us that the Bim pasha would meet us at the gate of the mosk inclosure known as the Bab-el-Guanimi, adjoining the government house, which occupies nearly the site of the ancient tower of Antonia, at the north-west corner of the temple area. Assembling our friends without delay, we marched in procession to the gate, which was opened as we approached, and we found a file of fifty soldiers waiting to escort us through the sacred places. Parting, twenty-five on each side of us, they marched forward, and we advanced into the great court. It was with no ordinary emotions that I set foot on the holy soil of Mount Moriah. If antiquity can invest any spot with especial interest, this, of all places of the earth, is the spot. From the interrupted offering of Isaac to 38* 178 O IAR. the day when the daily sacrifice was suspended in the temple by the army of Titus, this hill was, of all earthly hills, most holy, and a Christian or a Jew might be pardoned for thinking of it, as the Moslems of the garden of Medinah, that it is a veritable extract out of the lands of heaven. With its history during the existence of the Jewish nation all readers are familiar, and no one needs to be reminded that the Salem of Melchisedec, the threshing-floor of Araunah at Jebus, in the time of David, and the holy hill of Solomon, are all acknowledged to be identical with the Mount Moriah and Mesjid El Aksa of the present day. Of the fact that this is the site of the temple of Solomon there is no dispute. When Omar conquered Jerusalem, the noble successor of the prophet refused to pray at the Holy Sepulchre, lest, he. said, his followers should make that a pretext for ejecting the Christians after his death. But he commanded them to show him the spot where Solomon's temple had stood, which he described as " the mosk of David." They led him from place to place until they reached Moriah, when he recognized the spot, which he professed Mohammed himself had described to him, though the prophet had never been in Jerusalem. This spot, marked in Roman times by a temple of Venus, erected by Hadrian, had been in later Christian cldays a place for the deposit of all manner of filth, whereby the Christians were accustomed to express their detestation of the murderers of their Lord. In such condition Omar found it, and caused it to be cleansed of its impurities, working thereat with his own hands, and commanded the erection of a mosk on the great rock which was exposed to view in the centre of the inclosure. There are conflicting accounts of the manner in which Oinar discovered the spot. The substance of them all is that he was led up steps, down which water was then DOME O.F THE ROCK. 179 running, to an open area, where he found himself before a large church. This church he immediately appropriated to the purposes of the Mussulmans, and in the openi space in front of it, on the great rock, Es Sukhrah, founded a building which was displaced fifty years afterward by the Sultan Abd-el-Meluk, who erected the splendid building which has ever since then stood on the spot, and is now incorrectly called the Mosk of Omar. To Mussulmans this is known as El-Kubbetes-Sukhrah, the Dome of the Rock. I have never heard it called by them a mosk, but the great church, to the door of which Omar was led, and in which he prayed, is a mosk, and one portion of it, as will hereafter appear, is called the praying-place of Omar. From this, doubtless, the misnomer of the central building arose. The latter is, in fact, like the holy places in the great mosks at Mecca and Medinah,.which are not spoken of as mosks but as sacred buildings. This is third in the IMoslem world, Mecca being first, and Medinah second. But here it should be remembered that the Moslems do not speak of the Kubbet-es-Sukhrah as the holy place, but the Mesjid-el-Aksa, which is a name including the entire hill of Moriah as well as the Kubbet-es-Sukhrah and the mosk (Jamy)-el-Aksa. On.entering the gate we found ourselves in a vast inclosure, oblong in shape, with nearly rectangular corners. The longest sides are north and south; the shorter, east and west. The length is not far from fifteen hundred feet, and breadth about a thousand; but the north end is much wider than the southern. All this space is sacred; and from even its gates, in former years, the Mussulmans have driven all Christians and Jews with stones and weapons of death-a practice which they still continue, and from which we were protected only by the presence of our worthy friend the Bim pasha's colonel and his 180 BOOTS. guard, whose bayonets would have been ugly customers for the Moslems to deal with, especially with the assurance of a bastinado as the inevitable result of an attack. There are several low buildings, colleges, and religious foundations of various names, but of no special interest, here and there within the inclosure, especially on the northern and western sides. The east wall, which is the east wall of the city, overhangs the great valley of Jehoshaphat, and the south wall crosses the ridge of Moriah, which extends outside the city for a fourth of a mile further, and beyond the fountain of Siloam. Along part of the south wall are large buildings, of which hereafter. In the centre of the inclosure is a platform of pavement, raised above the surrounding ground, and very elegantly finished and ornamented. This great terrace, which is five hundred and fifty feet long by four hundred and fifty broad, is not precisely in the middle of the area, but is somewhat nearer the western and northern sides. This pavement is in general about fifteen feet above the surrounding surface of the ground, from which it may be reached by eight flights of steps, three on the west, one on the east, two on the north, and two on the south. We approached the north flight, on the western side; and here, before we mounted the last step of the rise, we removed our boots, replacing them with slippers, with which we had provided ourselves. I had brought Ferrajj, my prince of blacks, with me, and handing him my boots, thought no more of them till I was ready to leave the inclosure, some hours later, when he returned them to me. Not so fortunate were some of our American friends, who, trusting to the sacred place, and the strict honesty of the Mohammedans, left their boots on the upper step. When they came back for them, they were not there. Divers were the demands they made, and fierce the American threats they showered SHEIK MOHAMMED. 181 in pure English on the heads of the surrounding followers of the Prophet, who showed no sign of interest, and neither smiled nor frowned. The old rascals knew well where the boots were gone, but they looked, if they did not recommend, resignation to the will of Allah; and our friends were left to imagine that their boots had gone on the Prophet's mission to heaven from Moriah. I don't think they were stolen for the sake of the boots, but they were taken to annoy the Christians. The building known as the Mosk of Omar stands in the centre of the platform. It is an. octagon of sixty-seven feet on a side, the walls of which are constructed of various colored marble, rising forty-six feet from the ground or platform, and supporting here a circular wall which iises about twenty-five feet further. Upon this the beautiful dome is built, about forty feet higher still, making a total of about one hundred and ten feet from the pavement to the top of the dome. Inscriptions in a sort of porcelain mosaic run around the walls; and the whole appearance at a little distance is very rich; but on approaching nearer it seems sadly out of repair. We entered from the western side of the building, pushing aside a heavy curtain that hung over the doorway, and which a man could with difficulty lift. Here we were met by old Sheik Mohammed Dunnuf, the presiding genius of the place, who I believe was a man of sincere religious feelings. The old man afterward explained to me that he did not think there was any reason for refusing to permit Christians to enter these places, but that he was always grieved to see profane eyes turned in idle curiosity to what he had been accustomed to venerate. He received us cordially, and led us, as we desired, from place to place within the building. The object of chief interest here is, of course, Es Sukhrah, the Rock, over which the Dome is built, and which a 182 THE MOSK. tradition says that Mohammed called one of the rocks of paradise. Two circular aisles surround it. Sixteen columns and eight piers, which support pointed arches and the high circular wall under the dome, divide one aisle from the other. The Rock stands out in the centre of the building, in the naked deformity of a huge mass of Jerusalem limestone. It is surrounded by a costly iron railing, and canopied with cloths, of which I could not in the gloom perceive the nature. There were fifty or more Mussulmans in the building when we entered; and as we approched the rock they turned their eyes on us furiously. It was certainly a breach of privilege in their view that they were not permitted to stone us then and there, as dead as Stephen. Notwithstanding their presence, however, we leaned against the iron lattice-work and gazed with an indescribable interest on that stone toward which more devout men had kneeled, when they prayed to God, than toward any other holy place on the surface of the earth. There has been no age of the world, since the time of David, when there have not been hearts yearning toward the rock of the temple. NSo period when somewhere on its broad surface there have not been men dying with faces turned thitherward, and dim eyes gazing through tears or through the films of death to catch, with the first power of supernatural vision, the longed-for view of the threshing-floor of the Jebusite, the holy of holies of Solomon. Blessed were our eyes that in the flesh beheld the spot where the daily incense was wont to be offered, where the ark of God for so many generations rested, where the cherubim overhung the altar, and the visible glory of Jehovah was wont to be seen by the eyes of sinful men. Jews and Mohammedans alike believe in the sacredness THE ROCK OF THE TEMPLE. 183 of this rock, and the former have faith that the ark is within its bosom now. It is a faith that needs not much argument to sustain. I know not why we should believe that the rod of Aaron and the pot of manna, that were so long preserved, should have been suffered to go to dust at last; nor can I assign any date to such a change in the miraculous intentions of God. It is pleasant to believe that somewhere on or in the earth those relics of his terrible judgments, as well as of his merciful dealings, are preserved; and I am not disposed to dispute the Jew who believes them to be in the rocky heart of Es Sukhrah. The rock stands about six feet above the floor of the mosk. It is irregular in form; a mass of some fifty by forty feet. The building is gorgeously ornamented, in the style of the early Christian and Moslem buildings, with gilded mosaic work, covering almost the entire walls. Here and there pieces of antique marble and porphyry are let into the walls, as if to preserve them; and these, and some of the columns supporting the pointed arches, are, without doubt, relics of some older building, possibly and probably of the temple itself. There is underneath the western side of the building a crypt, or vault, which is still the holy of holies. I had heard much of this among Moslems, though no traveler has mentioned it. Sheik Mohammed told me that it contained the armor of no less a person than Ali himself; relics which came into the possession of the Jerusalem Haram by some process that I could learn nothing of, but which are esteemed among the followers of the Prophet as beyond price. When we approached the doorway that descends into the vault where these treasures are kept, I endeavored to persuade the sheik to take us down the steps; but he most skillfully evaded the demand, by assuring us that the door of entrance was elsewhere, by which he would take us down, and then lead 184 CAVE UNDER THE ROCK, ing off in another direction. Abd-el-Atti called my attention to the manceuvre; but assured me that it was of no use to ask him, as he would never consent to admit us there, since no one was admitted but a sultan or a man of the highest rank for piety and learning. The nearest approach that I could make to it, was the obtaining of two curious prints, which are given to Mohammedans only, but which I became possessed of in the usual manner, which operate as certificates of pilgrimage to El Kubbet Es Sukhrah, and which profess to represent the sword, the gauntlets, the shield, and other armor of the valiant sonin-law and successor of the Prophet. Each article is profusely covered with inscriptions, all to the glory of God and Mohammed. Whether there are in reality any such arms preserved in the vault as these pictures would seem to indicate, or whether it is all a deceit, is a question I leave for decision to those who, in later times, will find free access to all parts of the Kubbet Es Sukhrah. While standing here, I heard a disturbance at the other side of the building, toward which some of our party had moved; and, hastening thither, found that some of the spectators had evinced a disposition to interfere with the progress of our investigations, when they found the Christians about to descend into the cave under the great rock. But a sharp order from the officer in command of the detachment, and the advance of a dozen men, quieted the disturbance, and cleared the steps, by which we descended into the cavern. This is a curious chamber underneath the great rock itself, surrounded and inclosed by stone walls, reaching from the floor to the under side of the rock. Let it be distinctly marked, that Sheik Mohammed Dunnuf assured me solemnly, again and again, that the rock hangs in the air seven feet above the ground, of its own power or the power of God, and is not supported by this wall, even to PRAYING-PLACE OF JESUS 185 the amount of a half ounce. The wall is built up only to prevent the rock falling, in case the power should for any cause be withdrawn, and, as some unlucky Moslem might be underneath at that moment, the result would be disastrous if the wall were not there. In this cavern Mohammed rested on that eventful night of which he related the history, and thereby lost many of his most faithful friends, who could not believe such a miracle. For he said that he rode from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night, and rested a little while there, and thence he rode to heaven; and, if Abubekr had not expressed his readiness to swear to any thing Mohammed said, it is probable that this would have been the end of his mission In this case Gabriel brought him the horse to go on upward, and there is a hole through the rock through which he passed. As he went, the rock followed him, lifting itself into the air; but he commanded it to pause, and it paused just there, and there hangs in the air; and he is a vile skeptic who believes that those stone walls built under it have any thing to do to keep it there, and may the curse of God and the Prophet be on him if he persists in his infidelity. The cave, or room, under the rock, contains two points of interest in Mohammedan tradition. The one, a niche, which they say was the praying-place of Solomon; and the other, a similar spot, which they say was made holy by the knees of Isa ben Maryam, Jesus the son of Mary. The Mohammedan faith in Jesus Christ is a subject of curious interest. The koran, the invention of Mohammed and Abubekr, by no means attempts to do away with the old religions of men, nor was Mohammedanism the establishment of a new faith. It is only claimed for Mohammed that he was a better teacher of religion than his predecessors, and that God inspired him to be the teacher of his race in the true doctrines which he ex 186 PULPIT OF DAVID, tracted from Judaism, Christianity, and a little PaganismHence, he refers constantly to Jesus; but, only as a prophet, not as divine. His mission from God is acknowledged; his crucifixion denied, on the ground that God substituted another for him; and his ascension, without death, believed in by some, but doubted by others. All orthodox Mussulmans believe that Jesus is to return to earth before the judgment, to die and be buried at Medinah, in the great mosk close behind Mohammed. The doctrine of the atonement is, of course, wholly unknown to them, and Jesus is made the equal, if not a little less, than the camel-driver of Mecca. Returning to the level of the mosk floor, we found two or three hundred persons present, who eyed us with no friendly feelings, but offered no insults. I made now a new attempt to induce the sheik to show me the arms of Ali, but in vain; and after a deliberated examination of the architectural details of the mosk, we sallied out of the southern door in a body, the soldiers following us, and the old sheik leading the way. During the visit to the Dome of the Rock, we saw nothing of the blacks whose famous bigotry we had been warned to beware of, and I strongly inclined to doubt whether there are any of them now in Jerusalem. But Hashim Aga assured us that he had locked them up, every soul of them, and perhaps he had, but his saying so did not prove it. We now passed across the southern part of the platform, and arrived at the steps, near which is a marble pulpit called the Pulpit of David, wherefore I know not, unless from some fancied connection with another small building in the east of the mosk, known as the Dome of the Chain, and also as the judgment seat of David. Descending the steps, we passed a marble fountain, surrounded by orange and other trees, but quite dry, and then THE TEMPLE. 187 the mouths of several cisterns, all full of rain water. The surface water of the entire mosk inclosure runs into these and other cisterns which we saw here and thereabout it. Our course was toward the southern side of the area, where several large and imposing buildings attract the attention of all visitors to Jerusalem, especially in the view from the Mount of Olives. These are by far the most interesting buildings in the temple inclosure. The chief of them is the great church we have before referred to, commonly called the Mosk el Aksa. The entire area of the temple is, as I have remarked, known as El Mesjid el Aksa, that is, " The Holy Place the most remote," being so called in reference to the Kaaba at Mecca, the centre of Islam, and the Prophet's Mosk at Medina, the nearest holy place to Mecca. In the middle of the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian erected this building in honor of the Virgin Mary. Its magnificent size and stately splendor have preserved it intact through all the changes which Jerusalem has undergone. The length of the building from north to south, is two hundred and eighty feet, and its breadth, one hundred and ninety feet, as given by Mr. Catherwood, who measured it. We paused a moment before its grand portico, covering the entire width of the mosk, and built in seven divisions. The architecture it is difficult to divine. The old Gothic is manifest as the leading characteristic, but the Saracen is curiously intermingled with it. Entering by the centre doorway, we found ourselves in a grand nave, extending the whole length of the building, supported on each side by seven columns and pointed arches. The columns are gigantic masses of stone. Each column bore, in immense characters, the name of a prophet or a caliph, so that the white walls of the building were destitute of all ornament, except only the names " Moham 188 THE TEMPLE, med,"9 "Omar," "Jesus" and on one column, "Allah." There are three side aisles on each side the nave, of which one, on the left as we entered, was walled off from the body of the church for the women, and this interrupted the complete sweep of the eye through the whole building, which was otherwise one of the most imposing that I know of; scarcely inferior to the splendid Basilica of St. Paul, at Rome, which is the finest specimen of religious architecture in the world. The simple and serene grandeur of the building was impressive in the extreme. At the southern end, the nave is crossed by a transept, which we reached after a slow walk down the nave and in the aisles, and turning here to the left, we entered a low chamber of stone, eighty-five feet long, which is called the praying-place of Omar. The tradition says that he was accustomed to pray in this spot regularly during his stay in Jerusalem, and this is probably true. The western transept led us into a long and very narrow mosk, known as that of Abubekr, which again leads into a very long mosk, running northward, and parallel with El Aksa, being quite as long, but very narrow, and known as the Mosk of the Mograbbin, or Moors. This latter we did not enter for lack of time. In the Mosk of Omar, last mentioned, I observed many small marble columns, set in the side walls, which were evidently of ancient origin, and I incline to think many of the other portions of this great building may have belonged to its predecessor, the temple of the Jews. Returning through the great nave, we paused a moment at a tomb-like structure, near the door, known as the tomb of Aaron, a name by no means corresponding with a tradition I had before heard, that Moses buried Aaron at Medinah, on Mount Ohod. But Moslems do not always adhere to the same traditions in various places. Coning out of the front of the mosk, and going a few CRYPTS UNDER THE TEMPLE. 189 feet to the eastward of the centre, we descended a staircase in the ground, and entering a heavy door, found ourselves in the famous crypts under the Mosk El Aksa, which have afforded subjects of speculation to Orientalists for so long a time. A broad avenue was before us, dark, indeed, but sufficiently lighted by our numerous candles, down which we slowly walked toward the southern end of the mosk. The passage in which we were descending, sometimes by an inclined plane, and twice, at least, by steps, was supported on both sides by heavy columns of stone built up and connecting with each other by low round arches. These arches were closed up with loose, dry stone walls, and on asking what was beyond, we were told that there were large cisterns of water on both sides, which, on surface examination, I judged to be true. The middle of this passage was supported by two rows of massive monolithic round columns, every four columns supporting a dome-shaped arch, of large stones, radiating exactly from the key-stone, which was always a single round block, some six feet in diameter. This very peculiar style of supporting a roof is worthy of careful remark, inasmuch as I have never found it except here, and in the hewn tombs in the rock on the hill-side of Aceldama. More extensive observation may show it elsewhere, but I regard it as very probable that this is a style of art indicating cotemporaneous origin in the buildings and tombs to which I refer. The pillars which support this vault are very massive, measuring, many of them, eighteen feet six inches in circumference. Their size is not strictly uniform, some being smaller than this. Their capitals are rude and simple, and I think indicate that they were constructed for the purpose they now answer. As we descended toward the east the arches on the sides disappeared, and we found stone walls built up of 190 CRYPTS UNDER THE TEMPLE. immense stones such as abound outside in the great walls of the temple inclosure, and at length we reached a sort of large chamber, of which the roof was supported by such arches as I have described. From this, opening southward, was a sort of breach in the wall, now heaped up with fallen stone so that it was impossible to advance more than a few feet, but here was sufficient to show us that we were at the great gateway described by Mr. Catherwood as resembling the Golden gateway of which I shall speak hereafter, and which is, probably, a gateway mentioned by Josephus (Antiquities, xv. xi. 5), when he speaks of the gates in the centre of the south front of the temple. This passage, down which we had come, was, undoubtedly, one of the ancient approaches to the great court of the temple, and the gateway before us, closed by the new southern wall of the inclosure, was one of the chief entrances. We paused a long time here, for the very ground seemed holy, and at length we retired slowly toward the place at which we had descended. It was impossible to enter the vaults either at the right or the left except from other points. On leaving these interesting vaults we paused a little while on the portico of the mosk to exchange notes on its history. In the seventh century, A. D. 636, Omar having taken Jerusalem, converted the great church of the Virgin, erected a hundred years before by Justinian, into a mosk, to which other caliphs made additions. It continued to be in their possession, undergoing some alterations, and receiving some additions which made it a palace as well as a temple, until the crusaders entered Jerusalem, in 1099, when Tancred and his knights and soldiers massacred thousands of the Infidels in the holy ground. Scarcely any picture so horrible is to be found in all the wars of the world as this massacre presented. They fell KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, 191 by the sword, and arrow, and spear, and seeking refuge from their fierce assailants were drowned in cisterns till they had choked them up with their bodies. An old writer says that so terrible was this slaughter, that in the temple and porch of Solomon they rode in blood up to their horses' knees.* This temple or porch, "templum et porticus," was the present mosk El Aksa. This name was always given to this building. Twenty years later, A. D. 1119, Baldwin II. gave this building to the " poor fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ." By this humble name a number of Knights of the Cross, who had fought their way at last to the Holy Sepulchre, united themselves shortly after the capture of Jerusalem. They vowed to devote their lives to the protection of pilgrims and the cause of Christ against the Infidels. They had no possessions but their swords, until the 20th year of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when this grant was made to them, for a hospital and church, and they became the possessors of the temple. Thenceforth they were known as Templars, and from a band of poor soldiers they became the most powerful and wealthy organization in Europe. Kings trembled before the grand master, who was priest and soldier. The pope issued bulls in their favor. Lands and wealth uncounted were from time to time bestowed on them and bequeathed to them, until the order was above sovereigns, and to be a Knight Templar was to be more than an emperor. Their war-cry * Si verum dicimus, fidem excedimus. Sed tantum hoc dixisse sufficiat, quod in templo et in porticu Salomonis, equitabatur in sanguine usque ad genua et usque ad frenos equorum.-Raimondi de Agiles, Hist. Hier., in Gesta Dei, etc., p. 179. Tantum ibi humani sanguinis effusum est, ut caesorum corpora, undA sanguinis impellente, volverenter per pavimentum, et brachia sive truncatse manus, super cruorem fluitabant, et extraneo corpori jungebatur, ita ut nemo valeret discernere cujus erat corporis brachium, quod truncato corpori erat adjunctum. —Roberti Monachi, Hist. Hier., Lib. ix. 192 GROTTO OF JESUS. rang on every Christian battle-field and their deeds were subjects for minstrel and troubadour in every century even to this. An old writer relates that under the earth in front of this church, lie buried the four knights who, in the year 1170, at the instance of Henry II., assassinated Thomas a Becket, in his cathedral of Canterbury. Condemned by the pope to exile in Jerusalem and, possibly, the poor guests of the Templars, they died here and were buried. No other incident is related of interest concerning this venerable building. When Salah-e'deen recaptured the Holy City, it returned to Mohammedan uses, and, with slight exceptions, has remained a mosk until this time. But the heart of the visitor throbs when he remembers the deeds of valor that have consecrated it, the mighty men who have walked its aisles, the names of renown that have been heard within its arches. Passing now the south-east corner of the inclosure, pausing only to look into more cisterns on the way, we entered a small building which there occupies the position of a corner tower, descending to it by steps from the'level of the great area and descending again in it to a chamber known as the " Grotto of Jesus.: In it was shown a white marble basin of which one side was worked into a scallopshell, amply large enough for the immersion of an infant, which has been erroneously called the cradle of Jesus. It is said to be the basin in which he was washed when he was brought by his mother to the temple-a ceremonial washing according to the Mohammedan tradition which is evidently founded on the presentation at the temple described by the evangelist. From this grotto an entrance, into which I looked, leads to the vast vaults under the temple area, which have been described by Mr. Catherwood. Although I was very desirous to make a thorough GOLDEN GATE. 193 examination of this place I could not at this time, both on account of the number of persons in the party, which hindered careful and slow examination, and also because I had already exhausted a large part of the day in the former places, and had still much to see before sunset. I made an appointment with the sheik for a second visit, which Whitely and myself repeatedly endeavored to make time for, but failed in doing. It was this expectation which prevented my making many measurements that I had designed, but the time is rapidly approaching when all travelers will be admitted to the holy spot, and, doubtless some one will have opportunity to make thorough explorations. We now climbed the east wall of the inclosure, where it overhangs the abyss of Jehoshaphat, and saw the seat of Mohammed, which he will occupy at the judgment. It is but a broken column, built in the wall at the bottom of an arch, five feet high, opening toward the valley of Jehoshaphat. The column projects about five feet over the valley. A doubtful seat even for a prophet, and one scarcely less trying than the bridge of a single hair, or the edge of a sword blade, over which the dead are to cross the valley, the evil falling on the way into pits far below, while the righteous will find it a broad, safe way. A little further along was the Golden gate, a building on the inside of the wall, connected with the projection and dead archways on the outside, which are supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Beautiful gate of the temple. We entered by a low doorway and found ourselves in a room, of which the stone roof was supported by six dome-shaped arches, the arches resting on the walls and on two beautiful polished marble columns that supported the middle; two other half columns projected from the east and west sides. The whole chamber was very beau9 194 SHEIK MOHAMMED DUNNUF. tiful. This is now said to be the tomb of Solomon, but this tradition I think not very ancient. The remaining brief time before sunset we devoted to strolling about the inclosure, the ground of which was a mass of broken-up ancient stone. We loaded ourselves with beautiful specimens of porphyry, verde antique, and marbles of different colors, which we purposed having cut and polished at home, and at length, as the darkness began to gather around us, we left the inclosure by the gate at which we had entered. In the evening, as we were seated around the table after dinner, Sheik Mohammed entered our dining room. The old man had somehow been taken with us, and so far from being offended at our entering his holy place, he was apparently pleased at our expressions of satisfaction. But his delight over some plain American sponge-cake, which Hajji Mohammed had the ability to make perfect, knew no bounds. He had no teeth, and this soft sweet went to his heart by the quickest way, to an Arab's, his stomach. Over this, while we drank our Lebanon wine, the old man grew eloquent, and Miriam, worn out with her day's adventures, fell sound asleep on the diwan in the deep window, while we talked of the Prophet and all the rocks of Paradise. 1^e DUqJ of fihe diJi'elIne. WE mounted at nine in the morning. There had been a shower of rain until that time, and we had our waterproof coats on, but before we reached the Jaffa gate we found that they would be useless. The servants were despatched early in the morning with the mules and baggage, and with instructions to pitch the tents near the Convent of Saint Saba, in the wilderness of Engeddi. It was our intention to visit Bethlehem on the way, as is customary with all travelers. Moreright volunteered to ride on before we left the hotel, and purchase in the bazaars some tin cases or bottles, such as are made for pilgrims' use who desire to bring back water of the Jordan. I wished to bring specimens of various waters to America with me, and used a number of these cases, whose contents I afterward transferred to glass bottles, around which I had close tin cases soldered, and thus brought them safely to America, unimpaired by air or light. We made our rendezvous in the open space in front of the Tower of Herod, within the Jaffa gate. Here Miriam and I sat on horseback for a half hour, surrounded by the usual crowd of beggar lepers, and at length Whitely came up the hill, from the bazaars, at a fast canter, and in a few moments Moreright came down the hill from the Armenian 196 OURSELVES. Convent, and then scattering the beggars right and left, we dashed out of the Jaffa gate, just as a stream of sunshine came down into the valley of the Sons of Hinnom. As we now appeared for the first time together in the party that afterward remained in company over many mountains and seas, and was kept unimpaired till we left Constantinople, I pause here to introduce ourselves once mIore. Moreright had not at this time decided to join us, wishing to remain in Jerusalem a fortnight longer. We afterward agreed to wait a week for him, and he thus made a fourth in the party. Modestly speaking, I may say this much, that I was in good condition for travel. Five feet nine, with reasonably broad shoulders, a beard not to be laughed at (no, not by the Prophet's own!), with a tarbouche of the unmistakable dye of the sultan's, and a boornoose that Sheik IHoussein might have envied, a navy Colt in one fold of my shawl, and a volcanic repeater in the other (small, but devilish), not to mention a bowie-knife, that I afterward left under the terebinth of Abraham at Hebron, I was not altogether the customer that an Arab would choose to deal with in an exchange of Arab civilities. But I was as nothing to Whitely. He stood two inches taller than I, and had a corresponding breadth of shoulder. His beard was trimmed short, and gave a firm and decided expression to his fine countenance. He carried also a small arsenal of weapons, and was just the sort of man you would expect to throw a Bedouin over his head, and have a shot at him flying for the fun of the thing. Moreright was a man of peaceful employment and disposition, that is to say, he carried only one revolver and a knife, and I don't think he would have used either except in case of a fair shot and in self-defense. My im OURSELVES. 197 pression is, that he never felt those temptations that Whitely and I freely confessed to when we saw a party of those wild-looking animals called men by courtesy, especially the Anazees. I always felt as I used to feel on seeing a drove of deer in summer, that it was a capital chance for a shot, but wrong, and I wouldn't do it for the world. But Moreright was to be depended upon. He was grit to the backbone, and a capital traveling companion in those countries. With Miriam, the centre of our party, the reader must be content to have but a slight acquaintance. Enough to say that, having left home an invalid, naturally slight and of frail constitution, she had gotten to sitting with a firm seat on her chestnut horse from early morning till sunset, and rode up and down mountain passes and rocky steeps that we men were unwilling to trust our precious necks over on horseback. Abd-el-Atti, my Egyptian dragoman, the reader has be. come acquainted with if he has read of my travels there. He was a stout-built, athletic Egyptian, with a light copper complexion, a very North American Indian countenance, and always carried a pair of pistols, a bad-looking knife, and a double-barreled fowling-piece swung on his shoulders. He was a capital horseman, fully the equal of any Bedouin, and a very sharp, active, intelligent fellow. But Betuni was the man of the party. Betuni was a small, wizen-faced, shaven-headed mukarri-a name applied to men who supply horses and mules to parties of travelers-thoroughly acquainted with all the roads, and thoroughly ignorant of every thing but the road, surly as a dog if he was scolded, but always brightened up to perfect serenity and hilarity by a pipe full of tobacco or a cigar, an inveterate sponge, and the best possible butt for fun of all sorts. Betuni was a treasure, and made the tents uproarious every night with his demands for gratui 198 BETUNI AND THE SERVANTS. ties which no possible resistance could overcome. He was always successful in extracting whatever he wanted, and took it and the accompanying kick that sent him out of the canvas with equal good will and gratitude. He wore a brown boornoose that he bought twenty years before, and a turban whose folds he was constantly arranging, and he always rode sideways on a minute donkey, which carried all the feed for the horses and Betuni, and Betuni on top of all, and yet beat us all in speed and endurance, cutting into the line ahead of his place everywhere, pattering along with his little feet on a steady trot all day long, never tired and never out of humor, in short, the perfection of a funny specimen of the donkey. They were well matched, and were a never-ending source of amusement to us. Such was our traveling party, who kept always together. The tents and baggage went by themselves, except in dangerous country where we rode with them; but usually we sent the train on to the point of evening halt which we fixed on in the morning, and then made detours ourselves to visit whatever we thought desirable. With the baggage train Ferrajj, my stout Nubian, and best of servants, and Hajji Mohammed, whose cookery for four months on the Nile had reached my heart, always rode. There were fourteen mules and horses in all, carrying the baggage and tents, so that when we were together we made a party of nineteen horses and mules, not counting two or three donkeys, and fifteen persons. Such was the appearance of the party that rode out of the Jaffa gate and descending into the valley of Ben Hinnom, slowly climbed the rocky road that ascends the opposite slope by the new American hospital on the way to Bethlehem. TWhitely led the line, and I brought up the rear, bothering with Miriam's horse, who, being broken Arab fashion to be guided by the knee and voice CHANGE OF ROUTE. 199 and not by the rein, was constantly getting out of line on account of the unusual pressure of a lady's side-saddle. The rein would not control him at all, and it was more than Miriam was willing to do to strike him an occasional blow on the side of the head to teach him his place. On the summit of the hill I shouted for a halt, and we held a parley. We were going to the Dead Sea, and now why did we go by way of Bethlehem? That was the question, and the reply was truly oriental, " because every one did." But we were going to Bethlehem again next week, and a half dozen times, hereafter. Not even Abd-el-Atti had thought of a shorter route to San Sabas, but it was quite certain there was one. Did Betuni know the direct road? " Certainly." Then we'd go direct. Accordingly we turned back, and descending into the valley of Ben Hinnom recrossed the dam of the lower Pool of Gihon, and followed the valley down between Mount Zion and the Hill of Evil Counsel, passing under the crags of Aceldama on the right, and by Siloam at a little distance on the left, until we reached the great valley of the Kedron, which flows from this spot downward with heavy plunges, descending three thousand nine hundred feet in the twenty miles between the hills of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Down this valley our course lay. The path was full of deep mud-holes from the recent rain, and our advance was slow, for the clouds had cleared away and a glorious sunshine was pouring into the valley. The wild flowers that shone all over the hills were opening their brilliant eyes, and we broke out into cheerful songs, or whiled the time-away with pleasant talk. The scenery soon became very grand. Itigh rocky hills hung far above us, on the sides of which innu 200 BED OF THE KEDRON. merable sheep and goats were feeding, while here and there a shepherd boy or girl would be seen sitting idly in the sunshine. Occasional overhanging crags made cavernous openings, all of which we found had been appropriated by the shepherds to stable purposes. We lunched in a beautiful bend of the valley, finding water in the rocky bed of a torrent that had been supplied by the recent rain. Flowers of infinite variety bloomed all around us, and the sky seemed specially smiling and kind. Sheik Halima rode up to us as we were eating, and afterward remained with us. He was the sheik of the tribe possessing the country from Jerusalem to the Jordan, to whom we had paid or agreed to pay the usual tribute of one pound for each person, in consideration of which he insured us safety from robbery while in his dominions. An hour later we came around a point of the rock and found ourselves among the low black tents of some of his tribe, who had pitched in the valley, while their sheep cropped a subsistence on the hills around. Our road had not followed the Kedron all the way, but crossed the hills once or twice to avoid its sinuosities. We were now on it, however, and at length crossed its dry bed at a point near where it suddenly enters a wild gorge of magnificent grandeur. Along the right bank of this our way now lay through a road cut and walled up by the holy monks of San Sabas, to afford easy access of pilgrims to that shrine. This gorge is celebrated in history and romance; for it was here that Sabas lived and died, here thousands of hermits spent their solitary days.in times of hermit life, and here Scott intended to locate some of the most thrilling scenes in the Talisman. The Kedron descends through it, the banks on each side being ragged, precipitous rocks, varying from two to five hundred feet in height above the bed of the stream. The distance across is a short rifle-shot at the top of the SABAS THE SAINT. 201 gorge, and from its dark depths the stranger shrinks in horror, even while he gazes in admiration. In the sides of these precipices, at points now wholly inaccessible, by reason of the scaling off of the ledges from the face of the rocks, which once afforded narrow and dangerous pathways, are many caverns, some formed under the overhanging rocks by roughly laid up walls, and others entirely natural. They increase in number as you approach St. Sabas, and they are numerous on both sides of the ravine. These were the abodes of those holy anchorites whose memory is fragrant in the churches, and whose histories have lent a charm to romance scarcely inferior to that of the Knights of the Cross. Men of all nations, all ranks, found here that peaceful repose which they desired after sinful lives among their fellows. Here many an aching heart was calmed and healed. Here many a troubled conscience found peace. Here the memories of fathers and mothers wronged, beauty outraged, love betrayed, heaven forgotten, and God defied, found oblivion. The grave was not more profound in its seclusion than this valley to him who fled from the courts of Europe to forget and be forgotten. Among all the holy men who inhabited these cells, the memory of Sabas is most to be revered, by Protestant, Catholic, Greek, or Armenian. When the disputes in the church at Jerusalem ran highest, and the head of the Eastern empire himself favored the heterodox faith, the old hermit of Engeddi was sent to Constantinople to plead the cause of truth and orthodoxy. When error was triumphant in Jerusalem, Sabas was the only living man who could drive it out. For a half century he was the hope and the main stay of the church of the Christians in the Holy Land, and, if there be one man of later than apostolic times who should be canonized, he is doubtless the man. 9* 202 THE AMERICAN FLAG. He died, and was buried in the wilderness where he had lived; and, around his bones hermits gathered and recited to one another the history of his virtuous and holy life. The caverns and cells that they occupied in the sides of the ravine were gradually connected by galleries running along the rock; and thus, this curious building, or collection of buildings, had its origin. Our cortege was now increased by the addition of a dozen Arabs fror the encampment we had passed; and, at length, we rounded a point of the hill, and saw before us two square stone towers, at the left hand of the road, on the ravine side; nor was it till we afterward entered, and saw the convent built down the precipice, of which these towers were at the very top, that we understood how they could be the great convent of Saint Sabas. We could see only these, and the high wall between them, running along over the ridge of the hill, now plunging into a chasm and remounting the opposite side, and at length disappearing over the precipitous crags. In the ravine made by a small mountain torrent, which in wet weather comes down here from the southern hills, a hundred yards from the wall of the convent, our tents were pitched. The American flag was fluttering pleasantly over them, to the great surprise of the Bedouins, who could not understand it. Hajji Mohammed, in loose trowsers, and full Nizam costume, was busy about the dinner; Ferrajj, glowing in his long white dress, which he most affected, was everywhere at once, taking care of his mistress and then of his masters, disposing of arms and cloaks, and, as he always was, showing how utterly impossible it would have been to get along without him. It seems nothing short of a miracle here in America that I can live without him, and I verily believe he would be worth his weight in gold to me at this present moment. Having disposed of our weapons of war, we now pro THE TRADITIONS, 203 ceeded to visit the men of peace within the walls of the convent, which were made thick and high enough to keep all persons, not peacefully disposed, on the outside. A basket, lowered by a pulley from a loop-hole high up in the western part of the wall, received a letter which we had brought from the Greek Bishop in Jerusalem. It is customary for travelers to accept the hospitalities of the convent, but this was impossible when there was a lady in the party. From the days of Sabas, no woman has set the sole of her foot within the gate of the convent; and, tradition says, that when one does, the walls will crumble away. If the tradition be true, it is time for the holy fathers to stand from under. For when, after some delay, the low door at whichwe stood was opened, we found a lay brother there who was not booked up in the traditions. He politely invited us to enter: I asked him if Miriam could be admitted; and he said there was no objection. I waited a moment, to send back to the tents for her; and he, in the mean time, stepped into the refectory to consult an older authority. When Miriam arrived, we advanced as far as the descent of the first steps, into the great court by the tomb of the saint, but there we were arrested by a cry that might have roused his bones, if the profane footsteps of a female had not already disturbed him. The father superior and a dozen brothers were begging Miriam to go out; and she paused a moment to enjoy their terror, and then retired to the gate, where a venerable monk soon joined her; and, making a thousand apologies, and relating the traditions to her great amusement, led her to the east tower, where she could look down into the convent, and where she was supplied with bon-bons, sweetmeats, jellies, (and arrakee!) ad libitum, while we entered the sacred precincts. The convent originated in a collection of such caverns 204 CONVENT OF ST. SABAS. as I have described. There are perhaps a dozen of these within the walls. The wall of the whole convent runs along the foot of the precipice, above the bed of the stream, then ascends its almost perpendicular sides by a zig-zag course, and continuing along the ridge descends again to the bed of the Kedron. By this the face of the precipice is inclosed, and the cells which once were mere caverns of rough rock have now their fronts walled up and whitewashed, and are connected with each other by galleries, while a broad ledge of the rock is occupied with substantial buildings of stone, which are continued wherever the rock affords foundation for them from the bed of the stream up to the lofty tower near our tents. It is, therefore, a village built on an almost perpendicular side-hill. The chief court is on a broad ledge of the precipice, and in the centre of it a small round building marks the tomb of St. Sabas. It is surrounded in the interior with poor pictures of the miracles of the saint, in which his head is usually four times as large as his body, to distinguish him from others, which are only twice. The church opens from this court, and is full of pictures of a similar sort. I heard of a Murillo here, but looked in vain for it. There is one in possession of the convent. The cell of Sabas, a cave which he shared fourteen years with a lion whom he cured of a wound, and earned his gratitude therefor; his oratory, another cavern, where he saw the pillar of fire that once was the evidence of God's glory present among men; and behind it cells filled with grinning skulls and white arm and thigh bones, which are the relics of fourteen thousand martyr-hermits of Engeddi; the tomb of John of Damascus, whose name is fragrant in the Greek church; and, finally, the cells of the resident monks, we visited in succession, and all with curious interest. The sun was setting when we climbed the highest part NIGHT IN THE RAVINE. 205 of the convent, and sat cown on the steps that led up to the great tower. Far down the gorge we saw the sunshine on the summits of the hills of Moab and underneath it the blackness that hung over the Sea of Death. Evening was fast settling down among the hills when we left the door of the convent and walked to our tents. The monks followed us out with trays bearing coffee, arrakee, sweetmeats, and raisins made at Bethlehem, which they insisted on bringing to the tents, where Miriam was now waiting our arrival, and Hajji Mohammed as impatient as a Christian cook could be when his dinner was spoiling. But we had to drink coffee, and a tiny glass of arrakee, each of us, before our monkish friends would be appeased; and then they distributed plenty of bread among the servants and muleteers, and left us to our tents and the night, which had now come down dark and heavy on the wilderness of Engeddi. As the day vanished the scene became exceedingly picturesque. The camp fire, which the men had kindled, spread a glare on the white tents contrasting with the black and rugged rocks close to which they were pitched. A solemn silence fell on every thing, broken only by the convent bell that tolled the hours of Turkish time, which number from the sunset; and after our usual hour of chibouks and coffee, which followed dinner, we slept. Once the loud bell for midnight mass echoed a hundred times fiom the sides of the gorge, and, rolling strangely down the narrow pass, aroused me; but it was only for a moment, and I slept again, to dream of those I should never see again in my distant home. Next morning we were up early; and when our breakfast table was set in the open front of one of the large tents, and we were about sitting down, our convent friends came out and brought a large bottle of Bethlehem wine, which they apologised for not before offering us. It 206 MORNING START. needed no apology, for it was worse than bad vinegar; but we accepted it with good grace; and then one of them produced the arrakee again, and his tiny glass, which he filled for each of us in succession. It is grand liquor, that convent arrakee, all through the East; and though it takes your breath away at the swallow, it produces no ill effects afterward. Miriam always declined it after her first taste in Egypt, and did so now, whereupon my venerable friend of the Greek church laid his hand on his breast and bolted it with an air of resignation that was truly edifying. He had declined breakfasting with us a moment before on the ground that it was Friday, and a fast-day. Our worthy friend who had so nearly produced the catastrophe to the walls of the convent by admitting Miriam the evening previous, lingered around us to the last. He was a queer fellow, had been a sort of dragoman, but liking the looks of the fat and quiet life of the monks of St. Sabas, he offered himself as a lay brother, and his skill as a purveyor made him valuable, but I fancy he was behind hand on the traditions. I gave him what he was waiting for however, and I don't think it enured to the treasury of the convent. The tents were struck and the baggage slung on the mules, and we still sat over our coffee, now in the open air. Hajji Mohammed emptied his portable kitchen, and raked the coals into a heap, in which he inserted a tin cup of coffee to keep hot for Ferrajj and himself, by way of stirrup-cup. Then the last package was made up of camp stools and table-furniture. We sat on the rocks, as the train filed off up the ravine, and no evidence existed but the ashes that our camp had been here. Then we mounted and departed. This was the daily morning process for months; and I never left a camp ground where we slept a night on holy soil without regret. VIEW OF THE DEAD SEA. 207 We bought handkerchiefs, printed in the convent, with quaint pictures of the miracles of the saint, and sundry wooden spoons, carved by the monks, which we preserved as mementoes of the curious spot. Starting at half-past eight in the morning, we retraced the road of the evening previous as far as the commencement of the gorge. A hawk, that was too small for poetry to make an eagle of, sailed in the air far below us, but far above the bed of the Kedron, serving to show us how deep the ravine really was. We crossed the Kedron at the head of the gorge, and immediately struck across the wild mountainous district which lies on the west side of the Dead Sea. No picture can convey an idea of the utter desolation of this country. Not a tree is visible, nor any vegetation, except low shrubs of a dry, harsh, rush-like plant, which the Bedouin women were gathering for fuel. A woman would carry a bundle of it as large as a small hay-stack on her head, and present the appearance of a tree walking. The face of the country was as if a thousand conical hills had been let fall on it, and we were finding our way around and over them. There was no regularity about them. Two hours from San Sabas, we saw a troop of mounted men, about thirty in number, crossing the ridge of a distant hill. The last one saw us and paused, but the rest rode on. We at first supposed them to be Bedouins, but afterward judged them to be government soldiers, and we saw them soon after halted on a hill, two miles fiom us, watching our movements. At the same instant, we caught a view of the Dead Sea, sleeping calmly a thousand feet below us, and the same illusion was manifest of which I have spoken on the Mount of Olives. It seemed to be not more than an hour distant from us, and that a gallop down the hills would take us there in fifteen minutes. 208 DESOLATE HILLS. It lay like a silver lake among the hills, relieved by the dark blue haze that rested on the mountains of Moab. nor would any one have imagined it the mysterious sea whose profound waters have so long swept over the memory of the Cities of the Plain. The scene was, in fact, so very soft, rich, and beautiful, that we all agreed that a painter who should execute its facsimile in colors would be ridiculed as exaggerating. From this point we saw the Wely of Neby Mousa, the reputed tomb of Moses, located by the Moslems, with their usual desire to differ from Jewish records, within, instead of out of the promised land. It stands on a hill.. top, about due west of the north point of the Dead Sea, and distant perhaps eight English miles from the mouth of the Jordan. Every hill-top within sight of it was marked. with small piles of stone, three, four, or more laid on each other, a custom with Mohammedan pilgrims on all points at which the first or the last view of a holy spot is obtained. The most remarkable feature of these desolate hills on which we were now riding, was the immense quantity of snails which covered the ground, oftentimes making acres of it white. We devoted much attention to them, Miriam having taken charge of the conchological department of our expedition, and we found fourteen or fifteen varieties between Jerusalem and the shore of the sea. They lay in the same quantities down to the very edge of the water. The rain storms wash thousands of them into the sea, where they die and are thrown on the shores, or found on the bottom. None of them live in the sea. I can not too much regret, that out of several hundred specimens of shells which we brought home with us, we miss these packages only, on which I placed perhaps the lighest value. Three hours from Saint Sabas we came to the top of a THE SEA OF DEATH. 209 deep, wild gorge, down which our path wound by fearful precipices. It turned and twisted by rectangular bends, the path oftentimes so narrow that it appeared impossible to pass. Continuing in this for an hour we reached the opening, where it breaks out on the western table of the Jordan valley. We now supposed ourselves within thirty minutes of the shore, and putting our horses to their speed, we started in full race for the sparkling beach. Never was illusion more complete. Riding half the time at a rattling gallop we were, nevertheless, an hour and a quarter before we dismounted on the water's edge. Our course was over the high table, broken up into hills which rise about fifty feet above the sea, and which occupy the western part of the valley as a step toward the mountains. Being composed of a gravel and clay mixture, this land is unfit for cultivation. We then descended to the lower plain, and penetrating thickets of reeds and zukkum, a thorny bush, among which were numerous springs and small rivulets of water, we at last emerged among piles of drift-wood on the northern beach of the mysterious Sea of Death. i,4 Ale e eq e0 3e qa the I o q. THE water was clear, bright, and transparent as glass, sparkling in the sunshine, and glittering with all the beauty of a sea beach on the Atlantic coast, without the mixture of sand to discolor it. The shore was composed of hard pebbles of various kinds of stone. The whole appearance of the beach was beautiful in the extreme. The bushes and reeds came down to the slope of the beach, and all the ordinary flowers of the country bloomed in profusion at the very edge of the water, much nearer than I have ever seen vegetation on the Atlantic shores. At the very moment of springing from our horses we started two rabbits that were among the drift-wood on the shore, and we saw birds among the brush, and snails on the bank, so that there was no appearance of death or of gloom in the valley. The sea was tempting. I can never resist the invitation of sparkling waters, and at sea have always difficulty in restraining myself from plunging into the bright foam. The day was warm, we had ridden far and were weary and thirsty, and the waves were before us. While Abdel-Atti arranged our luncheon, and Betuni took care of the horses, Whitely, Moreright, and I walked westward along the shore until we found a good place, and prepared for a bath. A BATH IN TIIE SEA. 211 There was a breeze of wind blowing from the south, and the sea rippled up at our feet. It made the prospect pleasanter, but we found our error soon. The water shoaled so gradually that it was impossible to plunge from the shore, and we walked off three hundred feet before we found four feet of water. "Come on, Whitely," I shouted, and threw myself forward into it, as I would at home into the arms of the surf at Watch Hill. And then! If there were words to express an agony that no one has experienced I would use them here. I can not conceive worse torture than that plunge caused me. Every inch of my skin smarted and stung as if a thousand nettles had been whipped over it. My face was as if dipped in boiling oil, the skin under my hair and beard was absolute fire, my eyes were balls of anguish, and my nostrils hot as the nostrils of Lucifer. I howled with pain, but I suspended when I heard Whitely's voice. He had swallowed some of the water, and coughed it up into his nose and the tubes under his eyes. The.effect was to overcome all pain elsewhere while that torture endured. It came near being a serious matter with him, and, as it was, his voice suffered for a week, his eyes and nose were inflamed as if with a severe cold, and the pain continued severe for several days. Recovering our feet with difficulty, we stood pictures of despair, not able to open our eyes, and increasing the pain by every attempt we made to rub them with our wet hands or arms. It was some minutes before we could regain our equanimity and open our organs of sight, when we saw Moreright, who had taken warning from our example, laughing at us, while he very coolly lay rolling about in the sea with his head high and dry in the air. As soon as possible we made some experiments to test the density of the water, and, as after 212 EXPERIMENTS. awhile the smarting pain in the skin diminished, we remained in the sea nearly an hour, thoroughly trying its buoyant powers. Walking off slowly from the shore, when I reached a depth where the water was at my arm-pits my feet left the ground and turned up to the surface. Lying down to float, no part of the body descended entirely below the surface. If on my back, my two knees, breast, and face were all out. I found no difficulty in lying on one side with my hand under my cheek and my elbow in the water, as if I were leaning on it. I lay on my back and lifted my right foot into the air, the lower part of the leg being parallel with the surface. I found it very difficult to swim, lying on my face, from the fact that my feet would be thrown into the air instead of against the water. This was a matter of prac, tice however, and in a short time I found no difficulty in making rapid progress, quite as rapid as in ordinary salt water, and much more so than in fresh water. The bottom was visible at a great distance from the shore; once I attempted swimming below the surface with my eyes open, a practice not difficult in the Atlantic, but I paid dearly for this second attempt. The agony in my eyes was intolerable, and when I attempted to regain my feet I found I was in such deep water that I could but touch my toes to the ground, and up they would go to the surface, while I floundered about like a fish on land, and my two friends shouted at me in an ecstasy of fun. I brought up from the bottom every thing I could find with my toes, but I got nothing but pebbles. There were no shells whatever. While we were bathing Miriam was making a thorough examination for shells, along the beach to the eastward, and we at length rejoined her and continued the search. I was content with her verdict, knowing her skill, by WATER OF THE SEA. 213 years of practice, in detecting the minutest specimens of conchology which were totally invisible to my eyes. She examined the sand and clay, and made a complete. investigation, resulting in nothing found. We discovered plenty of fresh water shells of various kinds, which we afterward found in quantities in the Jordan, but they were all dead, and mostly worn on the pebbles. There was no shell in the Dead Sea not already well-known as a fresh water inhabitant, and therefore a stranger here. It may be considered as settled, by frequent examination, that there is no life whatever within these waters. A pint of Dead Sea water, which I took in one of the tin cases before mentioned, remained in it till it reached America, just six months afterward, when it was transferred to an open-mouthed bottle. It was clear and sparkling when opened, as it was in the sea, but in a few days it became yellow, thick, and oily. In this condition it remained until again closed and corked, since which time it has become more and more clear and white, and I am anticipating its perfect restoration. The water of the Dead Sea has been repeatedly analyzed, with slightly varying results. Dr. Robinson gives four of the analyses, of which I here give three, namely those of Dr. Marcet, London, 1807, Gay Lussac, Paris, 1818, and Dr. Apjohn, Dublin, 1839. Dr. Marcet. Gay Lussac. Dr. Apjohn. Specific Gravity at Boiling Point, 1211. 1228. 1153. Distilled Water being 1000. Chloride of Calcium................ 3.920 3.980 2.438 Chloride of Magnesium............. 10.246 15.310 7.370 Chloride of Sodium................. 10.360 6.950 7.839 Chloride of Manganese.............. 5 Chloride of Potassium.............. 0.852 Sulphate of Zinc.................... 0.054 0.075 Bromide of Magnesium............ 0.201 Water............................ 75.420 73.760 81.220 100.000 100.000 100.000 214 WATER OF THE SEA. Just here I may mention a circumstance in connection with the water of the river Jordan. I sent about a quart of it to America. When bottled in Jerusalem it was of the clayey, milky color of the river. When opened in America it was clear and perfectly transparent, while it had a strong sulphurous smell that was fully equal to the strongest sulphur-spring I have ever seen. I have been unable to find any analysis of the Jordan water, and I mention this fact to call the attention of those interested to this evidence of a contribution to the Dead Sea, which I have never before seen mentioned. The effect being the same in two bottles, one of which I shipped from Smyrna and the other from Leghorn, I have no idea that it was produced by extraneous causes. We lunched on the shore of the sea. Abd-el-Atti had kindled a fire among the drift-wood which lay piled up on the beach. This drift-wood was much of it large timber from the hill-sides of Moab, and lay in quantities sufficient to supply Jerusalem with fuel for months if there were any way of conveying it thither. But here it lies and rots, since a camel would take two days to carry a small quantity to the Holy City and the worth of his load would not repay the time and labor. The fire spread rapidly and blazed fiercely among the dry trunks and branches of trees. Leaving it to complete its work of demolition on these memorials of the desolateness of the spot, we mounted our horses at three in the afternoon to proceed to the Jordan. I rode the bay, Mohammed, down to the edge of the sea, but he paused, snuffed the salt air with his nostrils and refused to wet his dainty fetlocks in it. He knew it well, and after a pleasant discussion with him, in which he very gently but decidedly begged off, I turned him to the path by which the others were gone, and he took the road at a flying run that soon brought us up with them. THE JORDA N. 215 We had now to cross the plain which lies west of the Jordan and north of the Dead Sea. It was very evident fiom its surface that it had been overflowed in rainy weather, and the deposit of clay on the surface forbade vegetation. It was a dead level of barren soil. Not even a blade of grass grew on it. On the ground lay quantities of small shells of a peculiar sort found in the Jordan, which had spread over the ground during the overflow, and now lay dead and white on the surface of the soil. A thin dry crust had formed in the sunshine as is usual over mud, but I could detect nothing in its appearance nitrous or in any respect unusual. We were three fourths of an hour from the sea to the ford of the Jordan, crossing the angle made by the latter with the north shore of the former. The Jordan was flowing strong and fierce between its high banks, swollen by the rains and the melting of the snows of Hermon. At this point, and, indeed, on most of its course, the Jordan has two banks, one of which it overflows in very high water, while the other is far above that. On the intermediate terrace grows a dense thicket of trees, willows, zukkum, and other brush. The pain of our bath in the Dead Sea was not over. My face, especially my chin under my beard, was burning. The beard itself was crusted with salt and all my skin, from head to foot, was covered with an oily substance that the reader can obtain some idea of by dissolving salt, soda, and lime in hot lamp-oil and brushing himself over with the mixture. We were in haste, therefore, to see the Jordan, and the instant we reached its banks we plunged into its cool flood. The snows of Lebanon had reduced it almost to freezing point, but the relief from the Dead Sea water was delicious. We remained in it but for a few minutes how 216 THE JORDAN. ever, and then sat down on the bank to feast our eyes on this the great end of Christian pilgrimage. The flow was swift and strong, like the flow of a river that knew its own might and majesty. The color of the water disappointed me. It held in solution a light clay that gave it a milky or even muddy appearance, and made it the very contrast of the light clear water of the Dead Sea. The stones under the water and the edges of the bank were encrusted with the shells I have mentioned. We collected a few of these and cut a half dozen canes from the various trees that grew on its banks. We had not brought our shrouds with us, as the eastern pilgrims are accustomed, to dip in the sacred stream, and then preserve for the time of burial, but we took away with our eyes the impress of the scene to remain on brain and heart forever. Beyond the stream the mountains stood cold and calm as when Moses from their summits viewed the Land of Promise. We endeavored to locate Pisgah, and in this succeeded to our satisfaction. I know of no line of mountains whose summit is such an exact level as is the summit of those hills of Moab. The line on the sky was almost without a curve, but one point " over against Jericho" was higher than the others, and this sufficed us. Hereafter, in speaking of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal at Nablous, I shall again mention this peak in a connection that gives it an interest hitherto unknown. An old Arab and his son came down to the ford as evening settled on us, and crossed the dangerous stream, while we sat and watched them. Twice I thought the old man gone, but his strong son held him up and helped him over, and then we turned away. Sheik Halima had been urgent for our departure for an hour. He feared the Bedouins on the east of the Jordan, BLOOD REVENGE. 217 of whom we had seen several parties moving on the opposite heights. But we laughed at his fears, and told him that three Americans were equal to three regiments of Arabs. He half believed it, for he was in a constant holy horror of my revolver, which he had once seen exhausted in shots into a flight of vultures. As one and another of the huge birds fell, the sheik opened his eyes and looked, and with the sixth ball he uttered a solemn " Bismillah," and dismounted to inspect the slain. After that he believed in Americans. But the darkness was impending, and we reluctantly turned our horses' heads from the pool; once before we departed, I spoke to my bay horse Mohammed, and shook his jingling rein. He went into the stream like a rock from a hill-side, with a fierce, grand plunge, and shook his fine head and flowing mane, as he breasted the swift waters, and then we came out again, and with a wild halloo, went up the bank at a bound, and then all together were off over the plain for Jericho. The pace, which was fast at first, gradually slackened, and Sheik Halima rode up, as we came to a singular pile of three stones on each other, in the middle of the path. A low muttering of the sheik attracted Whitely's attention as we passed the stones. " What are they?" No answer. " Sheik Halima, what is that?" " The revenge." " What?" "They killed Rakhin there. The stones will stay there till one of them is killed just there." "Who killed him?" "They-over there," pointing across the Jordan. " When was it?" In the time of the grapes last year." And the sheik growled a little to himself, and rode on. 10 218 JERICHo. Ten minutes later, we met six wild-looking Bedouins, going toward the Jordan. They stopped and exchanged the salutation of peace with us, which proved their good intent, so far as we were concerned, conversed a few moments, and rode on. Under the pledge of secrecy, they communicated the fact that they belonged to a tribe near Hebron, from whom the common enemy east of the Jordan had stolen two camels three years ago. They were now on an expedition of reprisal. If the reader feels any interest in the result of their expedition, I may add (in confidence still) that I met one of them in Jerusalem a week afterward, and he told me that they found four camels in a convenient place, and appropriated them, asking no questions. It was now quite dark, and in a few minutes we had completely lost our way. The tents had been sent to the village El Riha (in which name the reader will catch the resemblance to Jericho), and according to our calculations we ought to be within a half mile of it. But we were in a sort of cul de sac among some fences of dry thorn bush. Here we stopped short to hold a council. In the midst of our deliberation, Whitely fired a pistol, and the next moment we heard the response of Hajji Mohammed's heavy fowling-piece. This gave us our direction, and he continued to fire occasionally until we reached the tents. A large camp-fire was kindled near them, and twenty Bedouins were seated around it, feasting on our provisions, while a crowd of not less than fifty women of Jericho (whose reputation by the way is exceedingly dubious), singing loud, shrill songs, interrupted with wild ullulas of joy, were waiting to welcome Miriam, whom the flag on our tent had taught them to suppose a sultana whose bucksheesh would equal their welcome. But dinner was the sole attraction for us, and this being FOUNTAIN OF ELISHA. 219 served and eaten, we slept gloriously on the plain of Jericho. Next morning we found our position. It was near an ancient tower, which alone remains of the Jericho of the time of the crusades, and near a low, miserable mud village, which was surounded by an impenetrable thicket of dead thorn-bushes. A cistern close by our tents, surrounded by a mosaic pavement, was perhaps the remains of some ancient palace-garden, and similar spots in the neighborhood indicated the antiquity of the site. The tower is not older than the middle ages. Twenty Bedouins, of the Ghor of the Jordan, were around the fire in the morning, and rose as we came out, to give us a morning salutation. There was nothing of interest in the miserable village El Riha, and we hastened away. Riding a half hour over a luxuriant plain, watered by a clear, sparkling stream, and covered with the nebbek or lote tree, and the zukkum, here quite large, but nowhere cultivated with any care, we reached the fountain of Elisha, now called Ain es Sultan. And a sultan's fountain it verily is, gushing up gloriously and running out in a small stream, heavy enough to work a large cotton-mill. It was as large and copious as any six fountains I had seen in America, and worthy the miracle of Elisha which was here performed. This spot, in all respects, answers the description of the fountain of Jericho, and as there is no other in this part of the valley, it is manifest that this must be the one, which at the request of the people, Elisha changed from bitter to sweet, as described in 2 Kings, ii. Here we were much nearer the site of the ancient city than the spot where we had passed the night, and near the fountain, on the plain, in all directions, but especially to the south and south-west, are remains of the ancient city of Herod. 220 ANCIENT JERICHO. Jericho possesses an interest to the Christian traveler which dates from the entry of the children of Israel into the Land of Promise. Repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament, it has its chief and holiest interest in connection with the Saviour's life. It was here that Zaccheus saw him, and here that he healed blind Bartimeus. It was here that he received the news of the death of Lazarus, and hence, followed by his sad disciples, he went up the road we were now about to travel, to Bethany, to call him back from the land of silence. Tradition endeavors to increase the interest that thus invests the spot, by making the high mountain, whose perpendicular walls of rock overhang the plain behind the fountain, the mountain Quarantana, of the forty days' temptation, but of that we will say nothing, since no one can affirm any thing of it. The fountain is broad and shallow, measuring nowhere more than eighteen inches in depth, bubbling up in all parts of its basin, with quantities of air or gas. It is surrounded by the ruins of a building which has formerly covered it. I found it filled with fish, many of them measuring six inches in length. We rode southward under the foot of Quarantana, whose rugged face is full of caves inhabited by fellaheen, whom Ibrahim Pasha expelled from their villages which he burned, and at length crossing the Wady Kelt which comes down through a deep gorge of the hills from the west, in the bottom of which flows the brook Cherith, we turned up on the south bank of that brook, and ascended the steep hill-side by an ancient road, at the side of which ran once an aqueduct now in ruins. The ascent was rapid and difficult. Abd-el-Atti had left us at the fountain and ridden on. HIe was quite ill with a cold and inflammation on his lungs. I found him near the top of the hill, lying on the ground under the side of a large A RUINED MONASTERY. 221 rock, in great pain, and having no other remedy at hand, I dismounted, and getting a bottle of brandy from the luncheon bag, poured it in quantities on his breast and rubbed it in with a flannel cloth. Miriam, coming up at the moment I was pouring it out, shouted out her recollection of an old Bible picture of the good Samaritan pouring oil and wine into the wounds of the man who had fallen among thieves, and we were thereby reminded that this was the road on which the scene of that parable was laid. The gorge of the brook Cherith was very magnificent. I have seen none in Alpine scenery to equal it for wild and desolate beauty. For an hour we continued to.pass remains of the aqueduct, and at about one o'clock arrived at an extensive ruined khan, where was a cistern of water surrounded by Arab women, who were drawing water and carrying it in skins to tents among the mountains. A fortress on a high hill over this was alike in ruins, and suggested memories of brave old days now forgotten. No tradition or history attaches to these spots so far as I could learn. I find in the pilgrimage of the English saint, Wilibald, mention made by that worthy that, on his way from Jericho up to Jerusalem, he came upon the convent or monastery, "Sancti Eustochii;" "Illud autem stat in medio campo inter Hiericho et Hierusalem," adds the venerable chronicler, and thereby "I conclude that the ruin which I now saw may have been this monastery, and the well at which I paused, may have been that at which he drank, in the year of grace seven hundred and sixty-five. Other record I know not of. Old ruinslike this possess to me a great interest, in that they rouse imagination, which peoples their halls with princes and priests, monks or ladies of the long-gone years. But whether this were monastery of saint, or castle of knight, it and its former habitants are dust now-holy dust of Holy 222 BED OUINS. Land, and the tents of the wandering tribes are the only habitations of man in their once luxuriant valleys. We rode on over hills and through valleys until, five hours and a half from Jericho, we entered the village of Bethany, and riding by the tomb of Lazarus, paused a moment to look in it, then went on over the Mount of Olives by that path so sanctified by the footsteps of the Lord, and descending by the garden of Gethsemane we crossed the Kedron and rode into the gate of St. Stephen. Our party had been increased by the addition of a dozen Bedouins, one only of whom wished to enter the city. The law forbidding him to carry weapons, he begged me as we were descending the Mount of Olives to take his gun from him, and I rode into the city with the queerest-looking matchlock across my saddle that any Christian man ever carried into Jerusalem. lhe BiHf~r plqee of 1ie 3SoHI. "Now, Miriam, now for Bethlehem! Give the chestnut the rein, and shake off the dust of Jerusalem from your feet and garments. Hey, Whitely, touch up the brown horse!" And we went like the wind out of the Jaffa gate, right under the tower of David, and so down into the valley of the Sons of Hinnom. It was a tremendous pace for that steep descent; but we had learned lessons in horsemanship in Syria, and my broad-breasted Mohammed went down the descent with long plunges, and, as he crossed the dry bed of the stream, lifted his head into the air and shook his flowing mane, as if he were intoxicated with that glorious northwest wind that came down from the hills of Ephraim. On the table-land beyond the Hill of Evil Counsel we found it blowing great guns. My boornoose streamed off on the wind, and Miriam's riding-dress was a flag to leeward. They kept up the pace-now the chestnut leading with his mistress, now Whitely ahead, and now Moreright waving his hand in the air as if he carried a Bedouin spear, his favorite style of fast riding, and one which his horse was, of course, familiar with. I fell behind at the first, for I had paused a moment in the valley to speak to my old friend Isaac Rosenstein, who is superintending the erection of the Jewish hospital on 224 Y ALLAH, the hill-side, which is founded on the bequests of the late Judah Touro, and the gifts of American Israelites. The charities of the American Jews are noble. Their hospital will surpass every thing of the kind in Holy Land; and many a worn old son of Jacob, seeking the city of David to die, and the valley of Jehoshaphat to be buried in, will bless them with expiring breath for this great work which they are doing so silently. When I reached the hill-top I saw the party a mile ahead of me, and I spoke to Mohammed. Some day, my friend, you may mount one of those half-breed Arabian horses, and know what that means. It is not safe for a stranger to speak to one of them. His first motion is a long leap, and at the third jump he is at full speed. " Y'Allah!" It is a profane expression; no doubt of it. But what is a man to do? The Arabs have a way of being profane, and the name of God is the most common word in their language. When men say the Turks are very reverent, and are always saying, "Please God," "If God will,"' In the name of God," "Bismillah," "Mashallah," and similar expressions, it means nothing more nor less than we mean when we say of a man that he swears like a trooper. The word which answers to the English " Go ahead!" the French "Allez!" the Italian "Avanti!" in all oriental countries is " 0 God!" or " Y'Allah!" Still, as I said, it has passed into common use precisely as Adieu with us, and one must use it. By the time I had thought of half this that I have written about the word, the bay horse was going over the plain like the gale that followed him, and I thundered up alongside of Miriam as we came to the slight ascent that approaches the convent of Mar Elias. Passing this, in a few moments we were approaching a small dome, on RACHEL'S GRAVE. 225 four-square white walls, that marks a spot of deep interest, being the tomb of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. No spot of ancient interest is better located than this. There has been no period of history at which tradition has not fixed upon this identical place, and indeed the description of the death and burial of the mother of Joseph and Benjamin leave no room for doubt as to the spot in which she was buried. "And they journeyed from Bethel, and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath. * * * And Rachel died and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem, and Jacob set a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." (Genesis xxxv. 16-20.) And again: " Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan, in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath, and I buried her there, in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem." (Genesis xlviii. 7.) The present building is a Moslem kubbet or wely, a small square building supporting a dome. In the centre of this is a pile of masonry covered with plaster. On the east side of it is another building adjoining it, with open arches, in which we were glad to find shelter from the piercing wind. Moslem tombs are around it. One large open vault, in the rear of it, was full of skeletons whose origin I could not ascertain. Here the tents of Israel were pitched in the centuries long gone, and here the dying Rachel gave birth to the beloved Benjamin. Close by her couch, on the one side, was the hill on which her children would build the great city, the prototype of the everlasting city of their God. Close by her, on the other side, was the hill on which the village would be built, from which would come the Saviour of Israel, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Shiloh of Joseph, the Hope of Benjamin. It was indeed holy ground on which she lay. The mother of a mighty 1 )' 226 BETHLEHE M race lay down in that ground and slept peacefully, serenely, century after century, nor have men ever disturbed her repose. We gathered flowers close by the tomb. The delicate anemone, and starry flowers that might have sprung from the blue eyes of the beloved of the old man, Jacob. The horses became impatient, and Mohammed, who had followed me around among the graves like a cog, lifted up his head as a sudden gust of wind dashed in his face, and started off at a furious rate to make the circuit of the kubbet, thereby conveying a hint that it was cold, and one must keep moving to keep warm. So we mounted, and ten minutes more brought us to the entrance of Bethlehem. My friend Pierotti, architect of the Terra Santa, to whom I had been indebted for so many favors in the Holy City, had given us a very kind letter to the superior of the Latin Convent of the Nativity at Bethlehem. But I am convinced it was not necessary to insure us a warm and hospitable reception within the walls of that old building. They were walls. It was something to have such piles of stones between one and the outer world. The window-seats, or niches, were ten feet deep through the massive piles, but the sunshine stole pleasantly in at them, and lit the room, into which we were shown, with a soft red flush that made it pleasant and homelike. It was a long and lofty chamber, from which opened little cells, four feet by seven, with curtains for doors. Each cell had a delicious bed, with white linen, for a sleeping-place. Over the end of the room was a large painting, representing a king and a queen who had made royal gifts toward the rebuilding of the convent, and who looked down on us in strange old style, as if they GROTTO OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. 227 wondered what barbarian land we came from as pilgrims. to the birth-place. Before the sun set we visited the Church and the Grotto of the Nativity. The church is one of the oldest structures in Palestine, being that erected by Helena, in the fourth century, over the supposed spot of the nativity of our Lord. The building is cruciform, consisting of a nave and two aisles on each side of it, the aisles supported by forty ancient Moorish pillars, with Corinthian capitals, all of which are grotesquely painted and ornamented in a style that is at once unseemly and puzzling. Four more pillars are now concealed in a wall which crosses the lower side of the transept, and completely separates the great nave from the upper part of the church. Under the high altar is the Grotto of the Nativity, into which two stairways descend, one on each side of the high altar. This grotto, on which much wealth has been lavished by the three churches who have joint possession of it, the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, contains two spots of special interest, one, marked with a silver plate that states in good Latin, "' Here was born of a virgin, Jesus Christ our Lord," and another that is cased in marble, and called the manger in which he was laid. Beside these, the spot where the Magi knelt is pointed out, and marked by an altar. The grotto, for it is a cavern in the rock, is gorgeously ornamented, and hung around with paintings, and gold and silver ornaments. There was one little picture, a Carlo Dolci, that I tried hard to buy, and I came near succeeding. In discussing the question of the authenticity of this spot, I refer the reader to what I shall hereafter remark, in speaking of Jerusalem, on the subject of tradition and its value. And I confess, that at this point T see no po 228 DR. ROBINSON'S ARGUMENT. sible room for doubt that the Lord was born within this same cave now consecrated to his worship. That I may not be accused of misstating the arguments against this view, I will quote here Dr. Robinson's entire argument on this subject. He introduces it in connection with his argument concerning the Holy Sepulchre and the place of Resurrection. (Biblical Researches, vol. ii., pages 78, 79.) " The cave of the Nativity, so-called, at Bethlehem, has been pointed out as the place where Jesus was born, by a tradition which reaches back at least to the middle of the second century. At that time Justin Martyr speaks distinctly of the Saviour's birth, as having occurred in a grotto near Bethlehem. In the third century, Origen adduces it as a matter of public notoriety, so that even the heathen regarded it as the birth-place of him whom the Christians, adored. Eusebius also mentions it several years before the journey of Helena, and the latter consecrated the spot by erecting over it a church. In this instance, indeed, the language of Scripture is less decisive than in respect to the place of the Ascension, and the evangelist simply relates that the virgin brought forth her son and laid him in a manger,' because there was no room for them in the inn.' But the circumstance of the Saviour's having been born in a cave, would certainly have not been less remarkable than his having been laid in a manger, and it is natural to suppose that the sacred writer would not have passed it over in silence. The grotto, moreover, was, and is, at some distance from the town, and although there may be still occasional instances in Judea where a cavern is occupied as a stable, yet this is not now, and never was, the usual practice, especially in towns and their environs. Taking into account all these circumstances, and also the early and general tendency to invent and propagate legends of a similar character, and THE ARGUMENT. 229 the prevailing custom of representing the events of. the gospel-history as having taken place in grottos, it would hardly seem consistent with a love of simple historic truth to attach to this tradition any much higher degree of credit than we have shown to belong to the parallel tradition respecting the place of our Lord's ascension." It will be observed that it is here admitted, that the tradition relating to this grotto is unbroken since the middle of the second century, at which time Justin Martyn speaks of it. Justin was converted from Platonism to Christianity A.D. 132. Of his age, we know nothing, but it is not in the least impossible that he had seen a hundred men who remembered the days of Christ on earth. It is incredible that at that period of time any error could be made in pointing out the birth-place of the Son of God, whose presence on earth was an event of more astounding importance in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of the country than would have been the advent of Antoninus, the reigning emperor, or the fall of Rome itself. If a philosopher or an earthly king had been born in a stable, there would not be the least doubt of the preservation of the place for twice or ten times that length of time, Why, then, imagine that the birth-place of the King of kings could be mistaken? Simply for these alleged reasons; 1. The only evangelist out of the four (Luke) who deems it important to mention that the babe was laid "in a manger," does not mention that the manger was in a cave. 2. This cave was, and is, at. some distance from the town. 3. It is not now, and never was, the usual practice, especially in towns and their environs, to occupy caverns as stables. As to the first point, it is true that Luke does not men 230 CAVES USED AS STABLES. tion the cave, nor does he mention that it was in a stable, nor that it was not in one or the other. I confess my inability to perceive the force of the argument, or any reason why the silence of Luke on this subject should operate to prove the cave a fiction, any more than why the entire silence of the other three evangelists should operate to prove Luke's statement all a fiction. The argument has equal force, that it is natural to suppose that if true, the sacred writers would not have passed over in silence such remarkable circumstances. As to the second point, the distance from the present town maybe three or four hundred yards. It is not at all improbable that the ancient town inclosed this site and swept quite around the hill. But the third point is the most remarkable statement, and here I am compelled to find fault with Dr. Robinson's accuracy of observation, which is the more surprising here as contrasted with his usual careful and reliable statements. I have no hesitation in saying that I never saw a cavern in Syria, near Jerusalem, or any large town, which was accessible to cattle, horses, donkeys, or sheep, that was not used as a stable. Perhaps he did not enter these as frequently as I did, for a sort of mania after caves and tombs led me into every hole that would admit my body. In the valley of Jehoshaphat, all the open caverns were stables. On the side of Aceldama, difficult of access as it was, horses and donkeys were nightly stabled in the tombs. In Jerusalem, on the north side of the Via Dolorosa, where for centuries there have been ruins of some ancient buildings, leaving a row of ten Gothic-pointed arches above the ground, supporting the vast heaps of earth known as the site of Herod's Palace, which arches admitted one to dark, subterranean caves in the earth, every night of my stay in Jerusalem, the camels of wan ANCIENT CUSTOoM 231 dering Arabs were housed for the night, among donkeys and horses of the resident inhabitants. The same was true of all parts of Syria, on the road to Hebron, to Saint Sabas, to Jericho, and to Galilee. That my own testimony on this subject may not go unsupported, I may refer to Lieutenant Lynch, who states his " own observation of the frequent and almost universal appropriation, where practicable, of caverns and recesses in the rock, for sheltering man and beast from the inclemency of the weather." (Lynch's Dead Sea Explorations, page 424.) Mr. Stephens's remarks are too well known to need quotation here. Thus much in regard to present customs. Probably the assertion that such never was the custom would be fully answered by an equally decided assertion, that such always was the custom, and one assertion might have equal weight with the other, since there is no authority on the subject. But reasoning from the general similarity of modern and ancient customs in eastern lands, especially in Syria, it is perfectly safe to believe that such was the custom, and I have no doubt, therefore, that the converse of this third proposition is strictly true, and that the use of caverns for stables is, and always was, the usual practice in Syria, especially in towns and their environs. Much more likely would thisbe true in a crowded time when Bethlehem was overflowing with guests, and when every traveler sought what shelter for himself and his beast the surrounding country could afford. But " the prevailing custom of representing the events of the gospel history as having taken place in grottoes" so far from operating as an argument against the authenticity of this faith appears to me a strong indication in its favor. That custom must have had an origin. What was that origin? Most probably in the fact that some of the events of the holy history did take place in grottoes. 232 OTHER GROTTOES. This tradition is the earliest that we have distinct knowledge of, and the fact that the Lord was born in a cave and buried in a cave may well have given cause to the custom of representing other events of his life as having occurred in a similar place. Finding this place marked out in the middle of the second century as the birth-place of the Lord, and nothing to forbid its truth, but, on the contrary, every thing to favor it, I believed sincerely that I was on the ground hallowed by that event. Various grottoes are connected with that of the Nativity by passages under the church. We visited the altar and tomb of Eusebius and that of Jerome, in succession, as well as that of Eustachia, and of Paula, a Roman lady, a friend of Jerome, who founded a number of convents in Holy Land, in the fourth century, and died at Bethlehem. Two paintings over her tomb are exceedingly beautiful. Thence we went to the altar and tomb of the Innocents slain by Herod, which I think must be the tomb and shrine which Dr. Olin took for that of persons martyred by the Mohammedans, as I could find none such; and finally we visited the cell of Jerome in which he translated the Bible, and which there is no reason to doubt is the chamber of that father. It was curious to be waited on that night by longrobed Franciscans; to have your toast handed you by a cowled brother, and your wine poured out by a venerable-looking priest, and your candles lit by a reverend father. Let me tell you there might be colder and less cozy places than that same guest-chamber in the old Convent of the Nativity, after the dinner was cleared away. There was little Miriam in a corner of the diwan, with a pile of cushions around her, resting most pleasantly. There was Whitely making magnificent strides up and CHRISTMAS MEMORIES. 233 down the room, and expressing his constant wonderment at the thickness of the walls. There was Moreright rolling a cigarette of his favorite Stamboul tobacco, of which he smoked regularly one after dinner, and no more; and there was your black-bearded friend with his chibouk, filling the air with fragrant Latakea, while, through the clouds that surrounded him, he discoursed somewhat on this wise: "Ah! Miriam, if I had lived in Bethlehem it should be a Christmas-day the whole year round, and life one long Christmas carol. I would have feasts in the day and songs in the night, and I would keep the birth-night three hundred times a year. Somehow, here in Bethlehem, I seem to remember only Christmas memories, as if on Christmas days in other years I had been nearer here. Do you remember only the few short years ago when our blithe Jessie sang the carols with us? and now-there are voices among the seraphim not more musical than her voice was then; and what must it be now that she is there? There! Where? Close above us. If there be a place where the heavens are nearer earth than elsewhere, it is here, above the Birth-place and the Sepulchre. And-hush a moment, Whitely; for heaven's sake stop that heavy tread one instant! I heard a voice outside the convent walls." "You did, did you? Why, Braheem Effendi, those walls are twelve feet thick." " Pshaw, man! the voice I heard sounds through six feet of earth and violets, and it is no louder than the rustle of the grass on her grave, and yet I tell you I heard it from the land of sunset-our land, my friend-our own old home." " The Effendi is a little crazy to-night," said Whitely, turning to Moreright, and pausing in his walk. "She lived to see just fourteen summers, and, and then 234 ONE BELOVED. -what then? Why, then she came to Bethlehemdon't interrupt me, Miriam! She died on a Christmasnight. I remember it as if it were last night. The moon on the snow, the snow on the hills, and the blue sky over them all. And she lay in her little bed, and her long yellow hair-golden as the golden sands of Saharastreamed down the white pillow, and her bright blue eyes were closed, and her thin white hands were clasped together on her breast; her gentle breast, that never heaved a sigh, now breathing gently, and as peacefully as if already she were in the atmosphere of heaven. Once, when the curls of gold trembled on the pillow, I believed for the instant that the winds that blow over those hills of God were among the tresses, and fanning her forehead. Once, as I pressed my forehead to the cold window-pane, and looked out on the night and stars, I believed that I saw the white-robed host approaching; and once when Philip-who had loved her as his own child-stooped over her, and she opened her blue eyes and smiled, then I believed-nay, I knew, and -it was so-that she saw nothing on earth-nothing but the ineffable countenance of the Saviour. Yes, she was gone! and where, where would the free soul of the beloved child, who all her life had so loved the story of Bethlehem, go first from his presence but to the cradle and the cross?" "Is it all true, Miriam, that he is talking about?" "I believe it is; and do you remember who, at this time two years ago, was lying even so, and-what day did she die?" " March 5, 1854; and this is March 7, 1856. Ah, how pleasant, after all, is the memory of that beloved child! And though her voice is not to be heard any more here -though her fair brow is not again to be uncovered on earth-I can weep now as I say it-yet, 0 friends of mine! this same city of Bethlehem is the place to remember STARLIGHT ON BETHLEHEM. 235 that he who was a little child bade children come to him, and that the jewels of his crown will be their radiant souls. Yea, I thank God-though it be in tears and pains-I thank God that he gave her to us, and that she died. Died! Can I say that here? Why, Bethlehem is the birth-place of the race of man. Here he who dies in India or America is born to immortality. The child that we thought dead in the valley of the Susquehanna was born that night in Bethlehem of Judea-born in the kingdom of the mighty Son of David. Whitely, light that candle, will you? I've an idea that all the holy fathers are as sound asleep in the convent by this time as Jerome himself, and I propose finding my way to the roof of the convent. I marked the passages before dark, and I wish to see the starlight on Bethlehem. Will you go with me?" " Certainly we will." I can not attempt to describe the labyrinthine passages of the old building. It was a walk of an eighth or a quarter of a mile to reach the terraced roof, and on the way we woke the light slumbers of two of the fathers, who put their shaven heads out of the doors of their cells, and muttered what we took for blessings, whether they were so intended or not. That hour was a life-time. Go out in the starlight of a Christmas-night at home, my friend, and look up at the stars, and try to realize some of my feelings in the starlight of Bethlehem. I lay down on the roof and gathered my boornoose about me, for the wind was not yet gone down, and I hid my face from my companions while I looked up. And then, then-deride if you will, 0 friend of mine! -laugh if you dare, 0 miserable unbeliever!-then, in the high arches of heaven, I heard the echo of the morning song sounding down the ages. And among the voices 236 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. of the sons of God I caught that distant wail that alone interrupted the universal joy, mourning that the Son of God must die for that creation. And next, as I lay and listened, I heard the unspeakable melody of the angels that woke the shepherds over on yonder hill; and as I lay there, that sound-a sound as of the hosts that are around the white throne-went up into the sky, and died away among the stars. It died away, but still I heard another sound-a faint, far sound-that thrilled through my heart and my brain as did not the songs of the new creation, nor even the angels' voices. When I was a boy-I, whose far-wandering feet had pressed the holy soil of Canaan, and had brought me to the plains of Bethlehem Ephratah-in my old home, thousands of miles away, where the forests waved in the autumn winds, and streams dashed with much music of water down old rocks, and the oak-tree over the house moaned, and the wind soughed through the dark pineswhen I was a boy, unsullied as yet in heart by worldly contacts, uncursed as yet by willing sin, I was wont to lie down at evening, wearied with the long day's play, and fall asleep, lulled by my mother's voice in one unchanging song. For years I fell asleep to that music, and the last sound that hallowed my undisturbed slumber, was that sweet voice singing to " Bonnie Doun," the Star of Bethlehem. Will you-dare you laugh at me, when I tell you that I heard that voice-that song-that holy sound, away yonder at Bethlehem, above me among the stars? That I shut back the memories that crowded to heart and lip, crushed down the longing I can not tell of, for the clasp of those so beloved arms, and that at length I sobbed aloud, and, hiding my face in my boornoose, I wept as I lay there in the starlight on the convent roof. Laugh if you will; but know of a surety that if I pre THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 237 vail to reach the heaven of our longing hopes, among the tempestuous songs of joy that roll down the banks of the river of life, I shall not find perfect melody till I hear that voice and song. WE prayed in the morning in the Grotto of the Nativity, finding in it a crowd of young children singing at the early mass. Many of the Bethlehem artisans waited on us with their work to sell, and we made some purchases. The chief business of the place is the manufacture of beads, rosaries, and crosses from olive-wood and other substances, and the carving of stone and the mother of pearl oystershell of the Red Sea, in images of holy men, women, and places. Esau, a Bethlehemite, is the most skillful of the workmen, as I have elsewhere remarked, and asks most exorbitant prices. The father-superior waited on us very politely just before we started, and expressed his regret at the impossibility of selling me the picture I had seen in the Grotto. It was a melancholy fact, that the war between the Greek and Latin churches had its climax at Bethlehem; and although this picture was the property of the Latins, yet if they removed it, it would lead to a dispute on the right to fill the vacancy; nor could I effect the object by instantly substituting another, as I desired to do on my return to Jerusalem. The dispute would still arise, and would lead to a reference to the authorities and endless bickerings. I was obliged to yield the matter, and, re POOLS OF SOLOMON. 239 luctantly bidding the good monks farewell, we departed for Hebron. One hour and a half from Bethlehem, we were at the Pools of Solomon. These vast reservoirs are three in number, in the slope of a narrow valley, where it is probable that the great king had a country seat and gardens. Each pool is lower than the one next above it, so that the water runs successively from one to the other, and from the last by an aqueduct to Jerusalem. The measurements of Cassas, whose plans I have before me, give the upper pool, 200 French feet by 366; the second, 206 by 366; and the third, 166 by 480. Dr. Robinson's measurements, which are manifestly much more accurate, are as follows: Upper Pool.-380 feet (English), by 160 at the west end and 250 at the east. Depth at east end, 25 feet. Middle Pool.-423 feet, by 160 and 250 feet. Depth at east end, 39 feet. _Lower Pool.-582 feet, by 148 and 207 feet. Depth at east end, 50 feet. An old Saracen fortified castle stands near the upper pool, with an ancient gateway leading into it. I rode in, and found an intensely black Nubian in solitary possession, and innumerable earthern pots, built up in high walls, by way of hives for bees, of which there were any quantity. Not far from the front of this fortress is the fountain from which the pools are supplied. A stairway descends through a mason-work passage about twelve feet, into a small chamber, in which a basin collects the water from several springs, and discharges it toward the upper pool. At the corner of the upper pool, it is received into a sort of subterranean fountain, which is also reached by steps, and thence distributed to the pool. The original fountain is very probably a work of Solo 240 VALLEY OF ESHCOL. mon's day, and is supposed to be the sealed fountain referred to in the Canticles, iv. 12. The road to Hebron from the pools is over the same desolate country that I have already described in other parts of Syria. I shall speak of it more in detail in describing our return to Jerusalem. It was three in the afternoon when we began to see those signs of cultivation and luxuriance that indicated our approach to the valley of Eshcol. The hills opened; the valley was fenced in, and vines covered the inclosures. A stone watch-tower was built up in each vineyard, where the owners, who live in the city, are accustomed to pass the summer months. They are not to be called houses, for they are but square walls of rough stone, without mortar, roofed over with brush or thatch, and without windows. The inhabitants of Syria need few luxuries. Beds are unknown, and a family of moderate means can be comfortable in such a hut, sleeping on straw or on the ground. The road became now quite home-like, as it narrowed between stone walls, over which the vines were growing. But it was not home-like underfoot, where the usual accumulation of rough stone made the footing insecure, and from time to time tried our horses' knees severely. But at last we found ourselves suddenly among houses, and, in a moment more, rode down by the southern side of the upper city of Hebron. The city is divided into three, parts, none of which are walled. They scatter along a valley between high mountains, an open space separating each from the other. The lower city is the largest and most important, since in it is the great mosk that covers the cave of Machpelah. Passing the two upper sections we reached the town; and, turning into it by a pool, and entering by an old archway, we rode up a dark narrow street to the Jews' quarter, in HEBRON. 241 which we had been told at Jerusalem that we could obtain comfortable lodgings. Let me here warn the traveler who visits Hebron, not to be deluded by such representations. We repented, in agony of skin, all night long, that we had left our tents at Jerusalem. The only house in Hebron into which travelers could be admitted was that of a Jew, whose hospitality was abundant in anticipation of full repayment. It was a queer little old house, dating somewhere this side of Abraham's day, which we reached through narrow winding, dismal passages, out of which opened many Jewish doors, in which were many pretty Jewish faces. One room given us was open to the stars of heaven, being only an alcove, from a small open court. The other, a closed room, opened from it; and on the floor were spread some coverlids, by way of bed and bedding. Leaving Abd-el-Atti to arrange the comforts of life, we rode out to examine the city. Hebron is known to Moslems only as El Khalil (The Friend), a name derived from the common title of Abraham, "the friend of God;" and not, as has been supposed, from El Khulet (The Castle). They relate that, in a sore famine, the Father of the Faithful despatched his servants into Egypt to one of his own friends there, asking for corn. The Egyptian refused it, saying, that if it were for Abraham and his family he would send it instantly, but as he knew that what he sent would be given away to all the poor of the land in Abraham's usual manner, he would not consent to send him any to be thus wasted. The servants, ashamed to be seen coming back with empty bags, filled them with fine sand, which they brought home, telling the result of their journey to Abraham alone. As he lay on his couch, revolving in his brain the means of preserving his family and retainers 11 242 MOSK OF M A CHPELAI I. from impending starvation, Sarah went to one of the bags, which had been deposited in the tent, and, opening it, took out meal and baked bread. Abraham, smelling the burning bread, demanded where she had obtained the meal, and she replied: "It is what came but just now from your friend in Egypt." " Say, rather," exclaimed the grateful patriarch, "that it came from my friend, God Almighty." The inhabitants of the city are friends to no one. They are the most bigoted Moslems of the East, and absolutely forbid the residence of a Christian within their town. They guard their great mosk with the most jealous care, considering it polluted by the gaze of a Christian on its outer walls. It is an immense building of handsome stone, with beveled edges. No position can be obtained near it sufficiently high to overlook its lofty walls. These are not inclosed by a roof. They are out-walls of a court, in one end of which stands a smaller building that covers the cave of Machpelah. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Hebron when the Christians held sway in the Holy Land, A.D. 1163, described the spot much as it is now described. He said if a wealthy person offered a sufficient fee a door was opened, " which dates from the time of our forefathers, who rest in peace;" and, with a taper in his hands, the visitor passed through two empty caves, and reached a third, wherein were six sepulchres, those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, opposite each other. All bore inscriptions like this: " This is the sepulchre of our Father Abraham, upon whom be peace." No Christian is now permitted to enter the inclosure; scarcely, indeed, is one allowed to approach'it. As we rode up toward it, the news of our arrival spread like wildfire through the town, and a crowd of men, AN AMERICAN LESSON. 243 women, and children met us near the Haram with shouts of defiance and derision, forbidding us to approach. Disregarding them, we rode on to the front of the building, and then around it, and up the steep hill-side behind it, till we were on an eminence commanding it. But we could see nothing more than its vast walls of large beveled stone, which seem to have been standing since the days of Jewish power. Our eyes could not prevail to penetrate the rocky curtain, and see the opening of that cave in which the mighty and the beloved slumbered. No place on earth, away from Jerusalem, is of more profound interest than this; and I know of no spot which I more desired to see. While we paused on the hill, the boys who had followed us threw stones at us from a distance, and emboldened by our taking no notice of them, at length approached us, shouting, " Nazara, kelb, kafir," and other words of contempt. Words did not hurt, but stones did; and as one struck the brown horse on the side of his head, Whitely lifted him in two long bounds that brought him among the boys; and seizing the largest of them, a fellow of full eighteen, with his left hand, he swung him literally across his horse's neck. The position was not favorable to a perfect covering of his body by his loose shirt. On the contrary, those parts which are especially designed for such purposes were exposed to the full force of the whip, which the American pasha laid on with a swinging arm. I will insure that young hound against calling a Christian a dog henceforth. He was a converted Moslem before my friend threw him in a heap into a mud-hole; and the other boys were aghast at this unheard-of outrage on a Moslem by a Christian. But they did not disturb us further; and we rode down the hill and visited one or two of the rude glass-blowing establishments, which are the chief business of Hebron. They manufacture glass 244 JEWISH HOSPITALITY. bracelets and anklets for the women and children of Syria, which they put on when young, and retain, without breaking, until the foot or hand grows too large for them to come off. Returning to our Jewish quarters, we found Abd-elAtti in a state of excitement hitherto unparalleled. It appeared that we were in the midst of a Jewish holy week, when they observed sundry special formalities, among which was one which forbade them to eat or drink fiom any dish defiled by a Christian's touch. Hence we could not have either cooking utensils or table-furniture, and dire was the commotion consequent thereon; for be it known that Abd-el-Atti had been entrapped into all this by a son of our host in Jerusalem, who was authorized to assure us that his father would be happy to accommodate us like lords. We, of course, forbade interference with the religious feelings of the family; and having drinking-cups in our pockets, and metallic plates and knives and forks in our luncheon-bag, we made a meal from the remains of our luncheon, and boiled eggs which -we found means to cook; and then sat together around the miserable tallow candle, that made the darkness visible, while we laughed over the appearance of our accommodations in Hebron. It was the first decided error that Abd-el-Atti had made in several months, and in this he was not specially to blame. The deep window-seat of the old house opened by a rude shutter on the plain outside the city, for the house was on the very edge of the dense mass of buildings, of which the outer circle, joining one to another, and being accessible by doors only from within, answered to a certain extent the purposes of walls. The windows were innocent of glass, and through the loose shutters the cold night wind found its way in piercing blasts. But not PLAIN OF MAMRE. 245 withstanding the wind, before I slept I threw open the shutters and looked out on the valley and the hills, and recalled the most interesting passages in the history of that ground. This verily was the spot where those events occurred in centuries so long ago that I can almost as well realize that I am in another world, as where the tent of Abraham was pitched, and the angels visited him. When men began to build cities, in the years immedi, ately after the deluge, Hebron was founded. In Numbers, xiii. 22, we learn that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, a fact which the sacred writer evidently mentions as showing its great age. Its first appearance in sacred history is when Abram took up his abode " on the plains of Mamre which is Hebron." The word here translated plains is more properly to be read terebinth, or oak grove, and hence arose a tradition, which is found in all the centuries since Bible times, of a terebinth of Abraham. The early writers speak of it as having lasted from the time of Abraham to that of Christ, when it died. There is now near Hebron a vast tree of this description, which stands in solitary grandeur, bearing the tradition at present, but probably not very ancient, though certainly the most remarkable tree in Syria. But here the history of God's chosen people commenced. Here Abraham ancl Sarah lived, and here occurred that incident in the family history of the father of the faithful which so often occurs in families at this day, the first death, that makes it necessary to purchase a burial-place for our dead. Not a few old men have likened themselves to Abraham when, with quivering lip and bursting hearts, they have bargained with others for deep places in which to lay the beloved out of sight. Abraham stood up from before his dead. She lay there, 246 A BURIAL-PLACE. cold and calm, who had been once the beloved of his youth, the splendidly beautiful Sarah, to whom princes and kings had bowed in admiring love, and he had been sitting in his tent by her side, with his head bowed down over his face, his meniory sweeping over the century of their love. He stood up, and spoke to the children of Ieth, and said, " I am a stranger and sojourner with you; give me a possession of a burial-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight." She at least would wander no more. She was in the city which had foundations whose builder and maker was his friend and God. And Ephron sold him the field and cave of Machpelah, and "after this Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before MaInre; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan." Watching and waiting fbr many years beside his wife's resting-place, the old man sent his servant Eleazar to bring a wife to his son, and it was somewhere on these fields that Isaac was walking and meditating at evening and met Rebekah. For twenty-five years of his old age she was the daughter of Abraham, but he had comforted himself with another wife, and had now a host of children, who perhaps displaced in some measure the older son in his affections. More likely still is it that they were a trial to his old age, for they were men whose names are lost in the rolls of the servants of his God on earth. But when the old man, the mighty patriarch, whose name was a terror to the kings of the land, both for the prowess of his own stout arm and the promise that the very name contained of a coming multitude to possess their country, when Abraham at length departed to that sublime company in which he recognized Noah, and sat down by Adam, Abel, and Enoch, where henceforth his open arms would receive the hosts of his descendants who sought his bosom, his younger children, either too THE PATRIARCHS. 247 young to take part in the ceremony, or offended at the old man's will, in which he disowned them and gave his whole estate to Isaac, and lacking the affection that the elder had, are not heard of at his grave. But the wanderer, the oldest son, not demanding or desiring aught but a son's privilege, returned to the valley from the southern plains, and "his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron." Isaac was a very slow sort of man. No event of his life marked it. IIe was born, lived, and died in this valley, content, like other sons of rich men, to live on his inherited estates. He was apparently very easily managed from boyhood. He submitted without resistance to the proposed sacrifice in the land of Moriah, and when he was forty years old, and his mother was dead, he made no objection to his father's choice of a wife for him. When he saw her "he brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife. And he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." The inferior of his- keen wife, and absolutely sold by his sharp son Jacob, there is no incident of his life that evinces any thing in his character above, scarcely indeed up to the common order of humanity. Esau was every whit a nobleman. The character of the older son shines even in contrast with that of Jacob, whose evil traits have become proverbial as characteristic of his descendants. When his father and mother were grieved because of his wives, Esau went and married his uncle Ishmael's daughter, who he thought would please them. But deprived by his sharp brother of his birthright and his blessing, he did for a moment promise himself revenge, a thought that gave place to better determinations at length. When time had made him an old man, and he and Jacob carried a hundred years of life on 248 BURIAL SCENES. their bent shoulders, Isaac gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Once more the great cavern opened its portals to receive to the silent companionship of Abraham and Sarah their only son, and once again for his wife Rebekah. In the still night that rested on Mamre, I could see the tall forms of the two great sons of Isaac, standing before the grand sepulchre; Esau, stern and magnificent, the prince of Seir, Jacob, weak and trembling, the shepherd of Canaan. The one stout and strong in his own pride and confidence, like the desert princes of this day, the other, bent and feeble with premature age and decay. Then the cave received the form of Leah to its increasing company, and then it was closed and deserted, and none of the descendants of the great father of the faithful were near to watch his place of rest. But the stillness of the valley of Eshcol was broken by the sound of an advancing army and the heavy notes of mournful music. Men called it the mourning of the Egyptians, nor did they understand that he whose bones were brought with such majestic pomp to the cave of Machpelah, was the father of a race of kings who should possess the land of Canaan for a thousand years. I saw this scene, too, on the hill-side. The stone was rolled back from the door, and the eyes of men might again gaze in on the repose of the fathers. The bier was set down at the entrance, and twelve stalwart men, robed as princes, stood over the dust of the great dead, and bowed their heads in reverence. One, most royal THE CLOSED TOMB. 249 "I am to be gathered unto my people! Bury me with my fathers, in the cave that is in the field of Ephron, the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron, the Hittite, for a possession of a burial-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah is wife, and there I buried Leah." "And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people." And then the cave of Machpelah was closed against the dead, and no more came to the assembly in its gloom. Some have indeed supposed that Joseph was at last carried to his father's resting-place, but we have no authority for believing that his bones were removed from Shechem. As years passed, the sacrilegious hands of men may have rifled the tomb of its sacred contents, and scattered the dust of the patriarchs on the soil of their beautiful valley. The oak that spreads its giant arms on the plain, may have within its stout form some of the blood of Abraham. The vines that gleam in autumn with their golden fruits, may spring from the dust of Rebekah. The solitary palm that stands by the great mosk, may have taken its stately beauty from the graceful form of Leah. But the place itself has never been forgotten, and can not now be mistaken. The force of God's promise to his faithful servant came over me with a force and beauty I had never before experienced, as I looked up again at the same stars that Abraham saw when God bade him look on them and see the number of his children. Four thousand years have passed since that promise was made on the plains of Mamre, and it has been long since fulfilled. The children of Abraham, a host more II* 250 THE PROPHECY FULFILLED. than any man can number, having suffered captivity in Egypt, and wandered through the wilderness of Expiation, possessed the land of that promise, built in it gorgeous cities, and the temple which God disdained not to occupy with his visible presence, offered sacrifices for centuries on the high altar of Isaac's offering, and then were swept away on the wind, like the smoke of their own incense. The song of their temple ceased to be heard, except in the mournful echoes of the tombs of Jehoshaphat. The smoke of the daily sacrifice ceased to ascend, but gathered and hung in a gloomy cloud over the holy hill, invisible to mortal eyes indeed, but visible to immortal, as the evidence of the accomplished vengeance of God. They offered their last great sacrifice on Calvary, crucified their Lord, and invoked the curse of his blood on themselves and their children. Then the promise to Abraham now totally and forever forfeited, they were scattered over the face of the earth, persecuted, driven up and down the highways and byways of life, among all people, until the name of Abraham became a reproach among men, and Israel the scoff of every nation. The descendants of the barbarian inhabited the land, and then the children of Ishmael and of Esau returned to possess it, and the blessing of Isaac on his nobler son, "By thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother, and it shall come to pass, when thou shalt have the dominion, thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck," was fulfilled, and the birthright which Israel bought for a mess of pottage, and sold again to the nations of the earth for old garments to conceal his nakedness and shame, Esau retook by his sword, and possesses unto this day. High over all in the serene sky, the stars that heard the promise, and were indeed the letters of light in which it was written, remain calm, and cold, and unchanged, above the valley of Hebron, as calm and cold to-night, VISIT TO THE MOSK, 251 above my head, as when their eyes fell on the white tents of Abraham, and the laughing eyes of the incredulous Sarah. I did not sleep that night. Regiments of fleas attacked me, whole armies in perfect organization, and I turned out at daylight in a humor to fight Hebronites. Nor was I likely to go without the opportunity. We rode out early to the mosk. I had strong hopes of being able to effect an entrance, but these were utterly routed when I saw the crowd in front of the great doorway. We sent for Sheik Khalil, a venerable old man, who is the chief in the Haram, and while we waited, the crowd shouted at us all the derisive names they could invent. I think the old man gets his name as a bishop does, from his diocese. We had learned how to manage this sort of people, and so long as they did us no harm we let them enjoy their own voices. Whitely would hurl a lot of English epithets at them once in a while, and amuse himself by an indiscriminate cursing of their fathers and prophets. But it was all blessing as much as cursing to them, although they would stop and listen curiously while he talked. The sheik arrived, and instantly bade us dismount and enter the outer gate of the mosk at one of the sides, which we did, and he thereupon shut the vast doors between us and the enraged people. A cry was raised among them that he was going to take us into the mosk, and the town was alarmed. But there were a dozen of the fanatical dogs inside with us, and they shouted back that we should not see the interior of the I-Iaram, although we were already far beyond the privilege of Christians. We were not within the building, but only within a broad alley-way that passes up the outside of it, and admits the visitor to a door at a hundred feet from 252 INTERIOR OF THE MOSK. the gate. The sheik led us about fifty feet to a door opening into his own house, and entering this we mounted to the upper floor, where his reception room was located. As we entered it, another door near by was half opened, and a white hand beckoned Miriam to enter. She left us and disappeared in the hareem, where she describes her reception as cordial, and decidedly impressing. A young and beautiful Circassian woman, the sole wife of the old sheik, received her in her open arms, pressed kisses on both her cheeks, and overwhelmed her with affectionate embraces. Then her hair, and face, and dress, and ornaments underwent the strictest examination, and her gloves produced immense astonishment. We sat down to coffee and pipes on the diwan with Sheik Khalil, and discussed the propriety of an attempt to enter the mosk. The old man expressed his perfect willingness to conduct us through it if it could be managed secretly, but now our arrival in town was so well known that it was out of the question. He volunteered the offer of admitting me if I would return from Jerusalem alone a week later, in disguise, and promised to pass an entire night with me in the mosk. I can never too much regret my inability to accomplish this undertaking. I sent Abd-el-Atti into the mosk while I was with the sheik, and he returned and gave me a description; but he could not draw me a plan that I could understand. He told me that in the outer court was a tomb called that of Joseph, while within the inner mosk were the several tombs or tumular structures of the patriarchs. The cave itself opens from the end of the inner building, and is a dark cavern, across the mouth of which the floor of the mosk passes, so that the visitor walks before the cave and looks down into it, being elevated above its floor. But it is so dark within that nothing can be seen. None but SYMPTOMS OF AN ATTACK. 253 royal visitors, or those high in the lMosleml religion, are ever permitted to enter the cave, and its contents are unknown. It was not a little painful to find myself so near the spot once occupied by those mighty relics, and not be allowed to see it. But we were forced to content ourselves with the coffee and pipes, and the religious conversation of Sheik Khalil, who was a trump in his way, and whose Latakea was as worthy of commendation as his piety. He talked much about the mosk, but I could not get him to describe the interior of the cavern. But the row outside at length became terrific, and we began to think that if we did not hurry out they would tear the mosk down to get at us. A miserable dog of a derweesh, filthy and disgusting in his appearance, who was inside, and to whom I had given an uncommonly large bucksheesh, was howling out a torrent of curses in return for it when we reached the gate, which was still closed. " Shut up your music-box, old fellow," shouted Whitely, ii a voice that brought the scoundrel to his senses in an instant, and as he suspended his vociferations the gates swung open, and our expectant friends had a view of us. They were silent for an instant while we mounted our horses, and then opened a lane for us toward the bazaars. We parted from Sheik Khalil with profound assurances of distinguished respect and regard, sealed with a dollar which the old man slipped up his sleeve with a dry wink toward his derweesh friend, and then trusted ourselves to the tender mercies of five hundred as vile-looking men and women as one might wish to see, who eyed us as so many hungry dogs would eye a bone, which each wished but none dared to seize. As we advanced, the shouts of derision began to rise behind us, and the lane closed in. Abd-el-Atti led our march, and Whitely and myself brought up the rear; the brown horse and the bay stepped 254 MORAL SUASION. daintily along; once in a while the bay sheered into the crowd, in a way much pleasanter to the rider than the people on foot. We had left the crowd, and were slowly advancing toward the bazaars, when a stone flew by my head, followed by a volley. Moved by the same impulse, Whitely and myself wheeled together, and each drawing a revolver faced the crowd that was advancing down the narrow street. The shudder of fear that went through the assembly was actually visible. Two balls in that mass would have made terrible havoc. We stood thus, facing each other for thirty seconds, and then I raised my pistol and fired six balls successively in the air, and replacing it in my shawl took out another (my volcanic repeater), and shook it in their faces. It was enough. The terror of that revolver will remain in Hebron as a civilizer. We turned our horses' heads again and rode very slowly on, but no more stones were thrown, nor did one of the crowd pass that spot. Ten minutes afterward passing the lower Pool of Hebron which is, probably, the one over which David hung the murderers of Ish-bosheth (2 Samuel, iv. 12), and looking leisurely at the lower end of the town, we turned up the valley and bade farewell to the burial-place of the patriarchs. We paused a half hour under the great tree in the upper part of the valley, of which I have spoken, known as the terebinth of Abraham. This magnificent tree, by far the finest in Syria, has a trunk about seven feet in diameter, and extends its branches for nearly fifty feet in all directions. Its great size and its situation near Hebron has given it its name, but there is no possibility of its dating so far back as the period of the Saviour, much less of Abraham. It stands in the midst of the extensive vineyards of the ROAD TO JERUSALEM. 255 valley of Eshcol which, at the time of our visit, were in bud, but not yet in leaf. Every thing indicated a luxuriant growth of the grape in this valley, and the accounts that we received were like those that the spies gave to Moses. We left the tree at 11 o'clock, retracing our way some distance, and struck into the Jerusaler road again. At one hour from Hebron we came to a ruin, heaps of large stones and the remains of a wall, called by the Arabs, Beit Ibrahim, the house of Abraham. The sheik of the mosk had explained to me in the morning that this was where Abraham lived, and the ruins of his residence. Such is the tradition. At half an hour further we passed a fountain on the right with ruins near it and hewn tombs in the face of a rocky ridge behind it. Immediately opposite to this, on a high hill, stands a large ruin called Beit Gala. One hour from this we crossed a hill on which is a large pool of water, and the finest grove of olive-trees I have seen in Syria. Large stones lie scattered around in various directions, but there was no distinct ruin. It is now called Beit Oumar. We pressed on more rapidly in the afternoon, for it grew cold and the wind penetrated our coverings and chilled us. The road was awful. I need scarcely repeat this, for all roads in Syria are alike. But there are places on this road where a horse can with difficulty go through the narrow passes between the rocks, and where the footing is dangerous in the extreme. I would sooner think of riding up into the fourth story of an American house than up some of those precipitous passes. At five hours from Hebron we reached the Pools of Solomon, and paused only to water our horses, standing a few moments within the ruined castle for shelter from the cutting wind. 256 AMERICAN FRIENDS. We left Bethlehem on the right. Three fourths of an hour from the pools and five and three fourths from Hebron, we passed Rachel's tomb. Just here the road was so bad that I preferred trying a patch of ploughed ground among some olives. It was inclosed in a stone wall three feet high. I rode the bay horse at it, and he, instead of going over it as I intended he should, mounted the wall and went twenty feet along its top, as easily as a dog would go, and, to my astonishment, Miriam followed me, on the chestnut. They then took the field and crossing it at an easy run, went over the low wall into the next, and so we rode on for a fourth of a mile, when we turned to the road again, and at seven hours from the time of leaving Hebron we rode into the Jaffa.gate of Jerusalem. The sun was setting as we crossed the Hill of Evil Counsel, and its red beams fell on the walls of the Holy City with a rich glow that made them singularly beautiful. The bleak wind blew cold across the hills of Ephraim as we passed on, and our cloaks flew out on the breeze as we went along the high table land before descending into the valley of Ben Hinnom. Never was home and fire more welcome to cold and weary pilgrims than was the house of Antonio to us that night. Nor was Jerusalem any less pleasant to us for that a party of American gentlemen had arrived the day previous, among whom were some of our personal friends. How strangely we cross each others' tracks in wandering over the world. In this party were two gentlemen, our good friends F- and B, of Philadelphia. We made their acquaintance in Jerusalem. They overtook us in Beyrout again, we went to Stamboul and strolled through the gorgeous bazaars together, and made a party up the Bosphorus to the Giant's mountain. They went to the Crimea, but a month later we found their cards on our table in the Via Babuino at Rome. WE MET IN JERUSALEM. 257 They left us there and went homeward, to America, as we and they supposed, but two months after that, in a railway carriage, at Windermere in the lake country, we heard familiar voices in the next carriage, and shouting a Salaam Aleikoum, received their cheery reply. It is a pleasant and memorable thing to say of a friend, " We met first in Jerusalem." IT. She ooij ~ice. THE reader who is not interested in the discussion of the topography of Jerusalem, and the locality of the Holy Sepulchre, will lose none of the incident of travel in this volume if he pass directly over this to section 18. I have no idea that these subjects can be finally disposed of by this or any argument; but I believe that the discussion by successive travelers will tend to throw addi. tional light on the questions, and aid in the ultimate discovery of truth, which will be established only when excavations can be carried on in and around Jerusalem. I am confident that, with proper aid and a firman from the Sultan, I could, by running two trenches through certain parts of the city, without injury to existing buildings, determine questions which are of more interest to the Christian world than all the discoveries of Egypt and Assyria. It is to be hoped that some one will be allowed to do this before long; meantime we must be content to argue the matter. I have differed materially fiom Dr. Robinson, the distinguished American traveler, in what I have written; nor have I in all respects agreed with Dr. Williams, his learned opponent, on the questions relating to the Holy Places. I am indebted to both these gentlemen for the aid their research has afforded in the historical part of the argument, REFERENCES. 1. Principal door. 27. Where Christ appeared to 2. Place for Turkish guards. Mary Magdalene as a 3. Stone of unction. gardener. 4. Tomb of Godfrey. 23. Where M. M. stood. 5. Tomb of Baldwin. 29. Altar of Franks. I [ 2 [so3 [I6. Tomb of Melchisedek. 30. Part of the pillar of fla7. Chapel of Adam and of gellation. John Baptist. 31. Church of the Latins. 8. Tomb of Adam. 32. Where Christ appeared to * ~ L,,~iB s _a B R 109. Robing-rooms. his mother after resur10. Armenian altar. f ection. 11. Place where Virgin Mary 33. Place of recognition of the stood while the body was Cross. anointed. 34. Latin robing-room. 12. Stairway to Armen. chapel 35. Place of Christ's bonds. and lodgings. 36. Chapel of the Virgin. 13. Chapel of the Angel. 37. Chapel of Longinus the 14. The Holy Sepulchre. Centurion. I 3ti 5g A a, _9 ons15. Altar of the Copts. 38. Chapel of parting the gar_8s~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ v _,'16. Altar of the Syrians. ments. 17. Tombs of Joseph and Nico- 39. Chapel of the mocking. -demus. _40. Stairs in solid rock going k,..vi4 —21, 22. Greek Patriarch's seat. 44. Chapel of the finding of the 23. Place of the paintings. Cross. 24. Table of Prothesis. 45. Altar of Franks. -20 —-- v25. Holy Table. 46. Latin and Greek stairs to 26. Great throne of Greek Pa- Calvary, which is over GROLTND PI),LNT OF T~ OgCB- Of-: THE ]H[OLY S EPTLC RE. TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. 259 I. GENERAL. TOPOGRAPHY. MODERN Jerusalem is not the same city in size or shape that stood on the hills in the days of Christ. The ancient Jerusalem was, in fact, two cities which had grown together; Zion, on its hill, enclosed in strong walls; Moriah, the hill of the temple, equally strong; and the houses which filled the deep valley between them. The first wall of the entire city connected these two hills, and served only to fortify the intermediate space; while all of the city outside these walls, and it was doubtless very large, remained unprotected against enemies, until a very late period. Our only means of knowledge in relation to the topography of ancient Jerusalem are the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the writings of Josephus, and the works of early fathers. Josephus wrote within the first century, and Eusebius something more than two hundred years later. The former was present at the siege of Jerusalem, about A.D. 70; the latter was present at the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in A.D. 335, and had probably been well acquainted with Jerusalem for many years prior to that date. He wrote his Life of Constantine after that emperor's death, which occurred A.D. 340. The descriptions of Josephus profess to be accurate. In some respects they are so; in others probably quite otherwise. Enough is clear, however, to enable us to fix the position of Zion and Moriah. These two great hills have never been doubted. The reader will bear in mind my simple illustration of the appearance of Jerusalem, in which I likened it to a two-tilled fork, Zion being the right hand and shorter, Moriah the left and longer tine. 260 NORTH BROW OF ZION. Abundant evidence is afforded us in Jerusalem that the north side of Zion was precipitous. The fact that it is not so now has been a subject of great difficulty to those who have not examined the foundation and location of the present citadel, near the Jaffa gate. Looking on this from the west, half way to the upper Pool of Gihon, no one can long hesitate to admit thal the castle of David, so called, stands on the extreme north point of Zion, and that there was a deep, narrow ravine extending across this tine of the fork, completely cutting it off. If there were no other evidence of this than the fortyeighth Psalm-that passage which as yet has found no intelligible explanation-" Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king," is-sufficient to lead to the belief that Mount Zion had a fine situation on the northern side. Every other reading weakens the force of the passage. But we are not left in doubt about it, since Josephus repeatedly speaks of and describes this northern declivity of Zion, which Titus never succeeded in capturing until it was deserted in fright by its Jewish defenders.* Zion then extended only as far north as this ravine. Of the shape of this ravine we shall speak hereafter. There remain two other hills to be located; and about these there is much difference of opinion. Josephus calls them Akra and Bezetha. Akra was separated from Mount Zion by a valley which Josephus calls the valley of the Tyropceon, which may be translated the valley of the Cheesemakers. To locate this valley and the hills Akra and Bezetha is then our first object. My views of the position of Akra are different from those of Dr. Robinson on the one hand, and Dr. Williams on the other. *B. J. ix. 8,4. THE OTHER HILLS. 261 II. AKRA AND BEZETHA. BEFORE proceeding, however, I beg leave to call the reader's attention, especially if he be one who has visited Jerusalem, to the fact that the surface of the ground has changed very much since the days of Josephus, particularly in the bottoms of the valleys, where the accumulation would be naturally greatest. At any point in the valley, between Zion and Moriah, there must have been a very great filling up. All the descriptions of this valley, the mention of steps from the temple area leading down into it, the bridge that crossed it, and the present level of the broken arch which remains, indicate that the bottom of this valley was not less than thirty, and probably fifty feet below its present level. But this change relates only to the valley. The rocky summit of the hill of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as the position of the Damascus gate, is not any lower than formerly. The descent of the land from the Damascus gate to the centre of this valley, must have been very much greater than now, and, indeed, very sharp and abrupt, especially if the deep trench on the north side of the temple area was, as is probable, carried out into the valley. Begging the reader to place himself in the bottom of this depression, as it then was, and look around him, I now proceed to state what I suppose to have been the location of the hill Akra, and its relation to the other hills of the city. Zion, all are agreed, was the south-western part of the city, and, although I heard at Jerusalem an idea suggested by some of the English resident missionaries, that 262 AKRA AND BEZETHA. Zion included the whole western and north-western part of the city, quite out to the present north-west corner of the walls, I am satisfied no one will seriously maintain such a proposition in the face of the abundant proofs that the north wall of Zion was on a rocky precipice. Looking around us, therefore, we see coming into the basin in which we stand, from the west, a narrow ravine, a sort of gorge in the rock, between Mount Zion and the hill north of it. On both hills the rows of houses come to the edge of the ravine and there terminate. From the north side of this ravine we have a semicircular hill-side, surrounding this basin in which we stand. The lower part of the ridge is where the Damascus gate now is, but this is not so low as to break the continuity of the hill, which sweeps in a semicircle around the north-west corner of the temple area, and falls off as it approaches that area on the north. This moon-shaped hill, sloping everywhere in toward the basin, I suppose to be Akra. The end of the moon nearest the north part of the temple area and the tower of Antonia, possibly by reason of some slight depression intercepting the continuity of the ridge, or perhaps all that portion of the moon east of the Damascus gate, where the depression was perceptible, and on which, not long prior to the time of Josephus, the new city was extending, had gotten to be called the new city, in distinction from the older parts which lay otherwise around the moon, although all these parts were called New City, in contrast with Zion the 61d city of David. Hence Bezetha, "new city," was the name given to that part of Akra which lay next the fortress Antonia north of the temple. And now to the evidence of this. Josephus says:* The city wai hIuilt upon two hills which are opposite * B. J. v. 4, 1. AKRA AND BEZETHA. 263 to one another, and have a valley to divide them asunder, at which valley the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end. Of these hills, that which contains the upper city is much higher, and in length more direct, accordingly it was called the citadel by King David. * * * But the other hill, which was called Akra, and sustains the lower city, is shaped like the horned moon (curved on both sides). Over against this was a third hill, but naturally lower than Akra, and parted formerly from the other by a broad valley. However, in those times when the Asmoneans reigned they filled up that valley with earth, and had a mind to join the city to the temple. They then took off part of the height of Akra, and reduced it to be of less elevation than it was before, that the temple might be superior to it. Now the valley of the Cheesemongers (Tyropceon) as it was called, and was that which we told you before distinguished the hill of the upper city from that of the lower, extended as far as Siloam. * * * But on the outside these hills are surrounded by deep valleys, and by reason of the precipices to them belonging, on both sides they are everywhere impassable." I have taken Whiston's translation with some slight alterations, but as yet no translation of Josephus is sufficiently accurate for the purposes of this discussion, and I give this but for the general idea, reserving for another place some changes in this reading. The points which we derive from this passage are these. 1. Akra was divided from Zion by a valley, in which, for some reason, houses were not built. 2. That the form of Akra was ad tiKvpTof, a word susceptible of various translations, but which is generally rendered "moon-shaped." Dr. Robinson translates it " gibbous." 264 AKRA AND BEZETHA. We are not left in doubt as to the precise meaning of this word which I shall translate "moon-shaped;" another extract from Josephus will sufficiently settle it. Speaking of the western site of the temple area, and the gates therefrom, Josephus says that one led "into the other city, being distinguished (or intercepted) by many steps down into the chasm (or gulf), and from this up again upon the entrance way (ascent according to Robinson). For the city lay over against the temple in the manner of a theatre, being held up around by a deep gulf as to all its southern slope." From this it appears very certain that the shape of Akra was that of a new moon, like an ancient theatre surrounding a deep gulf or valley, and I apprehend no possible lodction can be given to it to answer the description of Josephus other than this. The chief and only objection to the idea is that found in the location of Bezetha as described by Josephus. This description is not given in the course of, or in connection with, the description of the hills on which the city was built. On the contrary, that description is general, and the statement is that the city was built upon two hills, viz., Akra and Zion. Subsequently, in speaking of the walls of the city, and of the third wall especially, he says (I use Dr. Robinson's translation): "This (third wall) Agrippa put around the new built city, which was quite naked. For the city, overflowing with the multitude, had, by little and little, crept beyond the walls, and uniting with itself the parts on the north of the temple at the hill, had advanced not a little; so that a fourth hill, called Bezetha, was now dwelt around, lying over against Antonia, and separated from it by a deep fosse. For a trench had here been cut through on purpose; lest the foundations of Antonia, being joined to this hill, should be easily accessible, and less lofty. * * * KRA AND BEZETHA. 265 This new built part is called in our language Bezetha, which, being interpreted in the Greek tongue, would be Caenopolis (New City)." And again: "This hill Bezetha was separated, as I said, from Antonia; and, being the highest of all, it was built up adjoining to a part of the new city, and alone overshadowed the temple on the north." Akra was the general name of the whole hill, of which Bezetha became the name of a part, when the new city came to be built on it, and the highest of all the hills until cut down as hereafter described. Or, if this idea appear not allowable, we have the hill on the north of the temple inclosure, which Robinson refers to when he says that the hill east of the Damascus gate " does not extend to the valley of Jehoshaphat, but there intervenes the rocky ridge upon and along which the eastern wall is built," and which is the hill more particularly separated from Moriah by the fosse now called the Pool of Bethesda. Wherever it was, it immediately adjoined the north wall of Antonia, except as separated by the trench, which I agree with Dr. Robinson was this deep place, now commonly called the Pool of Bethesda; but which I have no doubt was originally a broad and probably dry trench, but was more lately used as a pool, as indicated by its cemented walls. It was not separated from Moriah by any valley. The trench was necessary to form a separation. The statement of Josephus, that the Maccabees worked down the height of Akra, and made it lower, so that the temple might appear above it (VTrepqaivotTr ), is very important to the argument locating Akra. Elsewhere,* he informs us that Antiochus built a citadel in the lower part of the city, on a hill that was so * Ant. xii. 6, 4. 12 266 AKRA AND BEZETHA. high that it overlooked the temple, and afterward,* that Simon destroyed the citadel, and " thought best to level the very hill itself on which the citadel stood, that so the temple might be higher than it." And he thereupon exhorted the people to do it, and they set to work and labored, day and night, three whole years, before it was removed, and brought to a level with the plain of the rest of the city. Now there is no possible point in the lower city which could so command the temple as this is described, except the hill east of the Damascus gate, and north of Antonia. But what hill has been cut down? Certainly a work so gigantic can not have been done, and left no traces of its results. If the hill west of the Damascus gate and north of Zion alone be Akra, then it is impossible that this statement can be correct, for this reason, that, from the moment that this hill commences to rise from the depth of the valley between the hills, it never ceases to rise for a distance of eight miles, and the ridge, constantly ascending, sweeps around the north and west of the upper Pool of Gihon, toward the distant mountains of Ephraim, without a break in its steady upward grade. There is therefore of course no point where they could have worked it down, so that the temple might any better appear above it, nor is there any object to be seen in giving such a view to the westward, where, beyond the valley of Gihon, the hills all commanded a full view. Nor is there any remaining evidence of any such cutting down on any part of this hill, as there most certainly would be. But on the north the hill might well need cutting down, so as to give a view of the temple for miles up the sloping table-land, and here there is the complete evib dence of the manner in which the work was done. Ant. xiii. 6, ". AKRA AND BEZET H A. 267 I have already described the great excavation north of the north wall, and east of the Damascus gate. At what time these quarries were commenced it is impossible to say. I presume the quarrying was commenced as early as the time of Solomon. I think no geologist can look carefully at this spot-I might better say, no stone-cutter or man who has seen rock cuttings-without perceiving that, at some period in their advance, it was for some reason decided to cut away the entire peak of the hill, which rises from the north of the temple and ascends to the present wall, where it is now cut off abruptly, but whence it once continued some hundred and fifty or two hundred feet further, and, having reached its culmination, again fell off to the north. This seems to me, without doubt, the hill which was hewn down, and brought to the level of all the northern parts of Jerusalem. But I have yet another view of this matter to take. Dr. Robinson gives part of the passage from Josephus, as follows: " Over-against this (Akra) was a third hill, by nature lower than Akra, and formerly separated by another broad valley. But, afterwards, in the times when the Maccabees ruled, they threw earth into this valley, desiring to connect the city with the temple." This third hill was Mount Moriah, the hill of the temple. Now, it is clear, that there is no intimation that Akra was separated from Moriah by any valley. Even Dr. Robinson's peculiar method of translating the passage (which gives us a sentence actually without meaning), is certainly conclusive that the " other broad valley" did not separate Akra from Moriah. This translation, if it means any thing, implies that Moriah itself was divided by another broad valley. But the Greek is r2arelta O apayyt 6detpo6pevog aX)I Trp6Oepov, and the correct translation, I apprehend, "formerly otherwise separated by a broad 268 AKRA AND BEZETHA. valley," that is, from the other city. The sentence will then read: " Over-against this was a third hill, by nature lower than Akra, and formerly otherwise separated (i. e., from the other city, or Zion) by a broad valley. But, afterward, il the times when the Asmoneans ruled, they threw earth into this valley, desiring to connect the city with the temple." If, as I have supposed, Akra included the whole moonlike sweep of the hill from Zion to the fortress of Antonia, then Akra actually needed to be divided from the temple by the trench, instead of being connected with it by filling up a valley. And we are left to look for such a heaping up (Xow) across the valley of the Tyropceon below. We are at no loss to find it. The causeway across this valley has long been a subject of discussion. Its existence is manifest enough to the eye, since it is impossible to go down the Tyropceon valley without climbing over it as it crosses the valley about on a line with the north end of Zion. The sentence, then, has a distinct meaning and connection. The third hill, Moriah, was lower than Akra, which actually sloped off to it on the north of the temple. This was its relation to Akra. Otherwise, that is as regards the other great part of the city, Zion, it was separated from it by a broad valley, which afterward the Maccabees heaped up with a causeway, so that the approach to it from that city should be as nearly on a level, as it already was from the new city. The result of this work is obvious. It connected the temple with Zion, as it was already connected with Akra, and thus it was possible to walk entirely around the central basin of the city on an unvarying level, crossing the Tyropceon and the trench of Antonia by bridges. It follows, if we have correctly located Akra, that the Tyropceon valley is, as we have already intimated, that THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 269 valley which cut off the north side of Zion, and on the opposite sides of whose ravine the precipitous cliffs of Zion and Akra arose. This valley came into the great basin in the heart of the city, and turning southward, under the north-eastern cliffs of Zion, continued down to Siloam, being then a broader valley, but retaining the same name. The objection that this name would not correctly apply to the two valleys loses its force if we believe the crescent shape of Akra, which I have suggested, since there would then be no other valley coming into the basin except this one, which continued by a uniform descent toward Siloam, nor is it impossible that the salesmen who gave it its name originally, carried on their business in both parts of the valley, which would be a sufficient reason for the uniform name. III. THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. I have already stated that when I first visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre it was with a firm conviction that there was no reason whatever for regarding it as the veritable tomb of the Lord. On the contrary, my mind was strongly inclined to find some spot outside the city walls, in a basin, like that which is at the head of the valley of Jehoshaphat, where I could with some freedom of imagination locate the place of the suffering and the burial. For it is remarkable, that the common idea that Calvary was a hill has no authority from the sacred writings, and my own preconceived notion had been, that, in pursuance of a custom not uncommon among the Romans, especially in the later persecutions, of torturing 270 EVIDENCE OF THE FATHERS. criminals in the amphitheatres, some amphitheatrical place would have been chosen for the uplifting of Christ. I was, therefore, not an impartial judge of the evidence for the Holy Sepulchre, because I was, in fact, strongly determined against it, but diligent examination and study led me to change my views, and to believe in the authenticity of the Sepulchre and Calvary. The only point at present in doubt about the Holy Sepulchre relates to the evidence prior to the middle of the fourth century. It is agreed on all hands that the present site is that fixed on by Constantine, or his representatives, as early as the year 330. I should perhaps except from this statement one English writer, who, having never visited Jerusalem himself, has published some theories that are too absurd to require refutation, and who locates the Sepulchre of the days of Constantine on the'hill Moriah, under the Dome of the Rock!* What, then, was the evidence which satisfied Eusebius, Jerome, and the fathers of the Church? Certainly, the onus of this argument, in a case like this, appears to be all on the other side. Venerable fathers, three hundred years after the crucifixion, state the localities in phrases that show that at that period they were well known and talked of universally, and he who doubts their testimony should prove it false. But is it probable or possible that in the days of Eusebius, less than three hundred years after the death of Christ, the localities of his life and death were forgotten? It is a brief space of time in which to obliterate such memories. Had events of even trivial importance occurred in the year 1550, we should have little hesitation in accepting a tradition which located them in particular spots. We do readily accept a hundred such. There is * An "Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem," etc., etc. London. 184T7 EARLY CHRISTIANS. 271 no question of tradition about it. It is not to be called tradition when, after a lapse of but three hundred years, Eusebius heard and recorded the stories of the Holy Places. The children, whom in his brief ministry Christ had blessed, grew up among the scenes that he had sanctified, and when some of them were old men, old as we count years now, without adding the long years of life that men sometimes lived then as now, they would, doubtless, point out with abundant accuracy the spot most holy in their memories. It is not to be questioned that there were scores of men living in theyear 100, who saw the sunlight darkened on the day of the crucifixion. Nor is it at all probable that at this period any one of the localities most likely to be cherished was lost. Men in all ages are but men, and there has been no country nor people on earth, since the days of Babel, where the heart of man has not done homage to the localities of great events. He who says that it is not probable that the early Christians cared for these localities, makes the early Christians anything but human. On the contrary, the Bible abounds in evidences that the Jews retained, through all time, the localities of great events in their history, and heaps of stone and memorial mounds stood for centuries as marks of such spots, where men paused to honor the memory of the great past. Even the most skeptical of travelers does not doubt the locality of Rachel's tomb, and the cave of Machpelah! They who think thus, dishonor the very religion of the Cross. It was no common event that men then had to keep in memory. It was no royal pageant, no parting of a river's flow to let an army pass, no death of a mother of a nation, no dream of a patriarch, no crowning of a king. It was the advent of the long-expected Messiah, 272 SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. the King of kings, the Saviour of Israel. It was the death by cruel hands on the cross of the Son of the Unbegotten, the offspring of the mighty God of Jacob. It is verging closely on scorn of him and his great name to suppose that within the century after his life on earth the places which he hallowed by his presence were forgotten or unknown. In all the history of man no like history has been known of the spread and triumph of a form of faith. Other religions have been propagated by the sword, and in centuries have made great advances, but the religion of the crucified Nazarene in three centuries had conquered the world, and emperors worshiped with faces toward Jerusalem. And yet it is argued that the locality of the suffering, the burial, and the ascension, the spot where man was saved, the cross to which the sins of a world were nailed, and the grave from which its Saviour rose, were forgotten either in one, two, or three generations, while the religion of the grave and the cross was thus conquering the world. An objection which some writers have advanced that the Christians were driven away from Jerusalem after its fall, is without foundation in fact. In fact, the Jews were, for a time, expelled, but the Christians were not, nor is there any evidence that they were not at all times in Jerusalem in great numbers. The notion that Jerusalem was absolutely razed to the ground and a ploughshare run over its site is a very common error. Nothing of the kind occurred, nor does there seem to be any foundation for the idea unless in a desire on the part of some to claim a far more extensive and literal fulfillnent of the prophecy of Christ than he himself designed when he pointed to the temple and said that before that generation had passed away it should be so destroyed that not one stone should remain on another. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 273 Even if literally to be fulfilled, it had no reference to any part of Jerusalem but the temple itself, and in that respect it has been sufficiently accomplished. But of the walls and erections in and around the city many remain to this day in the position they occupied eighteen hundred and, perhaps, twenty-four hundred years ago, and I seek in vain among all the accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem for any evidence that even the lines of streets, the ruins of houses after the fire, or the houses themselves were destroyed, nor is there any evidence in history on which to affirm that the structures now pointed out as the Arch of Judgment and the Arch of the Ecce Homo, did not stand in the days of the Saviour, whatever other evidence we may have on the subject. The expression of Josephus, that Titus commanded the city to be demolished, by no means indicates a thorough sweeping away of the stones themselves, or even a total destruction of the houses, nor is there any thing in the subsequent history that leads us to suppose such a total demolition accomplished. Indeed, it is remarkable that a part of the city was especially exempted by Titus from that destruction which came on the rest, and by this means the towers of Phasaelus Hippicus and Mariamne were left, and so much of the wall as inclosed the city on its west side, the wall being preserved for a shelter to the Roman camp now established in the city, and the towers as a memorial of its ancient grandeur and the power of the conquerors. " The rest of the wall," says Josephus, "was so entirely thrown down even with the ground, by those that dug it up to the very foundations, that there was nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited (or contained inhabitants)." Scarcely half a century after this "total destruction," the Jews in revolt, under Bar-Kochebas, "the Son of a 12* 274 JERUSALEM AGAIN FORTIFIED. Star," sustained a three years' siege in the same Jerusalem, successfully combatting the forces of Rome, a fact that certainly goes very far toward showing that the city was in some measure restored to inhabitable order, and the walls rebuilt on those sides where they had been thrown down to the ground. Again Jerusalem was destroyed, and the expressions of Josephus are exceeded by Jerome, who says that it was burned and destroyed so that it lost its very name. Nevertheless this destruction was not complete, inasmuch as Adrian, whose intention to rebuild the former city as a garrison city has been, by some, stated as the cause of the revolt, did actually accomplish his intention, according to Eusebius, and, therefore, we have again the city of Jerusalem on its ancient foundations. Nor am I able in any of the accounts, brief and incomplete as they are, to find any reason for doubting that the city was restored on its ancient lines, and that the streets and passages were preserved as before the first destruction. Certainly this would have been the easiest and most practicable plan as well as the most probable, and nothing was done in either destroying by which any of the localities were placed beyond the possibility of recognition. There was nothing in the former case to prevent the inhabitants claiming and taking possession of their own houses and lots, nor does it appear that they were in any manner ejected. Christians and Jews alike lived in the Holy City at all times prior to the second rebuilding. It is impossible then that any spot of interest in the history of Christ could have been forgotten. This brings us down to a time between A.D. 130 and A.D. 140. The revolt of Bar-Kochebas was finally crushed at B3ether, near Jerusalem, in the eighteenth year of Adrian, corresponding to A.D. 135. It was at this time that, according to Jerome, an event occurred (about which ClRIS'TIAN CHURCH. 275 there is still much doubt as to whether it really did occur), which has afforded the only foundation of the story that Titus ran a ploughshare over the site of Jerusalem. Titus Annius Rufus, governor of Jerusalem under Adrian, is said to have run a ploughshare over the site of the temple; but this ceremony, for it was nothing else, needed not so much attention as has been given to it by writers in later years. An ancient ploughshare, wooden blocks of the rudest construction, would do little toward smoothing ruins; and the best modern American prairieplough, with eight or a thousand yoke of oxen, would do little practical work among piles of stone, each of which was twenty feet long by five and three in thickness, the accumulated ruins of the great walls of Jerusalem. The ancient ceremony of running a ploughshare over a conquered city was a formality, signifying total subjection. The idea that it proves a total razing of walls to the ground is incorrect, as any one knows who has seen ancient ruins. The Jews were now (A.D. 135), expelled from the city of their fathers, but the Christians remained; and the church of Jerusalem at this time elected Marcus the first Gentile bishop, doubtless from a willingness to show to the emperor that they were not Jews, though such had been their reputation. From this time, for a hundred and fifty years, the Christian church remained in Jerusalem, and the Christian religion spread over the world. The star that had risen above Bethlehem had drawn the eyes of all the world to its abundant light and glory. From being a despised and hated sect, watching with earnest and sad devotion the sepulchre that had once entombed their Lord, and from which in their persecutions and agonies unnumbered they could sometimes scarcely believe he had arisen to be in heaven their God and hope, they became the 276 ADRIAN'S TEMPLE. teachers of kings and emperors, the very light of the world. From that Golgotha, of which they well knew the story, and whose locality it seems idle to suppose in those few short years they could have lost, they beheld a light spreading over the world that was reflected from the snowy summits of Caucasus, the white cliffs of Albion, and the far mountains of Atlas. There was no race of men known to the wise of Rome that did not hear the story of the Nazarene. There was no name by which men called themselves that was not heard in the streets of Jerusalem within a space of time almost too brief for us to believe sufficient for the history of Calvary to have reached Abyssinia and England; and at length the mother of the Emperor of Rome, with all the gorgeous attendance and pageantry that could surround the royalty of Constantine himself, came a pilgrim to the places which Rome had never before visited, except as the scourge of an avenging God. It seems to me that it matters very little, in view of this brief history, whether Adrian did or did not mark the supposed site of the Holy Sepulchre and of Calvary with a temple of Venus. If he did, then there is of course no reason to doubt that the locality was preserved perfectly; for we have already said enough to show that in the time of Adrian it could not have been mis-located. He would have selected the right place beyond a peradventure. If he did not, it is by no means credible that Golgotha or its adjacent garden was forgotten by the church of Jerusalem. Had the Saviour remained in the grave, his followers (for they did not then appreciate or expect the resurrection), would never have forgotten that grave; and so long as the name of Christian remained in Jerusalem the spot, though deep down under the rubbish of a fallen city, though rifled of its sacred contents, and no longer containing his precious dust, would have been PRESERVATION OF HISTORY. 277 visited with tears of devotion. Has it never occurred to men that there were children of Lazarus to bear in memory from generation to generation the story of his tomb; children of the widow's son of Nain, of Martha and Mary, of the cleansed leper, of the blind who saw, of the hundreds who had personal and family reasons for remembering the burial-place of a great benefactor? The tomb of Joseph at Shechem, of the patriarch at Hebron, of Rachel, close to the wall of Jerusalem, were kept in honored remembrance. How much more likely was it that for a few years the memory of the tomb that held a greater than Solomon for two nights, and then gave him forth to the resurrection of all the dead, should be preserved. More than all is it incredible that the Christians of Jerusalem could read the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in their meetings and their families daily in Jerusalem, and not understand perfectly where each little incident occurred, and, above all, where the great events that ended the mission and the work that Christ finished. It is on this very account that Eusebius and Jerome do not speak of any tradition as guiding the search made by order of Constantine. There was no tradition about it. The places were so well known that no one thought of calling it tradition at all. So much seems to me certain, without resorting to what can not be doubted, the idea that in the early Christian times, as in all other times, there were a thousand papers, notes of journal-keeping men, family manuscripts, old letters, and like records of events of daily occurrence, to which, had it been necessary to seek them, those desirous of finding the sepulchre would have had abundant access, and which on the other hand would have been voluminous evidence against the selection of a wrong locality. These were not such papers as a later writer would refer 278 ADRIAN S TEMPLE. to, except as Eusebius does in the phrase e e'yypd'a/v, but to deny their existence, is asserting a remarkable state of society and affairs in Jerusalem, where it can hardly be doubted were always many very learned men, Jews and Christians, who were students, scholars, critics, theologians and historians. But the fact remains undisturbed that in the days of Eusebius the site of the sepulchre was marked by a heathen temple, placed there for the purpose of devoting the place to heathen religion, if thereby the faith in the arisen Christ might be shaken. This simple fact, which is of conclusive force in the argument, is attacked in various ways, but the substance of all the attacks goes only to the question of evidence of the date of the erection of this temple. No one disputes that Helena found it there. The date of its erection, by later writers unhesitatingly attributed to Adrian, is of less importance than the fact that this shows us that the locality was in no respects a doubtful one. This spot was known by Pagan, Jew, and Christian, as the spot where the Christians' great founder had been buried. In the face of this fact it is impossible to deny that the locality must have been one often spoken of in the previous years, one about which vast interest was felt, and that the early Christians did think of and cherish such places. But there is another view of the subject. We are fully authorized, in a case like this, to yield our belief to a fact found by good judges, though we are ignorant of the evidence. Is it probable, or possible, that men, like Eusebius and Jerome, would lend themselves to a trumpery plot, such as some writers have attributed to the bishop of Jerusalem, to get up an interest in the Holy City, and increase the importance of that see? The very notion is absurd, EUSEBIUS AND JEROME. 279 and may be repelled without argument. Attributing such motives betrays either a want of appreciation of the spirit of the age, or a recklessness of statement of character. Could they have been themselves deceived? Let us see who they were. They lived in no dark age. The fourth century was long before the gloom of the dark ages. It was a time of religious and classical learning unsurpassed in the history of the church. It was the age when Christianity, from being a despised creed, had become the religion of Rome and the world. An eminently light and brilliant age. Dr. Robinson's judgment of Eusebius and Jerome is sufficiently satisfactory:' The one a leading bishop and historian, the other a scholar and translator of the Scriptures." And (speaking of their judgment concerning Emmaus) he says, " This was not the voice of mere tradition; but the well-considered judgment of men of learning and critical skill, resident in the country, acquainted with the places in question, and occupied in investigating and describing the Scripture topography of the Holy Land."* It is worthy of consideration whether the judgment of such men at the time they lived, is not worth more than all our theories at this remote day. It is quite idle for us to attempt to prove that they were mistaken. When the walls and ruins of the Jerusalem of Christ's day were lying around them, is it reasonable to suppose that they would select a place within the walls of the city as the locality of an event that occurred without the gates, and stultify themselves in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Jews, pagans, and infidels, who would have laughed at them with sharp glee? And it is very certain that in the fourth century, however difficult it might have been to establish the fact * Biblical Researches, vol. iii., edition of 1856, p. 148. 280 CONCLUSIONS. that this was the location, it would not have been at all difficult to prove that it was not, if the arguments now in use are valid. There would have been no difficulty at that time in proving that the spot lay within the line of the second wall, whose ruins themselves would remain to show it, while the walls and towers of Zion which Titus preserved would have afforded abundant evidence of its starting-point. These points, then, appear to me sufficient evidence on which to rest my faith in the authenticity of the Holy Sepulchre: 1. It is not credible that this locality was forgotten by Christians within three hundred years after the great events of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. 2. Critical scholars and learned men, employed in investigating the topography of the Holy Land, had no doubt of its authenticity in the beginning of the fourth century. 3. No one, so far as we know, thought in that age of disputing the fact, but all men acknowledged its truth. 4. It is not doubted by any one that this is the locality in which those learned men placed their confidence, it having been well preserved from that time to this. This is, I say, sufficient, without those additional considerations which I shall hereafter present. But of course these grounds of faith may be undermined. It is not pretended that they sustain a certainty. Hie who would overcome the argument, may do it in two ways: 1. By proving that this is not the locality, from some evidence therewith connected. 2. By proving that some other place is the locality, and thereby establishing a sort of alibi. The second proposition it will not be necessary to consider, since no one can maintain it. DR. ROBINSON'S ARGUMENTS. 281 The first is held by many persons, of late years, with what success I now propose to examine. Dr. Robinson, in his Biblical Researches, published in 1841, and republished with extensive additions in 1856, has taken the position, to which his learning and ability fully entitle him, of the leader in maintaining the proposition that the Holy Sepulchre is not on the locality of the sepulchre occupied by Christ, and in his elaborate works we shall find all that can possibly be said to this effect. In proceeding then to notice, and if I may be able, to expose the errors of his reasoning and the mistakes of his observations, I desire first to express my own obligation, in common with that of all travelers to Holy Land, for his profound and invaluable volumes. They are the only extant guide-book in Syria, excepting the Bible, and he has brought to their preparation an amount of erudition and scholarship which no one hereafter can hope to excel. Away from Jerusalem, and its immediate neighborhood, in all parts of Syria, the traveler may, with one or two small exceptions, place implicit confidence in the results of his reasoning. But I have already stated that I saw reason to differ from his views of the Holy Sepulchre after personal examination, and as the arguments on the question are chiefly topographical, I felt no diffidence in so doing, since one pair of eyes is quite as likely to see well as another. Dr. Robinson's line of argument is twofold. He contends that there is no evidence of any tradition at the time of Eusebius locating the Holy Sepulchre, an argument which is quite conclusively disposed of by the admission of the fact, that there was no tradition about a spot which every one knew; and he attacks with great spirit all attempts to show that Eusebius and Macarius had any evidence of the locality whatever. But his main argument, and one which, if correct, is 282 AN ERRONEOUS ARGUMENT. conclusive, is founded on an attempt to show, by the topography of Jerusalem, that the present locality of the Holy Sepulchre actually lies within the walls of the ancient Jerusalem, as existing at that time, and therefore can not by any possibility be near the place where Christ was crucified, "without the gates." Before passing to this second and more important portion of the doctor's theory, I refer briefly to a weak and inconclusive style of argument which is a favorite with him, and which he derives from the familiar law maxim, " Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." But this proverb, which is very true in the use of the word false, has no force or truth when we substitute mnistaken or erroneous. Thus he argues that Jerome was wrong in stating that an idol had stood on the site of the Sepulchre from the time of Adrian, and arrives at a conclusion in this way. He says: " Eusebius and the other historians speak only of a temple of Venus over the Sepulchre. Jerome, on the other hand, places the marble statue of Venus on the' Rock of the Cross,' or Golgotha, and an image of Jupiter on the place of the Resurrection. Here the Latin father is probably wrong, for Eusebius was an eye witness; and the former is therefore equally liable to have been wrong in ascribing these idols to Adrian;" a conclusion of which it is somewhat difficult to appreciate the sequitur. I hardly need remind the reader that these are "the men of learning and critical skill, resident in the country," before spoken of. By a similar error of reasoning, the learned'doctor overthrows, to his own satisfaction, the value of a tradition in favor of the Sepulchre, supposing one to exist. For its value, he says, "we have a decisive test; in applying the same reasoning to another tradition of precisely the same character and import." And he then proceeds to DR. ROBINSON'S ARGUMENT. 283 show that the tradition of the place of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives could not be true. My remarks on that point will enable the reader to judge how satisfactory Ilis conclusions are. He then goes on to overthrow the tradition concerning the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem (of which part of his argument I have spoken at Bethlehem). Then, supposing it established that both these traditions can have no foundation in truth, he argues, that "on this ground, as well as on all others, the alleged site of the Holy Sepulchre is found to be without support.".* Certainly, as a mere matter of reasoning, nothing can be plainer than that if all the Holy Places, with one exception, were proved to be wrongly located, this would have no value in an argument concerning this one. I pass directly to the topographical argument of Dr. Robinson, which is mostly contained in the following extracts. The first of these extracts (Biblical Researches, vol. i., p. 461, etc.) is as follows: " Josephus' description of the second wall is very short and unsatisfactory. It began at the gate called Gennath in the first wall, and encircling only the tract lying north, extended to Antonia. This gate called Gennath in the first wall, doubtless was near the tower of Hippicus, and was probably not included within the second wall, in order to allow a direct passage between the upper city and the country. The two extremities of this wall are therefore given, but its course between these points is a matter of some difficulty to determine. "Did this wall perhaps run from its beginning, near the tower of Hippicus, on a straight course to the fortress Antonia? This question I feel compelled to answer in the negative for several reasons. First, the ex* Biblical Researches, vol. ii., p. 76, etc. 284 DR. ROBINSON S ARGUMENT. press language of Josephus, that it took a circular course; secondly, the Pool of Hezekiah, which is of high antiquity, and lay within the ancient city, must then have been excluded; thirdly, the whole space included in the lower city would in this way have been reduced to a small triangle of about 600 yards on the south side, and some 400 yards on the east side; and lastly, this wall built for the defence of this part of the city, would thus have passed obliquely across the very point of the hill Akra, and have been overlooked and commanded on the west by every other part of the hill." The second extract (Biblical Researches, vol. ii., p. 67, etc.) is as follows:," But as the third or exterior wall of that writer (Josephus) was not erected until ten or twelve years after the death of Christ, it can not here be taken into account; and the question still arises, whether the present site of the Sepulchre may not have fallen without the second or interior wall; in which case all the conditions of the general question would be satisfied. " This second wall, as we have seen, began at the gate of Gennath, near the tower of Hippicus, and ran to the fortress Antonia, on the north of the temple. Of the date of its erection we are nowhere informed; but it must probably have been older than the time of Hezekiah, who built within the city a pool, apparently the same which now exists under his name. We have then three points for determining the probable course of this wall; besides the general language of Josephus and the nature of the ground. We repaired personally to each of these three points, in order to examine there this very question; and the first measurement I took in Jerusalem was the distance from the western side of the area of the temple, or great mosk, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I measured from the western entrance of that area DR. ROBINSON'S ARGUMENT. 285 on a direct course along the street by the Hospital of Helena, to the street leading north from the bazaar; and then from this street to a point in front of the great entrance of the church. The whole distance proved to be 1,223 feet, or about 407 yards; which is 33 yards less than a quarter of an English mile. " On viewing the city from the remains of the ancient Hippicus, as well as from the site of Antonia, we were satisfied, that if the second wall might be supposed to have run in a straight line beween those points, it would have left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre without the city; and thus far have settled the topographical part of the question. But it was not less easy to perceive, that in thus running in a straight course, the wall must also have left the Pool of Hezekiah on the outside; or if it made a curve sufficient to include this pool, it would naturally also have included the site of the Sepulchre, unless it made an angle expressly in order to exclude the latter spot. And further, as we have seen, Josephus distinctly testifies that the second wall ran in a circle or curve, obviously toward the north. Various other circumstances, also, which go to support the same view, such as the nature of the ground and the ancient towers at the Damascus gate, have already been enumerated. Adjacent to the wall on the north there was a space of level ground, on which Antiochus could erect his hundred towers. All this goes to show that the second wall must have extended further to the north than the site of the present church. "Or, again, if we admit that this wall ran in a straight course, then the whole of the lower city must have been confined to a small triangle; and its breadth, between the temple and the site of the sepulchre, a space of less than a quarter of an English mile, was not equal to that of many squares in London and New York. Yet we 286 DR. ROBINSON S ARGUMENT. know that this lower city, at the time of the crucifixion, was extensive and populous; three gates led from it to the temple; and, ten years later, Agrippa erected the third wall far beyond the limits of the present city, in order to shelter the extensive suburbs which before were unprotected. These suburbs could not well have arisen within the short interval of ten years, but must already have existed before the time of our Lord's crucifixion. "After examining all these circumstances repeatedly upon the spot, and, as I hope, without prejudice, the minds of both my companion and myself were forced to the conviction, that the hypothesis which makes the second wall so run as to exclude the alleged site of the Holy Sepulchre, is, on topographical grounds, untenable and impossible. If there was prejudice upon my own mind, it was certainly in favor of an opposite result; for I went to Jerusalem strongly prepossessed with the idea that the alleged site might have lain without the second wall. " But, even if such a view could be admitted, the existence of populous suburbs on this part is strongly at variance with the probability that here should have been a place of execution, with a garden and sepulchre. The tombs of the ancients were not usually within their cities, nor among their habitations, and, excepting those of the kings on Zion, there is no evidence that sepulchres existed in Jerusalem." From these extracts the reader will perceive that the topographical argument of Dr. Robinson depends on the situation of the gate Gennath, and the direction of the second wall of Jerusalem. In the time of Josephus there were three walls; the first being the old wall, inclosing only Zion proper, and Moriah. "The second wall had its beginning from the gate which was called Gennath, being of the first wall, and, THE SECOND WALL. 287 surrounding the northern slope only, reached unto Antonia." (Jos., B. J. 5, 4, 2.) The third wall began at the tower Hippicus, and extended quite around the northern part of the city, including a large space; but, as this was built by Agrippa after Christ's death, it is of no importance in the argument.' All parties are agreed upon certain points in the topography of Jerusalem, among which the location of the tower Hippicus is one. This was on the north wall of Zion, and is doubtless marked very nearly by the modern castle of David. The position of the tower Antonia is also in general agreed upon. It occupied the northern part of the temple area, which must have been nearly identical with the present area of the great mosk. The second wall, therefore, ran from a point in the north wall of Zion, to a point in the north wall of the temple area. Did it include, or did it exclude, the present site of the Sepulchre? The reader will have no difficulty in fixing these points perfectly in his mind, by referring to the bird's-eye view of Jerusalem in this volume. The high minaret in the north-west corner of the mosk area marks the site of Antonia, and the citadel, with a flag over it, is the tower Hippicus. The reader will have already perceived, from the remarks of Dr. Robinson, that the difference in-the line in the two cases would be little, if any, more than the length of the Church of the Resurrection, say four hundred feet. But Dr. Robinson, with singular illiberality, confines us to one of two lines, either his line including the Sepulchre, or a straight line from point to point. It would be supposed that no possible other line could be devised. But I have yet to see the writer on this subject who has contended for a straight line wall, or supposed it necessary. The great difference between Dr. Robinson and the 288 THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH. believers in the Holy Sepulchre,'consists in the location of the gate Gennath, and the commencement of the second wall. If it be three hundred feet eastward of the point at which he locates it, then no one can doubt that the Sepulchre was excluded; and this is, in effect, the point of the whole argument. But in the first place, let us for the moment admit Dr. Robinson's location of the gate Gennath, and see if his reasonings from it are correct, and whether there is any thing in'that location, or elsewhere, which requires that a wall commencing there and running in a curve to the north side of the temple should include the present site of the Sepulchre. It will be perceived that his argument in regard to the direction of the second wall is, that if it ran so as to exclude the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it must also have excluded the Pool of Hezekiah, "which," he says, "is of high antiquity, and lay within the ancient city." In fact, this is the whole of his argument. For the evidence that this pool was within the ancient city, we look elsewhere in his work and find it as follows: "We are told of King Hezekiah that' he made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city,' and also that'he stopped the upper water-course of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.' From this language we can only infer that Hezekiah constructed a pool within the city on its western part.") This is Dr. Robinson's entire argument to show that the Pool of Hezekiah was within the city walls, a conclusion by no means justified by the words of the Scripture account. But who can fail to be astonished at the next sentence of Dr. Robinson's remarks? "To such a * Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 488. THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH. 289 pool the present reservoir, which is doubtless an ancient work, entirely corresponds," when I remind the reader that the present reservoir is situated on the slope of what Dr. Robinson believes to be the Akra of Josephus, due north of the " city of David," and far north of any point in it, where no possible form of imagination could locate it as on, near, or related to the west side of the city of David, and where it must have been separated from that part of the city by the deep valley which Dr. Robinson calls the Tyropceon, and which was under the precipice on the north side of Zion. In fact, no language can be used which would define this reservoir, or its locality, by any reference to the west side of Zion. It is hardly necessary for me to remind the reader that the " city of David" always means the citadel city, or Mount Zion, as distinct from the rest of Jerusalem, and it is a matter of astonishment to me that Dr. Robinson should not have remembered that his very argument, which located the second wall outside of this pool, necessarily proves that the pool was north and east of the north-west corner of the city of David, which was the tower of Hippicus. But I am unable to see any necessity for locating any pool made by Hezekiah within the city. The passage in the second of Kings, xx. 20, which states that he brought water into the city (or waters, as I suspect the original has it, for although I have totally forgotten what little Hebrew I once knew, I find that the Latin translations have the word aquas), has not necessarily any connection with that in second Chronicles xxxii. 30, where it is stated that he "stopped the upper water-course of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David." This latter passage is much more likely to refer to the lower pool of Gihon, which is on the west side of the city of David, and which may have been improved and in13 290 THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH. creased by straighteningthe water flow, which was crooked, or possibly swampy, and by stopping up and gathering in a reservoir the springs at the upper Pool of Gihon, which formerly flowed across to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Especially does this seem likely when taken in connection with a passage in Isaiah xxii. 9, referring to the lower pool, and recited, if not addressed, to Hezekiah. "Ye have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many, and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool;" and the 11th verse, "Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool, but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago;" the first verse quoted manifestly implying that Hezekiah constructed, or improved the lower pool, and the second that he made another aqueduct, or repaired an ancient one, not connected with either pool, but between the two walls; an expression referring, doubtless, to the valley of the Tyropceon between the east wall of Zion and the west wall of Moriah, and probably to the pool which is referred to in Nehemiah, iii. 16, which was the limit to which Nehemiah worked in repairing the wall after Shallum, who, in the previous verse, is said to have repaired by the Pool of Siloah, and unto " the stairs that go down from the city of David." After him Nehemiah repaired "unto over against the sepulchre of David and to the pool that was made." This must imply that Nehemiah repaired the wall on the west side of Moriah, opposite the east side of Zion, and that the pool was between the two. It is probable, therefore, that Hezekiah constructed other aqueducts than the one on the west side of the city of David, and this is made perfectly certain by the passage in Ben Sirach, xlviii. 17, where it is stated that " Hezekiah made his city strong, and conveyed water into the midst THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH. 291 thereof; he digged through the rock with iron, and made fountains for waters." It appears, therefore, quite clear that there is no scriptural evidence of the antiquity of the Birket-elHamman, or Pool of Hezekiah, and there is certainly nothing in Josephus or the early Christian writers which will make it necessary for us to regard it as of their date. On the contrary, the only mention of a pool in this direction, by Josephus, appears to intimate the existence of a pool or other supply of water outside the walls, near this spot, for he speaks of a pool, Amygdalon, hereabouts, not locating it, and of a gate in the wall of the upper city, Zion, which was used to bring in water to the tower of Hippicus. This gate Dr. Robinson supposes to be identical with the gate Gennath, which was the point of commencement of the second wall, though he locates the pool Amygdalon within that second wall, of course without proof of each location. It seems more likely that the gate opened to this pool, as the nearest reservoir to the towers, and if the gate were identical with Gennath, then, doubtless, the pool was outside the second wall. The result of this argument, thus far, is only to overthrow the idea of Dr. Robinson that the Birket-el-Hamman, or Pool of Hezekiah, was necessarily within the ancient walls. It may have been or it may not have been. Enough that the chief, I might well say the only, argument, showing the line of the second wall to be outside the locality of the Holy Sepulchre is thus disposed of as without weight. It will be observed that Dr. Robinson is very strenuous in maintaining the necessity of a circular line in the second wall, based on Josephus's use of the word IcvoVFievov, which he translates " encircling." This is perhaps of little importance, since it, in fact, no more implies a circular line than does the word surrounding in English. 292 THE GATE GBENNATH. Each has a common meaning applicable to a circle, square, parallelogram, or an irregular figure. A curved line it probably was, but, like all city walls, it was likely to have frequent breaks and angles. The exact phrase used by Josephus may help us materially: " icvKoOVCEVOV de TO rrTpo(Udprtlov iXta,") which Dr. Robinson translates "encircling only the tract on the north." The word c4ipa literally and usually signifies slope, being derived from X1iv&, meaning to bend, or, to use our word derived from it, to incline. Now let the reader bear in mind my description of the hill Akra-or rather the description of Josephus, which made it a theatre, surrounding the basin at the northwest corner of the temple area, and sloping down to this on all sides. He will then perceive that the idea of this wall encircling the slope to the north of Zion, or the entire slope of Akra, distinctly defines the wall, as well as materially confirms my idea of the shape of Akra. We have thus far argued on the admission of Dr. Robinson's location of the gate Gennath. We now proceed to show that he is in error in that location. Dr. Robinson says: " It must have been on the east of Hippicus, for the third wall began at that tower. It could not however have been far distant, because that part of Zion was then high and steep." The only point to be settled is, therefore, how near to Hippicus it was, and this is, as I have said, all the difference between Dr. Robinson and the believers in the Holy Sepulchre. He locates it very near to Hippicus, they at various distances eastward. Reason on this as we will, there can be no certainty arrived at with our present knowledge: we can, at best, reach probabilities. First of all, if the location of the gate to the eastward of Hippicus, some three or five hundred feet, be necessary to the exclusion of the Church NORTH WALL OF ZION. 293 of the Sepulchre, there is evidence that it must have been so (and this is no petitio principii) in the probability that the time of Constantine afforded much better proofs of the line of the walls than we can ever expect to arrive at. On this point none of the early writers appear to have thought it necessary to remark, doubtless from a conviction that no one could imagine Eusebius and Macarius, Helena and her illustrious advisers, so very ignorant as to select a spot within the ancient wall of the city, whose ruins, if not its actual stones in their places, must then have been very manifest. The first and only early writer that I find speaking of it is Saint Willibald, the English pilgrim, in the eighth century (A.D. 765), who says that this church was formerly outside the city, but was brought into it by Helena. " Et haec fuit prius extra Hierusalem. Sed beata Helena, quando invenit, collocavit illum locum intus intra Hierusalem."* It is quite evident that the scoffers of the early ages never discovered what it is now attempted to prove, though if true it must have been very plain then. But' passing that, let us see what other evidence we have. Josephus tells us that the north wall of Zion was precipitous. We have already spoken of the valley of the Tyropzeon as lying between it and Akra. This valley I suppose was deep and narrow. The sides were perhaps precipitous rocks. Josephus describes the rows of houses on both hills as ending at the valley's edge. But the ravine of the valley must not be mistaken as that of a stream. The valley of the Kedron implies the valley through which that stream runs, sloping one way always. But the valley of the Cheesemakers was one which opened on the one side (the west), to the valley of * S. Willibaldi, Hod., sec. viii. 294 TOWERS O F ZION. Gihon, or Ben Hinnom, and on the other (the east), to a large basin in the heart of the city, and thence down toward Siloam. It can hardly be otherwise, therefore, than that this valley or ravine sloped both ways. It is not probable that its water shed was all to the eastward from the very brow of the valley of Ben Hinnom. On the contrary, that it was deep there is evident from the description of the tower Hippicus, and the adjacent towers, all which were on a high hill. The tower Hippicus stood on the north-west brow of Zion, overlooking the valley Ben Hinnor as to its west side, and the Tyropceon valley as to its north side. Two other towers stood near it, known as Phasaelus and IMariamne, names which Herod gave to them. These were all in the north wall of Zion, and were all built on a high hill; such is the express statement of Josephus. (B. J.. 4.) Hippicus was twenty-five cubits broad, Phasaelus forty, and Mariamne twenty. As they did not join each other, but were separate and distinct towers, although near each other, it is fair to estimate a distance between them equal'to their several sizes, which gives us a hundred and seventy cubits of the north wall of Zion as on a high hill. This distance, therefore, I feel well assured, the slope of the Tyropceon was toward the westward; and somewhere to the eastward of this point must have been the gate Gennath, which certainly did not open on the browof the hill. This seems conclusive against Dr. Robinson's location of Gennath. Be it noticed in passing that Titus did not overthrow these towers, but allowed them to stand as marks of the mighty power he had conquered. It is not probable that two hundred and thirty or fifty years had removed all traces of them, or that in Constantine's day there was any doubt about their location. LOCATION OF GENNATH. 295 Nor is it probable that the gate Gennath was between two of these towers, as Dr. Robinson appears to suppose, although he does not say so distinctly; for doubtless Josephus would then have stated that the commencement of the second wall was from such a tower, as he does of the third wall, which began at the tower Hippicus; nor, if the gate was between two towers, would it be likely that he would call it a gate of the old wall. He would rather call it a gate of the palace, into which it must have opened, since that lay behind the citadel, or of the citadel itself, which evidently included the three towers. The name of the gate Gennath, signifying gardens, has been frequently mentioned, but no one has appeared to observe the interesting fact, however slight may seem its importance in this argument, that this gate opened toward that garden in which we suppose the Saviour found a tomb. It shows this at least, that on this part of the western side of the city there were gardens. The weight of evidence is, decidedly, that the gate Gennath was not near the tower Hippicus, but, being located at that point where the descent from Zion into the valley was least, must have been to the eastward of the three towers, and quite as far east as the present site of Calvary. This being the case, it is very evident that that site, as well as the Holy Sepulchre, are outside the walls of the ancient city, supposing the wall to have run northward to the site of the modern Damascus gate, which is the line on which I believe all are agreed. A very trivial objection is founded on the narrowness of the city thus caused, which the objectors are pleased to measure from the interior wall of the temple inclosure instead of its exterior. The city, or rather the walled part of the city, was of very uniform breadth from its northern to its southern extremity, if this line be correct, the general line being from the south-west to the north 296 POOL AMYGDALON. east. Outside these walls was a large growing city, which in later times was walled in by Agrippa. The second wall was but a small sweep, inclosing the sloping sides of the basin of Akra, within which houses had been built. Even this wall had not been necessary in the long history of the glory of Jerusalem, which had been contented with the citadel of Zion, and the inclosed temple area, and the hollow between them, which alone were walled during all the times of the kings. Dr. Robinson's remaining topographical argument is based on Josephus's description of the final taking of Zion by Titus, after he had taken the second wall; and he supposes the Pool Amygdalon where the tenth legion built their offensive mounds against Zion to be identical with the Birket-el-Hammam. It may have been so, although its distance from the north side of Zion is very great, almost too great to admit of the possibility of its being so regarded. But there is nothing in the account of Josephus to lead to any conclusion that it was within or without the second wall. The argument that the attack on Zion had been delayed till the second wall was taken has no force in showing that its capture was necessary to that attack; because the fact appears distinctly, that the final taking of Zion was not by this attack on the north. Dr. Robinson errs in stating this, which he does by way of proving that the ground must have been less high at the north-west corner of Zion, and thus that the gate Gennath would be there located. He says (vol. iii., new edition, page 215): " He divided his force against Antonia on the one hand, and the north-western part of Zion on the other, over-against the royal palace. This was obviously the most feasible point of attack, in respect to the ground, notwithstanding the great strength of the three towers, Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne, by which it was defended. OLD ARCH. 297 And here it was that the Romans, in consequence of a panic among the Jewish leaders, finally made their way by a breach into the upper city." The breach was not on the north side of Zion at all. Josephus expressly states that the Romans could never have taken the towers on the north side by their engines, and his description of the taking of the towers contains the statement that their defenders were frightened away by men who told them of a breach in the western wall and the entrance of the Romans there.* Zion was impregnable on its north side, and remained so in this last great struggle. So steep was all that part of it near the towers, that the engines could never have made a breach in it. In this connection I may refer to a gateway of which some remains are visible, which has by some been supposed to be the gate Gennath itself, and by others a gate in the second wall. It is one of the most curious and interesting relics of antiquity in Jerusalem. It is situated on the side of a street, running south from the bazaars, not far from the north-east corner of Mount Zion. Dr. Robinson disposes of it in his own way as follows. I quote him for the sake of saying that, in this instance, either his prejudice leads him to be unfair, or his observation is seriously at fault. " Here * * * is seen the crown of a small round arch, apparently ancient, fronting toward the west, and now rising only just above the ground. We endeavored to gain access to it from the rear, but without success. The stones of the arch are small, rudely cut, and without any trace of beveling. It may have belonged to a small gateway, perhaps in the wall of a dwelling or a court. It more resembles the rude entrance of an aqueduct or sewer. A * B. J., ix. 8, 4, 13* 298 OLD ARCH. glance only is needed at its appearance and position, to show that it could never have had connection with any city wall. So trivial, indeed, is the whole fragment," etc., etc. I The reader can not fail to observe the repetition of the word small.. It is a small round arch; the stones are small. It can not be a city gate-it was the gate of a house or a court-and a small gateway, at that. Now for the facts. Of this arch seven stones, forming the entire arch remain above ground. The sides of the gateway are below the earth. The rear is a dye-shop, built up close. I got into it with a candle, but the stones were thickly plastered over, and I could see nothing. But the arch was and is a massive structure, which would sufficiently impress any candid obseerve. The stones of the arch differ in size. The first stone, which is entirely above ground, is five feet top, three and a half bottom, by five high-depth not less than five feet. The reader, by marking out this size before him will judge how trivial the arch was. The next stone is a little larger, three inches broader; the next, the key-stone, is a little smaller. The next is larger again, and the fifth is so crumbled that I could not measure its size. The arc of the interior of the arch is fifteen feet. Not a very small arch for the small gateway of a house or a court! The idea of its being the entrance to a sewer is trifling with truth. There are four large stones remaining on the north side of the arch forming part of the strong wall in which it stood, but I do not intend here to attempt any conjecture as to its origin. I am not prepared to con. sider it the gate Gennath, but it is not impossible that it was a gateway in a tower of the second wall. It stands in a remarkable line with a ridge extending quite to the Damascus gate, in which some antiquarians have sup OLD ARCH, 299 posed that they recognized traces of the second wall. The Porta Judiciara stands parallel to and within a few feet of this line, and may have been the arch on the inside of a tower, of which the outside, twenty feet distant, opened outside the wall of the city, the line of the wall passing between the two arches. This is the archway through which, tradition has it, that Christ was led out to crucifixion. As to the absence of beveling on the stones, it is to be observed that Dr. Robinson has a sort of mania for beveled stones. He regards them as almost unmistakable evidences of high antiquity, and seems to think no wall can be old that is without them, a notion that fifteen minutes in Jerusalem ought to expel, since there are numerous walls of beveled stone of late Christian periods, and others of plain stone that antedate the fall of Jerusalem. This gateway is, perhaps, the most massive perfect arch, ancient or modern, in Jerusalem, and future excavations will, probably, connect it with some great structure, wall, or castle, of the days of Jewish glory. Should any traveler of less distinguished reputation for calm and candid observation, describe it as Dr. Robinson has, it would, very probably, be set down to want of fairness or inability to form a correct estimate. A statement is made by Dr. Robinson and others, calculated to throw discredit on the locality of the Sepulchre, that there was no evidence of any tombs having existed in this region of Jerusalem, and that it is, therefore, not probable that there was a sepulchre in a garden here. abouts. The location, by Josephus, of the monument of the High Priest John is just here-within a few rods, at most, from the Sepulchre. But a very decided answer tc this statement is found in the inclosure of the Church of 300 TOMBS NEAR CALVARY. the Resurrection, in the tombs known as those of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. In the western part of the church, just outside the great wall of the rotunda, at a distance of about forty feet from the tomb of Christ, is a low, dark vault in the solid rock, within which are four open graves (cut in the rock) and two closed. Two of these are niches, opening in the side of the crypt, and two are sunk in the floor. Of the antiquity of this crypt there is no reasonable doubt. The impartial visitor can not enter it without feeling the great force of the evidence thus afforded that he is on a spot which was, of old, a place of graves, a place which might, therefore, have well deserved its name Golgotha. There is no evidence that there was ever a tomb hewn in the rock in or near Jerusalem since the time of Christ, but though this may have been, there is enough in the appearance of; at least, two of these niches, to convince the visitor of their high antiquity. Dr. Robinson did not see these tombs on his first visit to Jerusalem. Indeed, it is much to be regretted that he did not then examine the Holy Sepulchre at all. It is no reflection upon his judgment to say that the arguments derived from the interior of the church and sepulchre might have had a weight in forming an opinion when his mind was as yet undetermined, which they would not have on his second visit, when he came back to Jerusalem with settled opinions. This is but human nature. On his last visit, examining them, he supposes that there is no reason for referring the tombs of Joseph and Nicodemus even to so early an age as that of Constantine, and says, " This is obviously true in respect to the sarcophagi sunk in the floor. No other instance will be found, I think, of like excavations in the floor of a crypt." (Vol. iii., new edition, page 181.) TODMBS AT GOLGOTHA. 301 This statement is not founded on correct observation, as indeed he might have judged by comparison with his own work, volume iii., new edition, page 479, where he describes the tombs near the ancient Abilene, and particularly one which Mr. Robson entered, having " four niches (loculi) in the floor of the chamber itself." He adds that other tombs here are similar, as indeed I am able to affirm, having found many tombs there, scores indeed, of this description. These tombs are doubtless of as early a date as Lysanias, who was tetrarch of Abilene in the days of John the Baptist. (Luke, iii., 1.) This style of tomb is also well known to all who have examined an Egyptian necropolis, as very common there in remotely ancient times. I therefore see no reason to doubt the antiquity of this crypt near the Holy Sepulchre. Were it of a later period than the time of the uncovering of the Sepulchre by Constantine, I have no doubt we should have a record of its period and object. A very common, easy, and absurd method of disposing of these arguments, is to talk wisely of monkish tricks, but the monks of the Terra Santa have in all ages been closely watched by zealous enemies, either unbelievers or heretics, and that they should succeed in imposing on the world by the digging of such tombs, is impossible. Another style of argument, which I am fully prepared to find myself met with, is that which ascribes any one's belief in the Sepulchre to monkish influence. I admit very freely my indebtedness to the monks of the Terra Santa for hospitality and kindness. I am so stupid myself that I have never been able to see why acquaintance and friendship with the monks should have any greater influence than decided Protestant and anti-Roman, Greek, Armenian or Jew education feelings and proclivities, or why good treatment in the Convent of the Terra Santa should affect my judgment in the Church of the Resurrection, or 302 HISTORY OF THE SEPULCHRE. here in America. Such arguments have no weight except in the minds of those who use them. I scarcely need again call the reader's attention to the fact that this is not to be understood as an argument to establish the authenticity of the alleged Holy Places. This is not attempted. But I believe it can be, and has been shown, that there is no force or value in the attempt to prove them false, and this done, every man is left to weigh the sufficiency of the evidence in their favor, and believe or reject it, as he sees fit. IV. HISTORY OF CALVARY AND THE SEPULCHRE. IT only remains for me to give a brief history of the Holy Sepulchre, that the reader may be in possession of all the facts on which to base his faith. We have seen that the Sepulchre was marked by the erection over it of a temple, which Jerome, writing in the fifth century, ascribes to Adrian. When Helena visited Jerusalem, she was guided to the spot by the resident Christians. Her son Constantine, Emperor of Rome, having been converted to Christianity, was willing and anxious to devote treasure to the beautifying of the Holy City, and the aged and pious pilgrim, his mother, was equally anxious to place the sepulchre of Christ in a position to be honored, as it had been before disgraced. Constantine ordered the removal of the temple of Venus, and it was done, the mound on which it stood removed, and a cavern found, answering, in all respects, the descriptions of the evangelists. I believe no one doubts that that cavern stood on the spot now pointed out as the site of the Sepulchre, and I think the reader will believe with HIELENA. 303 me that the identical cave remains, the veritable rockhewn tomb. In the absence of better reasoning, a very trifling objection has been magnified much by writers on the Holy Sepulchre. It is that there is a discrepancy in the accounts of the discovery of the Sepulchre and other holy places, Eusebius ascribing it to Constantine, and later writers to his mother. The latter was in Jerusalem, and the emperor in Rome. The emperor was the commander, and the paymaster. His mother was present, as a devoted pilgrim, to aid in person. Eusebius speaks of the royal patron, and later writers of both the patron and the pilgrim. The reader will have no difficulty in understanding facts if he bear in mind that Helena was in Jerusalem about 325, and left there after the uncovering of the Sepulchre, and her discovery of the Cross, and died before the Basilica of Constantine was completed, at the dedication of which Eusebius was present. Eusebius might well omit her in his account of the great work of Constantine, and yet no argument be thence derived that she had no share in it. I may pause here, a moment, to allude to that other search, carried on by Helena herself, which many writers have confounded with the finding of the Sepulchre. While the empress-mother was in Jerusalem, she listened to a story-tradition, if the word be better-which aged Christians related to her, of the history of the cross on which Christ suffered. They said that it was well known among Christians, that, on the night of the crucifixion, the cross was thrown into a pit near the place of crucifixion, and that it had never been removed from that spot. This statement is ample evidence to oppose to the attempted proof that no tradition of the Ioly Sepulchre existed in the time of Eusebius, and that the discovery of 304 THE TRUE CROSS. the place was miraculous. If men knew where the cross lay, they knew where the tomb was. If they had an account of one, it involves necessarily the fact that they had of both. The very places were, according to the Scripture history, the same. Wherever Calvary was, "in that place" was a garden and a sepulchre. Helena caused that place to be excavated. The excavation remains unto this day. No one denies it. She found in it three crosses, or pieces of timber which she believed to be parts of three crosses; one of them she recognized as the true cross of Christ, by the inscription of Pilate, which remained upon it. The story that it was recognized by touching the three crosses to a sick person, and her reviving and being healed by the true cross, is of a few years' later date than Chrysostom and Saint Ambrose, who only state that it was known by the inscription, and say nothing of the miracle.* Without pausing to discuss the question, whether the wood here found was or was not the wood on which Christ suffered, it is, nevertheless, a discovery of the deepest interest in a historical point of view. The nails which were found in the same pit, were believed to be the nails that had transfixed the hands of the Victim. The history of two of them is forever lost. Two others were wrought, by order of Helena, into a crown for her son; and the royalty of Rome acknowledged the supremacy of Him whom a Roman governor crucified for saying that he was King of the Jews, by wearing a crown made of the iron that the nation believed was the instrument of his torture. The history of those nails, whether they were or not the nails on which the sins of mankind hung -of the heads that have worn that crown, from the mighty Charles to the child of Destiny-of the weary * Ambros. Fun. Orat. de Thedos. Imp. A.D. 395. WOOD OF THE CROSS. 305 temples that have throbbed under it-would be one of the most sublime histories of this world. And the history of the wood is of greater interest. Could men but know the beating hearts that have hushed to quiet death under fragments of that wood-the vows that have been made over pieces of those beams-the souls that have gone to God, fighting valiantly on old battle-fields around the sacred wood —could one thousandth part of the history of men as related to it be told, we should regard the excavation of that cavern as one of the most thrilling incidents in the world's story. But a few years later than this discovery, Cyril speaks of it and of the fragments, as already widely distributed.* Nevertheless, the chief part of the wood, enough to be called the cross, was preserved in Jerusalem, where it became one of the objects of greatest interest to pilgrims. At the time of the Persian invasion it was carried away by Chosroes; but recovered again, and restored by the Emperor Heraclius, who, on the 14th September, 629, marched barefoot and in sackcloth, into Jerusalem, carrying on his own shoulder this piece of holy wood, recovered from the enemy; from which time to the present, that day has been a feast day in the Romish and English calendar. It continued to be in the possession of the church of Jerusalem until the time of the Crusades. It was carried from Jerusalem to rouse the drooping spirits of the Crusaders, when summoned by Guy, last king of Jerusalem, to the battle of Hattin; and I shall have occasion hereafter to describe its fate in that noted conflict. I find it afterward spoken of as in Jerusalem, in the possession of Salah e'deen, although an old account states that it was buried on the field of battle; but later than this I am not able to trace its history by any author. ities within my reach. P Cat. iv. 10; x. 19; xiii. 4. 306 THE SEPULCHRE. The Sepulchre, as uncovered by order of Constantine, Eusebius describes as " a cave which had evidently been hewn out," and as being hewn in an isolated rock, one which stood by itself, on the level land. He saw it with his own eyes. We are not now speaking of tradition. From that day to this the written record is complete, and no one doubts that this spot isunchanged. And I think the same cave remains. This idea seems startling, especially to visitors who have seen only the marble decorations of it. By Constantine's order, the rock was hewn into a smaller shape, decorated with columns, and left standing opposite the western front of his church, or basilica. Cyril, born A.D. 315, cotemporary with and ordained by Macarius himself (who was bishop of Jerusalem, A.D. 335, when the basilica was dedicated), and who succeeded him as bishop in 350, describes the rock of Golgotha as showing how the rocks were riven, because of Christ's crucifixion, and also the cave, and how it was hewn down.* I scarcely need cite the Bordeaux Pilgrim (A.D. 333), who says, " On the left hand is the little hill Golgotha, where the Lord was crucified, and, about a stone's throw from it, the crypt wherein his body was laid." For, I presume, no one doubts the existence of a cave at the time of the dedication, A.D. 335. The Sepulchre remained the object of Christian solicitude until the beginning of the seventh century, when Chosroes, the Persian monarch, swept over Palestine, and captured Jerusalem. The Jews, who followed in his train, destroyed the Christian churches, and the basilica was burned. The Christian inhabitants were slaughtered, and the city once more desolated. This invasion was like the hurricane, furious, but passing swiftly away. * Cyril, Lect. xiv. 9. OLD PILGRIMS. 307 Modestus, vicar of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, rebuilt the churches on their ruins. In the latter part of the century, Adamnanus describes the visit of Arculfus to Jerusalem, and the cave in the solid rock then standing, from which it appears that it had not been destroyed in the Persian invasion. He describes the marks of the tools on the rock, the color of which was white and red, which is the color of the native stone of Jerusalem, as now seen. He is very minute in his account of the cave as such (Spelacum sive spelunca, recte vocitari possit). The door was on the east; the chamber, a foot and a half higher than an ordinary man; the sepulchre, on the north side of the chamber, excavated in the same rock, and elevated three palms above the floor. All this is accurately descriptive of the present cave. St. Willibald, who visited Jerusalem in A.D. 765, describes the Sepulchre briefly, but with ample minuteness: "Illud sepulchrum fuerat in petra excisum; et illa petra stat super terram, et est quadrans in imo, et in summo subtilis * * * et in orientali plaga in illa petra sepulchri est janua, per quam intrant homines in sepulchrum orare. Et ibi est intus lectus, in quo corpus Domini jacebat."* This description again agrees with the present appearance of the Sepulchre. Such it continued until the accession of the Kalif El Hakim, who, A.D. 1011, demolished the Church of the Sepulchre. He, however, very soon restored the buildings. The historians who describe his attempt either say nothing of the tomb itself, or, as Glaber and Ademar, affirm decidedly that it was not in any way injured at this time. Ademar says it remained solid and immovable.t An attempt to destroy it by fire was made, but being rock it resisted the effort. * Hodoep. S. Willibaldi in Thesaurus, etc., Canisii, p. 111. f Dr. Williams cites the only two chroniclers who mention the result 308 OLD PILGRIMS. Throughout the Crusades, which followed soon after the time of El Hakim, the Sepulchre is spoken of as existing. No one of the numerous writers of that period mentioned any doubt of its existence, or spoke, as they all would have spoken, of the place of the Sepulchre in distinction from the Tomb itself. Thus Robert the monk, writing at the beginning of the next century, and describing that day of slaughter when the Christians entered Jerusalem with Godfrey, says of the soldiers, that they went to the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord in which he was buried;* and Baldric, of the same period, speaks expressly of the Church as distinct from the Sepulchre, which was in it.f Indeed, to doubt it would be to render ridiculous all the devotion of the Crusaders, and falsify the entire historical evidence of that period, when men by millions visited and knelt at, or fought and died for the privilege of kneeling at the Sepulchre. Benjamin of Tudela (a Jew), visiting Jerusalem about of El Hakim's attempt on the cave itself. I am indebted to his work for their evidence, not finding either of them within my reach. Glaber says: "Ipsum quoque concavum sepulchrum tumulum ferri tuditibus quassare tentantes, minime valuerunt." Ademar more distinctly and decidedly: "Lapidem vero monumenti cum nullatenus possent comminuere, ignem copiosam superadjiciunt, sed quasi adamas immobilis mansit et solidus." —oly City, vol. i., p. 349. * "Ad sanctum Domini Sepulchrum leto incessu perrexerunt; et ei qui in eo sepultus fuit gratias referentes capitalicia sua obtulerunt. Ipsa die, sicut per prophetam fuerat praedictum, Sepulchrum Domini fuit gloriosum, cum omnes * * * proni incedebant, et pavimenta imbre lachrymarum inundabant."-Roberti Monachi, Hist. Hieros., lib. ix. Vide Gesta Dei, etc., vol. i., p.'6. f Baldric, the Archbishop, speaks in the same connection of Sancti Sepulchri Ecclesiam, and the Sepulchre itself, making the distinction between them, and describes the crusaders, hastening after the conquest, "ad Sepulchrum Salvatoris deosculandum."-Baldrici Archiep., Hist. 17ieros., lib. iv. FATHER BONIFAC E. 309 1160-1170, writes: "The large place of worship called Sepulchre, and containing the Sepulchre of that man, is visited by all pilgrims." To multiply illustrations would be tedious. All travelers and all writers, with hardly an exception, through successive centuries, down to this time, have regarded the Sepulchre as a cave in the solid rock. Perhaps the most satisfactory testimony is that of Father Boniface, of Ragusa, guardian of the Holy Sepulchre from 1550 to 1559. By order of Pope Julius III., and permission of Sultan Suleiman, he undertook the repairing of the Church of the Sepulchre, and then uncovered the rock from its casings of ornamental marble. He says:* "On the demolition whereof, the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord, cut in the rock, offered itself plainly to our eyes, whereon two angels were seen depicted * * which pictures, when first they felt the influence of the air, in great part vanished. But when it became necessary to move one of the slabs of alabaster with which the Sepulchre was covered, there clearly appeared to us that ineffable place wherein the Son of man rested for three days." In 1808 the rotunda of the church was destroyed by fire. The Sepulchre was the centre of a furnace of fire, the timber of the dome piled over it, but a picture of the resurrection, then hanging in it, but now outside the chapel of the angel, was intact by fire, and the cave and its contents were wholly uninjured. It has been very foolishly stated by some that the marble slab over the couch was cracked by this fire. No one who has seen this fissure, of which I have before spoken (page 79), would so state. It is of uniform width, about an eighth of an inch, extending two thirds across the slab, and * Quaresmius, vol. ii., p. 512. Not having Quaresmius at hand, I quote from Dr. Williams. 310 THE CASING OF THE SEPULCHRE. ending abruptly, precisely, as I have said before, as if a thin stratum of softer stone had crumbled out. It can no more be mistaken for a crack in the rock made by fire, or any other cause, than could the slit made by a saw half way across a board. My friend, Mr. Pierotti, architect of the Terra Santa, who was residing in Jerusalem for the purpose of completing certain buildings for the Austrian government, and erecting some votive and other stuctures within the great Church of the Resurrection, accompanied me in many of my visits to the old Church, all parts of which we explored together, from rock foundation to dome. On one of these visits we examined with great care the little building which incloses the Sepulchre. Entering the Chapel of the Angel in company with a Fransiscan brother, he opened a small concealed door in the marble side of the little chapel, by which we were let into a dark passage between the outer and inner walls of the building. We climbed a narrow and steep staircase, passing with difficulty among iron bars which braced the marble slabs, over the top of the Sepulchre to the roof under the dome. The reader, by referring to the very exact view of the Holy Sepulchre given elsewhere in this volume, will perceive that we were then standing under the sharp dome which overtops the building, which building itself stands in the centre of the great rotunda of the church, and is exposed to rain and storm through the open unglazed dome above it. "It is solid rock," said my Franciscan companion, stamping his foot on the floor upon which we stood. I expressed disbelief to see if he would affirm it, and he was surprised at my faithlessness. "Certainly it is," said he; " no one can doubt it." Mr. Pierotti then assured me of the fact, as one with which he was perfectly familiar in his capacity of architect, admitted by THE rIRE OF 1808. 311 all the churches to all parts of the building, and engaged in making repairs and improvements in it. My attention was called to the hole through which the smoke came up from the lamps in the tomb, and its appearance, it can not be denied, was that of a hole through solid rock. I yielded unhesitatingly to Mr. Pierotti's statements, knowing him to be a gentleman of intelligence and education, thoroughly familiar with the Holy Places, and in no respect given to promoting monkish deceptions. Regarding the fire of 1808 as one of the most important points in this chain of evidence, I gathered satisfactory evidence of its effects while standing on the Sepulchre, and afterward in the rotunda. The timbers of the rotunda fell on and over the Sepulchre, making it the centre of a fiery furnace. The outer casings of marble were calcined, but the interior was untouched, and its contents, among which was an oil picture, were uninjured. This fact is incontrovertible. Nor can I account for it in any other way than by supposing the Sepulchre arch to be the ancient stone of the hill. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt that the cave remains. Neither is there any reason to doubt that the cave uncovered by Constantine's order was the veritable tomb of Christ. I am content, then, to believe that my knees have pressed the rock where the feet of Mary stood when she lifted her beloved load to its restingplace, and where the feet of the risen Saviour first pressed the rock of the world he had redeemed. I have not space in this volume to attempt any description of the surface of the ground in the Church of the Sepulchre. The very elaborate and exact plan, for which, as well as the other large illustrations in this volume, I am indebted to Dr. Williams's work (the Holy City) will convey an idea of the localities within the church better than a volume of description. The eye 312 CALVARY. will instantly fall on the two heavy black semicircles at opposite ends of the church. These, as most of the other heavy black lines, represent solid rock. I suppose that at the time of the crucifixion there were two knolls or cliffs of rock facing each other, or separated from each other by a space of which the figure 19 is nearly the centre. The cross stood upon one of these knolls. The tomb was hewn in the face of the other. Constantine and later builders have hewn away the rock around the tomb, while Calvary remains, stern, cold rock, as when rent by the earthquake. I l TIHE ITOLY SE PtTULCIIRE. i8. If fogi fo l hee, 0 1e lt qqeIC AT length our pilgrimage was accomplished. I had washed in the Jordan, and had prayed at the Sepulchre of the Lord. I had laved my eyes in the Fountain of Siloam, whose waters go softly, and had bathed my forehead in the dews that fell at evening in Gethsemane. But my face was not yet set homeward. I had before me a journey to the banks of the Tigris. I intended visiting Nineveh and Babylon, and dropping down the Euphrates to the gulf, where I hoped to find a steamer to take me to Madras, or to Aden, so that I could return to Cairo, and thence reach Constantinople in the autumn. My route was, accordingly, to Damascus, visiting the sacred places of northern Palestine in the way. We therefore made our farewell visits to the places of deepest interest, and ordered our men to be ready at nine in the morning for the grand start. Father Joseph gave to Miriam and myself separate certificates of our accomplished pilgrimage, notwithstanding he knew our Protestantism, and he positively refused a farthing in exchange. It was the last courtesy we received from the monks in Jerusalem, and in character with all we had seen of them. Thus ended my rest in Jerusalem. Think not lightly of this, my friend, for it is ino light 14 314 THE ONLY GUIDE-BOOK. matter to have seen the Holy City. I hesitated much before I visited the Holy Land. I had always reasoned somewhat in this way. If I were taught that the Son of God descended to this earth, assuming the form of a child, and was the reputed son of a carpenter in an American village; that he lived here, walked these streets, preached at these corners, slept in the nights on the hills of Long Island and New Jersey, and was finally mobbed in the public places, tried for some alleged crime, condemned and executed here; if, I say, all this were taught me, I should find it much more difficult to believe than I now do the story of his life and death in a distant land, over which tradition and history have cast a holy radiance. I therefore feared much that when I had walked the streets of Jerusalem, had climbed the sides of Olivet, had rested in the garden of Gethsemane, and visited the Holy Sepulchre, my faith in the divinity of the Saviour, and the authenticity of his mission, might be seriously impaired. Far otherwise was the reality. Every step that I advanced on the soil of Palestine offered some new and startling evidence of the truth of the sacred story. Every hour we were exclaiming that the history must be true, so perfect was the proof before our eyes. The Bible was a new book, faith in which seemed now to have passed into actual sight, and every page of its record shone out with new, and a thousandfold increased lustre. The Bible had, of course, been our only guide-book. There is no other-and the publication of another will tend materially to decrease the interest of travel in Syria. He who shall visit Holy Soil with Murray's proposed red book in his hands, will know nothing of the keen pleasure that we experienced in studying out for ourselves the localities of sacred incident, or the intense delight that BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS. 315 flashed across our minds when we found those startling confirmations of the truth of the story-startling, because unexpected and wholly original. Sitting on the side of Mount Moriah, it was with new force we read that exquisite passage in the 46th Psalm, "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High;" which had its origin unquestionably in the beautiful fountain that springs under the very rocks of Moriah, the site of the ancient temple, more beautiful just here where fountains are so rare, and whose waters supplying Siloam, and thence "going softly" down the valley of Jehoshaphat, have in all times been the type of the salvation that God devised in Jerusalem for the races of men. The vision of Ezekiel, which promises a river flowing out of the sanctuary to the eastward, and giving life even to the terrible death of the Dead Sea, was startling when read on the slope of Moriah, whence those sweet waters flow down the valley of the Kedron, failing now, indeed, to reach the far depths of Engeddi, much less the waters of the Lake of Death. That mournful procession, in which David, flying from his rebellious son, went up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, was before us like a picture as we sat outside the gate of St. Stephen, among the Moslem tombs, and looked into the valley and across at the steep slope of the hill of the Lord's ascension. Right well we knew what the passage meant, which likened the guardianship of the Father to the watch kept by the mountains around Jerusalem, when we saw the city, set on a hill itself, yet commanded on the north, east, south, and west by much higher hills, over whose summits the blue sky curves downward with that close embrace that one might well expect from the heavens above the city of the Sepulchre. With these thoughts, new and fresh, and crowding on 316 THE DEPARTURE. our minds every hour, it is not to be wondered at that we were willing to linger in Jerusalem, even after we had visited every one of its interesting points again and again. I should never weary of that walk over the Mount of Olives to Bethany, if I walked it every day until the sky opened above me, as it opened above the Lord. I should never satisfy my thirst for the waters of Siloam, if I drank them daily, and were forbidden evermore even the golden wine of Lebanon. I shall never cease in my soul to visit with pilgrim, footsteps, day by day, the Sepulchre of the Saviour of men. But the day appointed for my departure at length arrived. It was a Monday morning. On Sunday evening. found my way to a little chapel, where I heard a sermon from Dr. Bonar. He had preached two successive Sunday evenings in a sort of lecture-room, belonging to the English mission. His ideas on the second coming of Christ to walk those streets, and establish the throne of David on Mount Zion, which we were then seated upon, if I did not fully coincide in them, were nevertheless eloquent, and interesting just then and there. Early on Monday morning, the court-yard of the house of Antonio presented a busy appearance. Piles of tents, boxes, canteens, and light baggage, lay on the pavement, which was otherwise covered with a mixed crowd of Arabs and townsmen, Jews, Turks, and Christians, all wishing to dispose of some few more relics of holy places, and extract a few more piastres from the departing Hajjis. Abd-el-Atti came in for instructions, and I directed him to pitch the tents at Beitin, the ancient Bethel, for I desired to sleep there, if perchance I too might dream of angels. It was but a short distance from Jerusalem, and I therefore delayed our own departure till nearly noon. Moreright had decided to go with us for the entire journey, but could not leave till later in the day, having A MISSIONA RY. 317 an appointment with some of the English missionaries. The baggage-mules were loaded and despatched. Ferrajj, in all the glory of a new suit, white shirt and drawers, flaming-red tarbouche, black face and shining teeth, led the van on his white horse. We still lingered in our own hired house on the Via Dolorosa, reluctant to go. An old gentleman, Mr/. Roberts, an American, who has taken up his residence in Jerusalem, called to see us while we stood waiting. His business was independent Bible distribution. He is a New Englander who, without money or friends, has wandered up the Mediterranean to Malta, Constantinople, and finally to Jerusalem, working his way slowly, and distributing the Bible, in the languages of the countries he visits, of which he knows nothing himself. It may seem a sort of monomania. Perhaps it is. But I commend him to all travelers as a good, noble old man, who is content to die at Jerusalem in this work to which he has sacrificed himself, and I commend him to all at home who desire to aid a work so carried on, independent of mission boards, by a volunteer who commands the respect and esteem of the missionaries wherever he has traveled. He was sustained in Jerusalem entirely by mission assistance, and it was not till after I left, that I knew these facts in his history, and that he would have been willing to receive money in aid of his work. He never hinted at it in any way, though we saw him almost daily while there. At length we pushed through the noisy crowd in the court-yard. The horses stood in the Via Dolorosa, impatient to be away. Mohammed threw up his fine head and snuffed the air as if anxious to be off over the hills. I lifted Miriam into her saddle, and she led off, down the Via Dolorosa, around the corner, and up to the Damascus gate, out of which we rode, with bowed heads, and in silence. 318 THE -LAST GAZE. Passing the tomb of Helena, and crossing the extreme upper part of the valley of the Kedron, we ascended the slope of Mount Scopus, which commands Jerusalem on the north-east. Pausing on the summit, we looked for the last time on the domes and minarets of the City of the great King. Seeing nothing of Abd-el-Atti, who had waited in the city to accompany Moreright, who was detained by his engagement, we dismounted and sat on the ground. The hill was covered with hundreds of memorial heaps of stone. For it is, as I have before remarked, an oriental custom, that has a remote origin, to heap up a pile of stones on a hill-top which commands the first or the last view of any place of devout pilgrimage. I, too, heaped up my pile of stones. Miriam, too, gathered her's together by mine. Whitely followed the example. Then we sat down, each by his monument, and looked back at Jerusalem, and sought, with earnest eyes, to fix that view in our memories forever. The soft wind played with my hair and beard, for I hae even taken off my tarbouche. Never was wind so holy on my forehead as that breeze which came down over the hills of Galilee. So sitting there, I looked at the domes of the Holy City. If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning! No tears came now to obscure that gaze. With eager eyes, I took in all the prospect, the Mount of Olives, the Mount of the Temple, Mount Zion, and the dome above the Sepulchre. With beating hearts, we yearned toward the city, even as the " tribes of the wandering foot" yearn toward their fathers' temple. There were a few white-robed women sitting under the olive-trees near the Damascus gate, but there was no THE LAST GAZE. 319 other sign of life anywhere. It mlight have been a city of the dead for aught that we could see. A city of the mighty dead it certainly was. Not as when Titus saw it from the same spot, with fortresses and palaces crowning its heights, the gold of the temple flashing in the noonday sun, and millions of the children of Abraham thronging to the walls that inclosed the hill of his sacrifice, and rending the air with their shouts of defiance! Nor as when, over the smoking ruins of the temple, right through the rent vail of the holy of holies, the destroying barbarians marched to the assault on Zion, and the wail of the perishing children of Judah and Benjamin went up before God. Not as then, indeed. Nor as when, in later ages, the Christian hosts rushed in behind the frowning battlements of the city, when the rent air quivered with the cry of " Holy Cross," the ring of steel on armor, shouts of triumph, and agonizing wails, that reached the ear of the false prophet in hell, and made him writhe, even in the pit, as the slaughtered hosts of his followers came rushing down to curse him. Not as then, indeed! The silent city lay calm and majestic in the sunshine that fell on church and dome, with a gentle, even a loving, though sad smile. Around the walls there were alternate lights and shades, the semblance of the memories that clustered there, to gild or to darken it. At length we mounted, and made as though we would go on, but a cloud came over the sun, and we could not leave Jerusalem thus. I waited till the full sunlight, gorgeous at high noon, lay bright on wall and church, on castle and minaret, and brightest of all, on the spot hallowed by the last footsteps of the ascending Lord, and then I turned my back on the city, and saw it no more. An hour from the summit of Scopus, where the Damascus road, which we were traveling, ran through a rocky 320 HONESTY OF ARABS. valley, we dismounted again, and waited for Moreright and Abd-el-Atti. We left the luncheon with them, and were beginning to feel the need of it. I threw the pile of water-proof coats on the ground, under the shadow of a high rock, by way of a seat for Miriam, and Whitely and myself practiced pistol-shots at stones, while the horses strolled around and nibbled the scanty grass. Again we mounted and rode on. An hour later I missed the bundle of water-proof which I ought to have replaced behind my saddle. By this time we had overtaken Betuni, who had left with the baggage in the morning, but had been asleep, with his donkey, along the road-side, waiting for us. I sent him back with my horse, and I walked on behind his donkey, which, the moment his master was gone, began to show all of the devil that a donkey can be supposed to have in him. Now he would go, and now he wouldn't. Here he took a steep hill-side, and there he plunged down an apparently impassable wall of rocks. I never have seen the equal of that donkey or his master. I gave him up in ten minutes, begged Whitely to " surround him" on his horse, and I trotted forward on foot, while a cold sunset shed a red light on the barren hills that surrounded me. Betuni found the bundle lying open as I left it. A dozen persons had passed it: no one had touched it. In contrast with this instance of Arab honesty I have often had occasion to remark that in Christian Italy, within ten miles of Naples, this same bundle was cut off from my carriage and stolen in broad daylight. I have no hesitation in saying that it is safer, so far as stealing goes, to travel in Moslem countries than in America or Europe. The man who trusts an Arab will never be deceived. A saddle hung up on a tree by the road-side is never touched till the owner comes to reclaim it, if it be months BEEROTH. 321 afterward. In Damascus, in the most crowded bazaar, I saw one day an article of value, which some one had dropped, lying in the path, where thousands passed it. Every man, woman, and child turned aside and avoided treading on it or touching it. It would lie there till evening; and if the owner did not come for it, it would then be taken to the nearest mosk and hung up till he claimed it. When Betuni returned, it was late, and the sun was going westward; but no appearance was yet to be seen of Abd-el-Atti, Moreright, or the luncheon. We reached Bireh, the ancient Beeroth, one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Joshua, ix. 17), and now a village on a hillside, near which is a fine fountain of water from which (Beer), it derived, and since keeps, its name. In a small building over the fountain, which may once have been a praying-place, we found shelter from the piercing wind. The women came out here for water. One or two of them were tall, slender, and beautiful girls, who laughed and talked with us as freely as coquettes at home, and quite as gracefully. The red sunset was fading fiom the hills, when at last we saw our horsemen crossing the ridge to the southward, accompanied by two others, who proved to be Dr. Bonar and an English gentleman in his company. They had despatched their tents, in the morning, with instructions to their servants to pitch them where ours were, and then had come out of the city and accidentally fallen in with Moreright. We did not stop for luncheon now. Bethel was so near us that we concluded to wait for Hajji Mohammed's dinner, and pushed' on, cold and hungry, until we came among the vast boulders that cover the land around the site of Bethel. Jacob's only trouble must have been in finding a stone small enough for a pillow. Immense rocks, of every conceivable shape, covered the ground in all 14* 322 BETHEL. directions. Off the road, to the right, were some large ruins, which the Arabs called Bourg Bethel, but which we did not go to examine, for darkness was fast overtaking us, and our tents were nowhere visible. We rode on, every white rock in the twilight deceiving us; and at length it became perfect night, with a moon lying on the western hills, and magnifying every stone in the path by its dim silver rays. I saw by Abd-el-Atti's manner that the disappearance of the tents was not so much a matter of surprise to him as it was to me. I began to suspect that there was a design on some one's part to disobey orders, and lengthen the journey of to-day to shorten that of to-morrow. By eight o'clock we were tolerably well fatigued. We had been in the saddle eight hours, with very little rest. The moonlight on the hills and in the valleys made it exceedingly difficult for us to advance rapidly. MIohammed, who had been ridden hard in the morning, began to show symptoms of weariness, though with the pertinacity of his Arab blood he set his foot down firmly on the road and moved steadily and cautiously forward. The path now led down precipitous hill-sides into deep gorges, winding hither and thither until I was completely puzzled and lost all idea of the country through which I was going. Abd-el-Atti had fallen behind, and at length, as we rode through a grove of olive-trees in the bottom of a ravine, I missed him entirely. I shouted, but there was no reply except the echo which came back from the side of the mountain opposite "Ya Abd-el-Atti!" It rang along the ravine, and came back in two, three, and four sharp echoes, then all was silent in the moonlight that fell like a glory on the flashing leaves of the olive-trees, but the dragoman did not answer. I fired a pistol-another-and another. The sound NO TENTS. 323 went rattling down the ravine in which I was waiting, and the next instant Whitely, who had ridden on withthe party, came back at a gallop, not doubting that I had killed at least two Bedouins, and hoping that there was one more of the same sort left for him. As he joined me, I heard Abd-el-Atti's pistol far off on the other side of the ravine. I fired again, and he answered again. He was lost, and but for my pause would have gone on to Cesarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean. I began to think that we were lost as well. Rejoining the party who were waiting for us, we held a council, for our position became serious. Miriam was nearly worn out, and Whitely and myself confessed to fatigue. I had walked for an hour, to relieve my poor horse. Betuni was positive that we were right and the tents were before us. I questioned Abd-el-Atti. He said they were certainly ahead of us. "How did he know?" He did not know-only they must be-where else could they be? Our English friends were in more trouble than we, for two of their party, relying on our tents being at Beitin, had remained in Jerusalem two hours later and were yet behind us. Betuni was sullen. I cross-examined him, but the dog knew that I had begun to suspect some one, and if he were in the secret, would not confess it. Abd-el-Atti half intimated, in English, which Betuni did not understand, that he, Betuni, had ordered the tents on to Ain Harameeyeh, to save his mules a long journey the next day, to Nablous. I looked around for a large olive-tree that would hold a man of Betuni's small size, and, seeing one near at hand, collared the little fellow, dragged him off his donkey to 324 HANGING BETUNI. ward the tree, and ordered him to pray then and for the last time. He looked in vain for help from Whitely, and the rest had gone on to the foot of the hill, not knowing of our delay. Down went Betuni on his knees, and prayed, but to me. He swore by all the commandments in the decalogue and the beards of all the prophets and false prophets, that he did not know where the tents were, only he knew, of a certainty, that they must be ahead of us. I turned away, half doubting, and walked on by the side of Whitely's horse, he and Abd-el-Atti following and grumbling to each other in bad Syrian Arabic which I but half understood. The road was terrible. Oftentimes it led through narrow rock fissures, where I was afraid my horse would fall over on me, for I was walking and he following, like a dog, behind me. The moon was on the edge of the hills, so that, at times, we went in deep shade, but our footing was better at such times than when the delusive light of the moon lay on our rocky path. Wild hills surrounded and hemmed us in. It was a scene for ghostly imaginations, as we pressed on, a silent company, along the winding pathway down the hills. That pathway, doubtless, in long gone ages, he who had no home, traveled, in nights like this, from Galilee. That pathway hosts of Roman soldiers trod, bands of Crusaders, many foot-weary pilgrims. I looked into the gloom on each side to see the shades of the dead reappearing, for every bush and rock seemed like the form of an old man, gazing at our curious procession. At length we came out on a point of the hill, below which there was yet another long plunge of the ravine down which we had been coming for two hours. Far THE TENTS FOUND. 325 below us we saw a camp-fire at which Betuni grunted his approval, but he avoided me. I was not sure that we had not hit on a camp of Bedouins, and ordered a halt. A pistol-shot was answered by the unmistakable ring of Hajji Mohammed's fowling-piece, and we rode on. It was ten o'clock when we reached the tents at Ain Harameeyeh. This spot had been proposed to me in the morning, and I had expressly forbidden them to come to it. Tired out as I was, for I had walked by my poor horse for more than an hour, before entering the tent I called dragoman, cook, servant, and muleteers before me, and examined them seriatim. But no one ever knew sharper witnesses in a police court. No one knew how they came there, and no one could tell who ordered them to come there. While Abd-el-Atti asserted that he had given the orders correctly, the entire crowd of men did not deny it, but still somehow understood that Ain Harimeeyeh was the camp ground, and had come here. The tents of the Scottish party were here also, and I endeavored to learn how they were induced to come on, but they were as silent as the rocks of Beitin, and I gave it up, contenting myself with a solemn assurance that if there occurred another instance of disobedience to orders, especially in the matter of selecting the place for the camp at night, I would thrash the responsible party as he never dreamed of being thrashed, and if I could not find who was responsible I would whip them all, from first to last, whether there was a governor at hand to do it or I had to do it myself. WE left Ain Harimeeyeh at a quarter to nine, A.M. The road lay up the valley for one hour, when we arrived at a point where a broad plain stretched off to the right. Sinjil was on the hill-side over us to the left, and turning down to the east we made a detour from the direct road to Nablous, for the purpose of visiting Seilun, the ancient Shiloh. Forty minutes from Sinjil, passing Turmus Aya on the plain, one of the most beautiful plains in Syria, and crossing the hill which bounds it on the north, we arrived at a small square building known to the modern inhabitants of the country as the Mosk of Settein (the sixty-not Seilun as Dr. Robinson understood it). It is a white stone building about thirty feet square. The broken pieces of three Corinthian columns lie inside of it, and an urn between two wreaths, over the doorway, seems indicative of a sepulchral purpose. The outside of the walls has been inclosed in a sloping fortress of heavy stone-work, showing that it has, at some period, been converted into a fortress, but when or why, or whence its name, I could not in any way ascertain. The ruins of Shiloh are but a little distance beyond, but of these nothing definite remains. The chief evidence of the presence of a great city, in former days, is found in the tombs which are hewn in the rocks about MOUNT HERMON. 327 here, and which are now open and empty. The location of the place is tolerably certain. In the last chapter of Judges we find the direction given to the Benjamites, to catch wives for themselves of the daughters of Shiloh when they danced at the yearly feast; and there Shiloh is located "on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah." This appears to be the spot. The ground, in all directions, was filled with the small cubes that formed ancient pavements. In one ploughed piece of ground they were more plenty than soil. Three fourths of an hour from Shiloh we reached Khan Luban, where we struck the direct road again, and fifteen minutes beyond this the village of Luban, which is, doubtless, the ancient Lebonah above referred to. In the afternoon, having passed Sawieh, we accomplished the difficult ascent of a high ridge, one hour from Luban, from which we had a view before us up a long and broad valley that came down from Galilee, and away beyond it, white and glorious in the sky, the snowy summit of Mount Hermon. Jebel-es-Sheik, the sheik of mountains as we called it, and as the name in fact signifies, was from that day never out of our sight for an entire day during more than a month of travel. It looked down on our sleep every night in all the northern part of Syria, and we were on the west, south, east, and north of it. In commanding beauty it equals any mountain I have seen. How we became acquainted with the dews of Hermon will hereafter appear. We rode up the valley, and at five o'clock reached the point where the valley of Nablous comes into it from the west and, crossing it, continues on to the east. The south-west corner of this intersection is occupied by Mount Gerizim, the north-west by Mount Ebal. They 328 JACOB'S WELL. are on the opposite sides of the valley of Nablous, but on the same side of the valley which comes down fiom Galilee. Mount Gerizin falls steeply to the valley level, but before it quite reaches it slopes off a little. In this slope, not quite on the valley level, is the well of Jacob, of which, and of the woman of Samaria, every reader knows the story. We reached it at five o'clock, and dismounted to examine it. It was formerly a deep well, of which the opening was vaulted over in a small chamber under the surface of the ground. A few weeks before our arrival this vault had fallen in, and the stones had jammed in the mouth of the well, closing it up entirely, so that it would require laborers and a day's work to open it. But the well itself is sufficiently located, nor can there be any doubt that this is the well which Jacob dug, and which Christ hallowed by his presence and by the comparison of the water with that living water that he could give. I had never before understood how it happened that Christ waited at a well, as he did, while his disciples went into the city to buy meat, but here, on the ground, it was very plain. He, in fact, could not have done otherwise. He was traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee. The direct road was up this valley. To go to Shechem, the disciples must go up the cross valley and return to the same spot again. He, therefore, sat down here until they returned, since there was no occasion for him to walk a mile or more and back again. In regard to the objection, that the woman of Samaria would not have come to such a distant well for water, Dr. Robinson has well remarked that the statement is not that she came from the city. She might have been working in the neighborhood, or even living there. She went into the city only to tell her story, or she might have come to JACOB'S WELL. 329 this ancient well of Jacob from a peculiar love or veneration for its waters, even from the city. A few rods from the well was a small Mohammedan wely, or dome, which marks the site of the tomb of Joseph, a much more probable place than in the mosk at Hebron, for without doubt this is the parcel of ground which was bought from the father of Shechem, and which Jacob gave to Joseph. Iere the body that was cast into the pit and rescued for captivity, that refused the soft embraces of the wife of Potiphar and rested in the arms of Asenath, that was clothed in the purple of Egyptian royalty and throned over the greatest nation of the world, that was embalmed and kept in a stately sepulchre until the exodus of his children, and then borne up and down the desert, now almost finding its desired repose by Abraham and Jacob, now resting on the shore of the salt sea, and now wandering among the mountains of Moab, here that body found its coveted rest. Here, in later years, the soft air of the valley heard those low and musical tones that echo still on all the plains of Holy Land, in those words that the winds whisper on Ebal and Gerizim, on Himmalayeh and Andes, the words of sublime faith and perfect adoration, " God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." We rode up the cross valley, as I have called it, to the city of Nablous, which lies a mile or more fiom the well of Jacob, covering probably part of, if not all, the site of Shechem. Mount Ebal was on our right, and Gerizim on our left, and in the front of each, where the valley narrowed to the least width, was a platform, natural, indeed, but capable of holding a hundred thousand persons, as if expressly arranged for the scene of blessing and cursing which here took place. 330 A DISCOVERY. But there was another discovery that we made just here, which was of startling interest. When Moses had brought the children of Israel to the banks of the Jordan, and gave them his last commands in the valley over-against Beth-peor, he ordered, among other things, that scene which was to take place on these mountains. It had always been a matter of curiosity to me, as I doubt not it has been to many others, that Moses, who had never been in the land of Canaan, should yet have made such an exact description of the spot in which this was to be performed: "And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal. Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the champaign over-against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh?" (Deut., xi. 29.) And afterward he gave them order for standing by tribes on opposite sides of the valley, and responding to each other in the words of blessing and cursing. And now, as we rode up the narrow pass between the hills, we looked behind us, and there, right down the valley, which went sloping away thirty miles to the Jordan, lit in the red rays of the setting sun, were the mountains of Moab and the summit of Pisgah. It was evident that the very words of the great lawgiver were accompanied by a gesture of his hand pointing them to Ebal and Gerizim, at the head of that valley, and I now saw how he was led to select them as the place for the ceremony. Riding up the valley, we entered Nablous, and threaded our way through narrow streets, dismal, and crowded with dismal-looking people, who opened their eyes in astonish NABLO US. 331 ment at Our cavalcade. We passed on the way the chief mosk, which is an ancient Christian church, and is still stately and fine in appearance. Nablous, the ancient Neapolis, and still called Naples by the natives, has now about ten thousand inhabitants, of whom none possess any special interest, except a very small number, less than two hundred, the last representatives of the Samaritans. We rode through the city, from east to west, and found the tents pitched among trees on the west side, just out of the gate. On a low housetop near the gateway, just before passing out, I saw the resident governor, surrounded by his officers. As we rode up he bowed politely, and I paused to exchange with him those pleasant salutations of the East, which more than any other intercourse with the people, attach the traveler to them. I did not dismount, as he was considerably higher up than I, but asking him at what hour the gates were closed for the night, and receiving for reply that they were never closed, but always remained open, I rode on to the camp, where I found the others already lying on a pile of baggage and carpets, hastening Hajji Mohammed's slow progress. It was "by the will of God, whose prophet is Mohammed, ever blessed," that we got dinner at any time. Our pilgrim cook was a firm fatalist. If dinner was to be ready, it would be ready. No entreaties or threats could persuade him to move along any whit faster. The only tedious hour of the day was that immediately after arriving at the camp for the evening, when we lay on the baggage, still cloaked and gloved, with whips in hand, as if the halt were but for a moment, shouting at cook, servants, and dragoman until the soup was ready. Those were the hours of Betuni's greatest achieve 332 EVENING SCENE. ments. Then he quarreled with the horses, and growled at the Howajjies, and cursed the mules. That afternoon I had special reason for looking dubiously at him, and he knew it. For I had by no means given up the idea that he was in league with Abd-elAtti to spoil my night's rest at Bethel. After various attempts to attract my attention, by arranging the baggage, bringing the books I usually read at that time, and hinting that the dinner was in progress, he at length burst into a small storm of rage that died away in hoarse growls, and ended with a rattling thunder of kicks on the sides of his extraordinary donkey. A fresh breeze of wind, coming down from Mount Ebal, strained the tent-cords to their utmost tension, swinging the canvas to and fro over our heads, and flashing the bright flag out among the branches of the trees. In those canvas houses little we cared for wind, or cold, or storm, so the coffee were good and the tobacco pure. The iron bedsteads answered well for sofas on which to lounge till sleeping time. Dinner over, and the pipes alight, we always placed Miriam on one of these lounges, rolled up in shawls if the weather were cool; then the swift hours had the wings of pleasant talk. Then came around us, brought up by the magician power of words, single words, that raised the dead past to living presence, all the forms, and faces, and scenery of distant lands. It were vain to attempt to recount how often I recalled my father's voice, my mother's stories to her child, as I went up and down the hills of Terra Santa; how many times thought went back to the village church-the white head of the good old man, my father, in the pulpit, his clear voice reading the sublime Psalms of David, or praying to the God in whose presence he now sits; how many times I remembered the twilight in our home, the Sunday evening twilight of all A VISIT TO THE SAMARITANS. 333 others, the gathering around the hearth, the story of Joseph, Samuel, David, the hymn of peace-the peace that followed after the hymn! Many and difficult have been our various paths in life. One and another has wandered far off, over seas and continents. Two of us have been in Nablous! On this same spot of ground, where now my tents are pitched, my brother had slept. The most thrilling idea that took possession of me that evening was this: that two of those boys who used, of a Sunday morning, to look up with earnest eyes to their father in the pulpit of the old white meeting-house, had set their far-traveled feet on the soil of the Holy Land, in the foot-prints of the Lord. Moreright interrupted my reveries, by proposing to go into the town and visit the Samaritans. I was not unwilling. A guide appeared, in the shape of an attache of the mission school in Nablous, and we entered the open gateway through which we had emerged shortly before. Silence reigned. The narrow, dark streets were absolutely deserted. No sign of life was visible; nor was there window or gleaming fire, or any thing to show that it was not a city of ancient days, empty and desolate. As we advanced, the streets grew darker, until at last we were in the very blackness of darkness, and the next step plunged us, all four, in a deep mud hole, where we paused to hold a consultation. I had, as usual, a piece of candle in my pocket, and plenty of matches. A flash revealed our position. The candle burned a moment, and the wind then dashed it out. But we advanced under a dark stone arch, into a long passage, in which the wind howled furiously, emerging at length by the door of a house at which our guide paused. A knock and a shout brought out a sad-looking woman 334 SAMARITAN SYNAGOGUE. and a fast-looking boy. They let us in, and called the rabbi and his assistant to show us what we wished to see, the Samaritan synagogue. The elder rabbi was a sharp specimen, with an eye to the tangible and useful. No speculating German, nor dreaming American. Not he. He began to whisper and mutter bucksheesh from the first momentof our acquaintance. He led us up a stairway to the top of a house, across this, and into an open place like a small portico. Here he demanded that we should take off our shoes; and we, of course, complied with his request. He then led us into a large, low room, dark as Erebus, where we stood in silence, while he scratched two or three matches on the wall and obtained a light. By this we saw that on the side of the room there was a niche, concealed by a curtain covered with curious devices, but no intelligible inscriptions. The chief object of this visit was to see the ancient copy of the law which this people possess, and which they profess was written by the hands of Abishua, the son of Phineas, nearly thirty-five hundred years ago. The old man demanded a bucksheesh, as the preliminary, I declined, and promised it as a closing ceremony. After a little demurring, he at length consented, and brought out two immense rolls of parchment, in cases. They were, as usual, on rollers, so arranged that one could roll the page off from one and on the other as the reading proceeded. One of these two was the ancient manuscript in question, and the other a more modern one. I believe some travelers have been disposed to regard this manuscript as quite as old as the seventh or eighth century of the Christian era. I formed a different opinion. I think it scarcely more than five hundred, if it be four hundred years old. I saw nothing of the peculiar THE SAMArITANS. 335 reverence for it which travelers have described. On the contrary, when I handled and examined it, turning over the back and bending the parchment in my hands to test its probable age, the old rabbi or the younger offered no objection, but, on the contrary, seemed anxious about the result of my examination. They showed us some other manuscripts of the law, of which they had perhaps ten or twelve in the closet behind the curtain, which I opened and examined. They would sell moderns, but I could not get them to name a price for the old one. The old rabbi asked earnestly after Samaritans in all lands. There seems to be a strong mournful anxiety on the part of this miserable remnant, to hear of others on the broad earth's surface, who believe in the worship of God on Mount Gerizim. They inquired if there were any Samaritans in America, and told us there were some in France and England. But in this they were deceived. Before bidding them farewell, I asked the younger rabbi to read to me from the old manuscript of the law. He read fluently. I desired to hear but one part of the writing, since in all others it is similar to the Jewish version. In the portion of Exodus, which in our version is the twentieth chapter, I found the Samaritan addition to the Decalogue, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God in Mount Gerizim." There are now no remains of the ancient Samaritan temple on the mountain. Later structures probably displaced the older, and all alike have disappeared. Nevertheless the Samaritans still regard the temple site as holy, and worship with their faces toward it. There are less than two hundred of them, as I learned in Nablous, and probably no others in the world. These few retain the ancient customs, and offer their annual sacrifices on Gerizim. 336 SHUT IN. Our bucksheesh on leaving was not satisfactory to the rabbi. I was sorry, but confident that it would have been no more so if ten times as great, I bade him goodnight, and we moved down the narrow streets now lit by the moon. As we approached the gateway, still some hundred feet distant, we saw its huge valves swing shut, and when we reached it all was silent and deserted. It was a very neat trick, but it did not succeed. I shouted for the guard, but no guard came. Then I hammered on the guard-house, and two soldiers made themselves visible, rubbing their eyes as if just aroused from sleep. I did not speak to them, lest my dignity should thereby suffer in their estimation. I addressed our guide, "Tell them I am Braheem Pasha, an American, and if the gate is not opened I shall send for the governor himself to let me out." The guide himself seemed astounded at the dignity of the man he was leading about, who thus talked of sending for a governor to open the doors of the city. He repeated it, with illustrations and additions. The soldiers looked into my face inquiringly, and I did a little English vociferation, which produced its effect. " What does he say?" said a sub-officer, putting his head out of the guard-house. " He says he's a sultan," replied the soldier. "Perhaps he is, and you'11 find it out to-morrow," said the sub, springing to the gate and swinging it open, then bowing very respectfully with his hand on his forehead, closely imitated by the other two, who began to be frightened about their feet. It was worth the piastres we threw to them, as we went out, to see their total change of demeanor. The neighborhood of Yablous was in a very disturbed condition, and the Pasha of Jerusalem. who had been SAMARIA. 337 some days here quelling disturbances among the surrounding Bedouins, was said to be a prisoner in the city, fearing to return to his own place. We left in the morning for Sebastieh, the ancient Samaria, distant an hour and a half, by a winding and pleasant road over the hills, bordered with many flowers. We found the people there as rude as they are accustomed to be. The site of Samaria is the long ridge of a lofty hill, commanding a magnificent prospect. On the western end of this are now the remains of a great gateway, which is visible from the Mediterranean. Thence a triple row of columns, of which a hundred and two yet stand, seems to have swept around the hill, as if the colonnade of a great street. It is eleven hundred paces from the western gate to a point where probably the eastern gate stood. Whether the colonnade went quite around the hill, it is now impossible to say. Other columns and ruins are visible in various parts of the hill, the principal of which is the Church of St. John the Baptist, now used as a mosk, in which they show the tomb of Neby Yeye, which being interpreted means, the Prophet John. The relics of knightly days, visible in the walls of the church, sufficiently establish the date of this building, which is a stately and imposing structure. We sat on the summit of the hill, which commands a fine view of the surrounding country, and read the passages of holy writ relating to the city of Omri, made specially interesting to us by the history of Elijah and Elisha. The people gathered around us, and brought coins to sell, of which we purchased a large quantity. A short distance from Samaria, we passed through Burka, a village at the opening of a narrow mountain ravine with high, steep sides. The path followed up the bed of the stream, the village guarding its outlet. 15 338 A PISTOL BALL. I had remained behind the party with Whitely and Abd-el-Atti, and we were now riding on fast to overtake them. As we passed through the village, a volley of stones came down the hill from the left and nearly unhorsed me. Without pausing an instant, only looking up to see the crowd of men and boys who had thrown them, Whitely and myself turned our horses up the hill. He took them on the right and I on the left, dodging their missiles as we advanced, our strong horses going up the steep rocks like goats. Seeing our determination they desisted, and when we reached the platform on which they had been standing, we found only women left, and they assured us the assailants were only boys. We knew better, but were forced to return unsatisfied, taking the narrow and steep lanes of the village to the foot of the hill, and again entering the pass to proceed on our way. We had not advanced beyond our former position, when another volley came down, with greater force than before. If one had struck me, I had not been here to write this. It would have killed me then and there. This was no child's play, and now we saw the rascals far up the hill-side, on the crags, where they supposed themselves safe. I pointed a pistol at them, and they laughed derisively, and sent down a shower of stones. Human nature couldn't stand that, and I fired. They believed themselves out of reach of ball, but an eight-inch Colt is a terrible weapon to carry. The conical ball went whistling over their heads, and split a piece off from a rock, a hundred feet above them. It was the first, last, and only time, in all my travels in the East, that I had occasion to use a deadly weapon, and I think it produced a good effect here. I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of attacking any one of the JEZREEL. 339 armed Franks. I think the lesson of that ball not lost, and under the circumstances, I should probably not have regretted if it had written its lesson in the flesh of one of them. As the chips of stone fell rattling among them, they retreated with a howl of dismay, and we rode on in peace. We camped that night at Jenin, on the plain of Jezreel. Foxes wailed and barked all night around the tents. In the morning, we visited the fountain in the valley, saw the women filling their water-jars, and heard their pleasant voices, and then rode on. At Jenin, we were on the great plain of Jezreel, which is, in fact, a branch of the still greater Esdraelon, toward which our course now lay. Two hours and a quarter over a dead level most of the way, brought us to a solitary tower among some ruins and a few mud huts, which is now known as Zerin, a corruption of the ancient Jezreel. The party of gentlemen from Scotland, increased to four, besides one of the resident missionaries at Jerusalem, were now in company with us, and our route lay together for several days. We climbed the huge square tower by a crumbling staircase, and then on each other's shoulders, to the edge of the battlements, from which the view was very fine and very interesting. Jezreel was the city of Ahab, and it was not a little interesting, in this spot, to read the story of the vineyard of ]Naboth, and endeavor to locate it. This was not so difficult as might be imagined. The hill on which the present Tower of Jezreel stands, is sufficiently marked to show the probability that the watch-tower was here, from which the watchman saw Jehu when he came up from the eastward, recognized his furious driving, and reported it to Joram and Ahaziah, who were in the palace. But the field of Naboth was hard by the palace, and it is said that when the two kings 340 MOUNTAINS OF GILBOA. went out to meet Jehu, who was rapidly approaching, they found him " in the portion of Naboth," an indication that it lay east of the palace, from which direction Jehu was coming from Ramoth-Gilead. But the great interest in the view from this tower consisted in the mountains that looked down on it. In the centre of the valley, to the eastward but a short distance, we saw the village of Beisan, the Beth-Shan where the Philistines fastened the body of Saul to the wall, and whence the valiant of Jabesh-Gilead took it away in the night, to burn and bury at Jabesh. On the south of the valley, stood the mountains of Gilboa, where the mighty fell, and their shields were cast vilely away. The mournful lament of David over Jonathan had a touching interest as we read it aloud here. To the westward, was the great plain of Esdraelon, and beyond it Mount Carmel, whence Elijah ran before Ahab to the gates of Jezreel. On the north, were the beautiful heights of the Little Hermon, falling off into the plain of Esdraelon, and far to the east were the blue hills of Moab. The whole country around us was now of the utmost interest. On the great plain which we were looking over, so many battles had been fought from the time when " the stars in their courses fought against Sisera,' and " the river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon," that the name of Megiddo had become synonymous with a battle-field, in the days of the vision of Patmos. 206 LEAVING Jezreel, we rode on, over the plain, to the south-western slope of the hill which I have called Little Hermon, and which is otherwise called Mount Duhy. Here, among a grove of orange-trees and prickly pear, we found a small village, known as Sulem, which is the ancient Shu7nem. Riding on through it, we closed up together, and I read aloud the exquisite story of the Shunamite woman, which possessed an interest I never before felt, touching as the history is. Carmel lay still overagainst us, whither she rode to the prophet, and where she met his servant, with that sublime answer of confidence in God that has comforted many a mourning mother since, " It is well." I never before appreciated the fact that the miracle of Elijah was performed so near the spot where Christ raised the widow's son. A short ride of half an hour, brought us to Nain, which lies on the northern slope of Duhy, as Shunem does on the southern. We rode around the end of the hill, and approached the village, which still bears its old name, hallowed by the most sacred associations. As we came around the end of the hill, Tabor, most beautiful of mountains, spread before us, rising from the plain of Esdraelon, which here swept off to the east, and standing against the sky in a long, graceful curve. The views of the hill are 342 NAIN. usually taken from the north-west end, representing it narrow and sugar-loafed, but our present view of its side exhibited it as a small segment of a circle, of which the are was the plain. Nain is a small village with remains of an ancient place scattered here and there about it. It is situated on the steep side of a mountain looking off to Tabor and Nazareth. The village has a few poor inhabitants, but I found most interest on the eastern side of it, where the quantity of rock-hewn sepulchres in the hill-side indicated the locality of the ancient burial-place. It was toward these, I believed, that they were bearing the young man when the voice of him who spoke to earth and the other worlds at the same moment, reached him and recalled him to his mother's affection. We sat down near the fountain, under the houses on the hill-side. The inhabitants gathered around us with staring eyes, for a Frankish lady was a curiosity to them, and wherever we went Miriam was sure to attract attention. Moreright, who did the serious for our party, and was indefatigable in finding illustrations of Scripture truths, called our attention to the various points of interest on the plain before us. The river Kishon no longer swept through it with resistless current, yet it is so fierce in the rainy seasons even now, that the French troops of Napoleon found it as dangerous as did Sisera. Many Arabs were drowned in it at the battle of Mount Tabor, in 1799. One branch of it came down the valley from the sides of Mount Tabor and another from the other parts of the valley toward the south and south-east. The whole finds outlet at Acre, in a strong stream, which, in wet seasons, becomes a torrent. We rode slowly for a little distance across the plain, toward the rocky and precipitous hills which frowned on ENDOR. 343 the other side, and among which Nazareth lay, invisible to us. But at length the bay horse, Mohammed, of his own notion, increased his speed, and the chestnut drew up alongside, and then all four went like the wind over the plain of Esdraelon. For three miles of gentle slope we kept up this speed, and hushed down the horses when we approached the hills. An Arab horse is stopped by a low hiss or hush. If you draw the rein he breaks down on his haunches and is very likely to pitch you over his head. There was a style of riding that we called the American style, from the number of our inexperienced countrymen that we saw going through it. English and French, Scotch and Italian, did the same, but we saw fewer of them. When the horse sprang off on the first jump, the rider broke his back over the board which stands up behind the saddle, then drawing the rein fiercely, threw his horse down on his haunches, and went over on his neck behind the ears. Such is the invariable experience the first time a stranger tries an Arab horse. A little below Nain on the hill-side, to the east, we saw Endoor, the ancient Endor. We observed the direction which Saul took to reach it before the battle of Gilboa. He doubtless crossed the plain near Beth-Shan, and then went over the ridge of Mount Duhy, instead of coming around, as we had, by the plain, which would have exposed him to the Philistines. We crossed no stream of water between Duhy and the hills near Nazareth. Our course was directly over the plain, which was carpeted with brilliant wild flowers, the various shades of the anemone abounding. At the foot of the Jebel Nazareth was a little village called Saleh, and, riding through this, we were under a precipice which I think no one would expect to mount on horseback any more easily than the Hudson Palisades. I paused in astonishment, and, unable to perceive any 344 A HILL-SIDE. gorge, ravine, or sloping place where a path could go, I doubted Betuni's ability as a guide, and was confirmed in my doubts by Dr. Robinson, whom Moreright now read aloud. He went by this spot to a pass below, being assured by his guides that no horse could go up here, though men sometimes did. In our swift ride over the plain we had left Betuni and his inimitable donkey behind, but they at length overtook us, and Betuni rode straight on. " But, Betuni, there is no road here." " 0, yes there is-derb tieb-keteer!" "There's a first-rate road, eh? Well, we'11 try it." With a sigh of horror we entered among the piles of fallen rock that lay near the foot, and commenced our winding, zig-zag process of ascent. On my word of honor, I should as soon have thought of riding up the front of Trinity church as up that hill. I could easier have ridden up the pyramid of Ghizeh, and after that I was ready to pledge Mohammed to carry me up the Bunker Hill monument by the stairway at a full run. It was a wild hill-side. Here and there patches of brush and wild flowers found soil among the stones, but the path was, for the most part, on solid rock. Oftentimes the horses ascended, for thirty feet, a succession of rocky steps, and the whole ascent, of more than a thousand feet, was accomplished within an angle of a hundred and fifteen degrees from the level of the plain, or twentyfive from a perpendicular. The view from the summit was grand and beautiful. We sat down on the ground to enjoy it while our horses cropped the low brush and wandered around us. It was one of the pleasant features of our various halts that we never had occasion to tie the horses. When I wished to dismount and walk, Mohammed followed me everywhere like a dog. NAZARETH. 345 The sun was far down when we came within sight of Nazareth, much the most beautiful village in Syria. Its white stone houses stand all along the western side of a narrow valley, which falls away to the plain of Esdraelon. This valley we should have come up by going further along the plain. At the upper end of the valley and village was a Greek church, under which springs a fountain that flows under ground a hundred feet in fiont of it and then through a stone sarcophagus which is sunk below the level of the ground. This is the " Virgin's fountain." Close by was a grove of olive-trees among which our tents were pitched, and the flag was fluttering gayly. Water was scarce in Nazareth. Every drop that entered this sarcophagus was dipped out by women who stood crowded around it, filling their large jars by small cups full. So great was the crowd that they stood around the fountain all night in a dense mass, talking in shrill musical voices, and making the night sleepless to us in the tents. We walked down through the village to the convent, which is built on the supposed site of the residence of the Virgin. I had little interest in visiting this spot, and should not have gone at all but for my desire to procure some supplies from the father superior. It was enough for me to see the mountains over which the young footsteps of the Lord wandered; to know that this sunshine fell on his fair forehead; that he lay down on these hill-sides, and watched the changing lights and shades across the plain of Armageddon; that here the angels guarded, and his Father talked with him. With the locality of his home I had nothing to do; for though he might have called this or that spot his mother's home, he had had no home, nor where to lay his head. From childhood he was a wanderer. The winds on these bleak hills were 15' 346 THE VIRGIN'S HOUSE. holy winds; I bared my head to them, and rejoiced to feel their soft influences over my forehead, since they had been accustomed thus to touch his brow. Over these rocky precipices he roved; on these hill-tops he sat down and studied the sky, beyond which he knew was his home and throne; here he read the brilliant page of the night, and talked with star-light as the messenger of his Father. All this I felt, and it was but a mockery of feeling after that to be led to the kitchen of the Virgin Mary in the rock behind the spot where her house stood, or to be shown the place of the annunciation. Nevertheless the old church was curious; and there were some old things in the chapel that repaid one for the visit. There was a curious broken column hanging from the roof of the Grotto of the Annunciation, and a hewn passageway through the rock behind it led to the kitchen. The house of the Virgin once stood over this grotto; and there are traditions, which every one has heard, of its having gone hence to Loretto, which can be found in their proper place. We found the superior in his room. HIe was a finelooking man, with a long, black beard, lying on his breast. He received us warmly; and after an hour's conversation with him, I ventured to ask him for the supplies that we were in need of. They were rather curious supplies to inquire for at a convent; but I was not disappointed. We had been assured in Jerusalem that the delicious Lebanon wine which we found there could be procured in any quantity at Nazareth; and relying on this, we brought no supplies of wine with us. Our claret and Marsala had lasted us till this day; but we had finished the former at luncheon, and the last bottle of the latter was for the dinner-table; and we HOSPITALITY. 347 did not dare trust ourselves to travel with no reliance but the water of the country. The worthy father told me that wine was very scarce in Nazareth, good wine particularly so; but he had a small quantity in the convent, of which I should have at least enough to last us to Tiberias, where he had procured it, and where we could find plenty. After dinner that evening, as I stood among the olivetrees in front of the tent looking down into the valley at the laughing crowd of women, whose voices rang like home music around me, two lay brothers of the Franciscans arrived with a large basket between them, containing a gallon bottle of capital wine, a quart of arrakee, and one old sealed bottle marked with the familiar wax and title of golden Muscat. The latter was a bottle evidently presented to the good fathers by some wealthy traveler, and I had not the heart to accept it. I sent it back with my thanks; but fee or reward the brothers who brought it protested they would not accept. I pressed a piece of money on each of them, and sent my hearty thanks and farewell to the superior. May he be long preserved to preside over the Convent of the Annunciation and welcome travelers to his hospitality! I know not to what I should attribute the kindness I always experienced from the monks and brothers of the Terra Santa. Other travelers have found them distant and reserved, and have described them as hospitable only for the sake of money. It was never so with me. Probably my frank manner of addressing them, a free and easy style of assuring them, that though I was a Protestant, I had yet a profound reverence for Holy Land, and an affectionate regard to them as the custodians of its holiest places; and, in short, a way of claiming friendship with them on the score of common Christianity, made them feel more kindly toward me than they feel toward 34-8 IILL ABOVE NAZARETH. men who eye them with suspicion or contempt, and converse with them in tones that indicate not only their incredulity, but also their belief of the insincerity of their informants. In Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, I found the kindest treatment, the pleasantest welcome; and I envied the good men their calm lives, and the prospect before them of slumber in holy soil. Early next morning I climbed the hill of Nazareth, back of our tents, before sunrise, and getting to the top of a Mohammedan wely, or tomb, sat down and saw the morning advance over the grandest panorama of mountains in the world. Eastward lay Tabor, its base hidden by the high bluffs up which we climbed the day previous, its summit on the sky just where the sun was coming up. Then the blue line of the hills of Moab went along the south-eastern horizon, and Little Hermon and Gilboa, reaching to Mount Carmel on the south, and Carmel sweeping away to the blue Mediterranean on the south-west. The sea was the western horizon, and north-west and north were the snowy peaks of Lebanon. Within this horizon line lay, east of us, the depression of the Sea of Galilee, the sea itself not visible, and the valley of the Jordan stretching away southward. Endor and Nain, this side of Little Hermon, and Jezreel visible beyond it. Shunem lay behind the hill. The ancient Megiddo and Taanah, on the broad plain of Esdraelon, with here and there a mirror-like patch of water in the bed of the river Kishon. The harbor of Haifa, with vessels at anchor, was visible to the west. Tyre and Sidon I could not see, but Cana of Galilee was doubtless one of the villages near us on the north, and Sefurieh, last city of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. The centre of all these was Nazareth, the city of the childhood of the Lord, where, in after years, the people A MOURNING SCENE. 349 led him to the brow of the hill, on which their city was built, with intent to cast him clown. The Mount of Precipitation is pointed out at two miles from the village, overhanging the deep valley of Esdraelon, but it is much more probable that a precipice within the city, not far from the convent, is the place where that event occurred. The other is certainly not the hill on which the city was built. While I sat on the hill, Moreright came up and joined me. Whitely was not given to early rising, and missed the scene. It was still and calm as a Sunday morning in the country at home. The voices of the women at the fountain came up to us with surprising clearness, though we were a thousand feet from them. A few rods nearer to us, a little way from the tents, was a grave-yard, connected with the Greek church at the fountain, and in it I had seen two women sitting over a grave, croning to one another a lament. I could hear the very words of it now on the hill-top. One, and another, and another woman came out of the village and joined them, till the circle became large, and the lament exceedingly solemn and sad. They sang more of a tune than I had been accustomed to hear from eastern women, and at length they rose and formed a large circle around the two chief mourners. There were forty persons in the circle. The two within continued the lament, going around the circle and facing each one in succession, bowing, and swinging a white cloth in the hand, and occasionally the entire company responded. The perfect time which they kept in the responses made the forty voices like one. This continued for a half hour, and until Miriam, whom I had left asleep in her tent, came out to look at them. As she approached, their grief gave way to curiosity, and they broke up the ring and surrounded her. One examined her hat, another her shawl, 350 A MADONNA FACE. her shawl-pin, and other ornamental articles of dress. They pinched her cheeks, and patted her on the back, to intimate approbation, and, in fact, made a general inspection of herself and her wardrobe, to all which she submitted with much amusement. After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have a last look at the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much the prettiest that we had seen in the East. As we approached the crowd, a tall girl of nineteen advanced toward Miriam and offered her a cup of water. Her movement was graceful and queenly. We exclaimed on the spot at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance. Whitely was suddenly thirsty, and begged for water, and drank it slowly, with his eyes over the top of the cup fixed on her large black eyes, which gazed on him quite as curiously as he on her. Then Moreright wanted water. She gave it to him, and he managed to spill it so as to ask for another cup, and by the time she came to me she saw through the operation; her eyes were full of fun as she looked at me. I laughed outright, and she joined me in as gay a shout as ever country maiden in old Orange county. I wished for a picture of her. A Madonna, whose face was a portrait of that beautiful Nazareth girl, would be " a thing of beauty," and " a joy forever." Over the hills to Tabor. Oak groves abounded now. The ground was brilliant with lilies of the field. One specimen that I found was the most beautiful flag that I have ever seen. I suppose it to be the Calcedonian Iris. It had three dark, mottled brown petals, sprinkled with spots of rich purple. Afterward, on the plain of the upper Jordan, we found it plentiful, whence it is known to the missionaries as the Hooleh lily, a name that I misunderstood at first for Holy lily, and which thus accorded with our expressed ideas that such a lily might well merit the praise of Christ, MOUNT TABOR. 351 The ascent of Tabor was difficult and dangerous. Miriam rode to the top. A horse in front of her fell twice, and, rolling back, nearly threw the chestnut down, but he stood up bravely, shaking his head at the mishap of his fellow, and though once he slipped on a smooth rock, regained his firm footing in a moment, and at length reached the top in safety with his rider, who was the only one of the party that rode to the summit. When we reached the eastern extremity of tie ridge, where ruins abound, our eyes were blessed with the blue, deep beauty of the sea of Galilee. Mount Tabor is the reputed mountain of the transfiguration. It needs but little examination of the account of that event to see that it probably took place on some more northern hill, and the fact that Tabor was at all times occupied by a fortified city, certainly puts it out of the question that that scene could have occurred here. We found the mount covered with ruins, and at the eastern point a sort of grotto which has once had holy reputation. A solitary Greek monk lives, hermit fashion, on the pile, guarding it from devils, for there is nothing here to keep men from. We were two hours from Nazareth to the foot of Tabor, and one hour in ascending it. Its Arabic name is Jebel e' Tur. It stands about fifteen hundred feet above the plain of Esdraelon, at the head of that plain. Annual pilgrimages are made here by the Christians of Palestine, and it is seldom that a day passes without more or less religious visitors resting on its summit, Many splendid churches and chapels have, in former years, been erected here in fulfillment of the design expressed by the disciples. But the summit of Tabor is now a heap of ruins, and the wild beasts of the plain find refuge on its sides. Two splendid eagles wheeled screaming over our heads 352 BATTLES NEAR TABOR. as we sat on the mountain, as if to remind us of the valiant whose blood had enriched the dust around it. I have already spoken of the battles which have taken place on the plain of Esdraelon. No place on the earth's surface presents a view of so many battle-fields, or as I should rather say, of the field of so many battles, as the top of Mount Tabor. Here Sisera was conquered, and here Gideon put to flight the Midianites, with his small army of chosen men. On the mountains of Gilboa Saul lost his kingdom and his life, and at Megiddo Josiah fell before PharaohNecho. Many of the most bloody battles of the Crusades were fought around the hill, and here, as often before in days when the crown of Jerusalem was verily given by God, Guy of Lusignan, last king of Jerusalem, lost his sceptre and throne in battle with Salah-e'deen. The brilliant career of Napoleon led him across the plain to fight the battle of Mount Tabor, where the great soldier, with six hundred men, rescued Kleber and his fifteen hundred, from twenty-five thousand enemies. Even so late as our day, one of the most celebrated bombardments, that of Acre, in 1840, was at the mouth of the great plain, not visible indeed from Tabor, but not so far distant that its thunders were not perfectly audible on the hill. Of all these battles, and many others that I have not alluded to, in Hebrew and in Roman times, there was none that so deeply interested me and so occupied my attention, as I sat on the summit of Tabor, and subsequently when I rode across the plain on which it was fought, as that last great battle of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when the possession of the Holy Cross passed from the Christians forever. E beginneth the story of the great battle of the HEBE beginneth the story of the great battle of the Cross, wherein that wood which Helena found in the pit near Calvary, which Heraclius, barefoot and bareheaded, carried on his shoulder into the gates of the Holy City, after that he had regained it from the Persians, which holy men of many centuries had gathered around with devoted affection, was lost unto Christians forever. There are, in the golden vials, which the elders spoken of in the apocalypse hold in their hands, many prayers that went up before that wood, and that sanctified it, whether it were or not the wood of Christ's Passion. I tell the story as I have found and heard it in fragments. The principal historical facts I have verified abundantly by examination; the incidents I gathered from the monks of the Terra Santa, and especially from Fra Giovanni, my gentle friend, whose brain was a treasure house of fine old legendary lore. It was in the year of grace and peace-woeful year to call a year of peace-eleven hundred and eighty-seven, that the kingdom of Jerusalem fell. Dark clouds gathered in the previous year. Dire portents were in the heavens. Earthquakes and terrible tempests shook Jerusalem on her throne of hills. The jealousies of the Knights of St. John and of the Temple, the contests for superiority, and the rival claims to the kingdom itself, might well make 354 REGINALD OF CHANTILLON. Baldwin IV. to believe that his crown was the last crown of Christ, not that of Solomon. Meantime, Yusef Salah-e'deen, the new Egyptian kalif, having made firm his throne in that country, had extended his power around Palestine, and was now in Damascus, meditating on a way to excuse himself from a violation of treaties, and an attack on Jerusalem. The excuse was at hand. Reginald of Chatillon, a Knight of the Cross, had come to Palestine with Louis le Jeune, and joined the forces of Raymond of Poictiers, Prince of Antioch. Keen as a hawk, and brave as a lion, the young soldier, nameless and of low origin, not only won a name, but, on the death of Raymond, won his widow Constance and his throne. The stories of his bravery and beauty, sung by the troubadours of those days, were countless, nor was any one more often mentioned, as stout knight and valiant soldier, than Reginald of Chatillon. His career is the theme for a history. His arm never grew weary of battle, nor did his sword rust until he was taken prisoner by the Moslems, and kept in chains for years at Aleppo. Released at last, he found his wife dead and his son on his throne. He himself gathered around him the most daring and reckless of the Templars, and having, by a second marriage, obtained other castles and possessions, he made it the business of his life to harass and annoy the Saracens wherever he could find them; and, at length, emboldened by his success, conceived the idea of marching to Medinah and Mecca, and plundering the holy kaaba itself. With his hitherto invincible band of warriors, he set out on this perilous enterprise. They surprised and captured the Egyptian caravan crossing the desert from India, and advanced in triumph to the valley of Rabid, scarcely thirty miles from Medina, where they were met by an overwhelming force, and routed with terrible slaughter. A GALLANT FIGHT. 355 Reginalc escaped even here; but Salah-e'deen was aroused by this sacrilegious undertaking. He swore, by an oath, that could not be violated, that the knight should die and Jerusalem should fall. Baldwin V., the infant successor of the imbecile Baldwin IV., died. The proud and weak Guy of Lusignan took the throne. His own brother, Geoffrey, on hearing of his succession, exclaimed, " If they made a king out of Guy,. they would make a God out of me, if they did but know me." Once and again Salah-e'deen advanced into Galilee. Treaties were from time to time concluded, and for a little while observed. But the bold Reginald held himself aloof from all treaties, and continued to capture Moslem caravans wherever he could overtake them. At length the end came. Raymond, Count of Tripoli, had strengthened himself in his city of Tiberias, against King Guy, with whom he was now at enmity. For Raymond had claims to the throne, which had been disregarded in behalf of Guy of Lusignan. A Moslem army entered Galilee from Damascus, summoned by Raymond to his aid. The Grand Master of the Templars, and the Master of the Hospitalers, with about a hundred and twenty men, were surprised and surrounded near Tabor. Of the deeds that were done that day, there are records in ancient books and songs that make it.illustrious among days of battle. Overwhelmed by thousands, they held the field one long day; nor had any Christian knight thought of leaving that field (save three cowards, of whom hereafter), but every man, fighting as if it were his own battle, fell where he fought, and died on the plain. They exhausted their quivers, and drew the reeking shafts from their own bodies to hurl them back on the foe. They lost their lances, and, wrenching the spears of the 356 BRAVE KNIGHT! Saracens from their bleeding sides, died piercing the enemy with the last thrust of his own javelin. One by one they went down on the bloody field, until, when the Master of the Hospitalers himself had fallen, one Knight of the Temple remained on the field, alone, of all that gallant company, to fight the battle of the Lord. Jacques de Maill6, mounted on his white charger, still lived, and still his battle-axe flashed death in the closing ranks of the foe. 6 Ha! ha! St. Jacques for the Holy Cross," he shouted, as he hewed his way hither and thither through the hosts of Moslems, who now believed that he was the very St. George, who, the Christians boasted, came down to fight their battles. "That for the Sepulchre!" and a tall Saracen went down, with crushed brain, among the hoofs of the horses; " that for the good Saint James," he shouted, as the leader of his enemies fell headless before the sweep of his falchion; " and that for holy Jacques, my patron saint," as with his blade he made in the air the sign of the cross, cleaving, as he brought it downward, the head, even to the chin, of a Saracen, as if he would make thus a socket for the holy sign to stand in. "That, for the cross! That, for Jerusalem! That, for King Guy! and that-and that-and that, for Jacques de Maille! Ha, ha, St. Jacques, holy Cross! And that for the dead lady of my love, Marguerite-may God have mercy on her soul!" The white horse staggered, as a javelin went through him from beneath, and now plunged forward, bearing his brave rider to the ground. Nothing daunted, the knight sprang to his feet, waving his axe around his head, and shouting the war-cry of the Templars, as the steel went crushing through the dense flesh that gathered around him. They lay, heaped up to his knees, a hideous gasping pile, life gurgling out THE GATHERING ARMY. 357 of their lips through blood, while the living shrank back aghast, forming a dismayed circle around him, and silence took possession of the scene. Then De Maille, bleeding from twenty wounds, worn out with the labor of killing, fell on his knee, and murmuring a prayer, died as a brave knight should die, with his arm stretched out to heaven, and his face to his astounded foe. The Moslems rushed in on him, tore his armor to pieces, and divided it among themselves, as relics of a brave man. They even mutilated his body, and preserved portions of it for talismanic purposes, such was their respect for his prodigious valor.* This battle occurred, May 1st, 1187. Salah-e'deen now advanced into Galilee with eighty thousand horsemen. The imminent danger which threatened the kingdom united all the Christian knights. Even Raymond of Tripoli obeyed the summons of Guy to all Christians to assemble at Sephouri, north of Nazareth about five miles, now called Sefurieh. While the armies were gathering here, Salah-e'deen attacked Tiberias, and captured the city. The citadel held out against him, defended by Raymond's brave wife. Fifty thousand Christian troops were gathered at the fortresses of Sephouri. Had they remained there to wait the coming of Salah-e'deen, the fate of the world had been different. Raymond strongly counseled it. He pointed, as an evidence of his good faith in the advice, to his wife now in prison at Tiberias, to whose rescue he would gladly march, but that he believed it fatal to the hopes of Jerusalem to advance on the plain with this * Quidam verb, ut fama ferebat, ardentius caeteris movebatur, et abscissis viri genitalibus, ea tanquam in usum gignendi reservare deposuit, ut vel mortua membra, si fieri posset, virtutis tantae suscitarent haeredem. Collection of Bongars, p. 1151. Cited by Michaud. 358 RAYMOND AND THE GRAND MASTER. army, to raise which had exhausted the powers of the kingdom. The grand-master of the Templars, who, two months before that day, had fled from the field of Tabor, and with two of his knights, alone survived the slaughter that was ended with the fall of De Maille, called Raymond a traitor to his face, and ridiculed his advice. "I swear, before God and man, that I am willing to lose Tripoli, and all that I possess on earth, if we may only secure the safety of the holy city," said Raymond. "We have seen wolves in sheep's clothing," sneered the grand-master of the Templars. " I call him who died on the cross to witness my sincerity," said the Count of Tripoli. " The name of Mohammed would sound better on the lips of a traitor," said the Templar. To this Raymond, nobly resolving not to open a private quarrel then, made no reply. Evil counsels prevailed, and the army advanced toward Tiberias. All the nobles and knights, except the Templar, agreed with Raymond, but Guy yielded to him, and they advanced with a certainty of defeat and death. To the north-east of Tabor, on the left of our path that day to Tiberias, is a great plain, above which rises a conspicuous hill, known as the Mountain of Christ's Sermon, or the Mount of Beatitudes. The Arabs called it in those days, as now, Tell-el-Hattin. This hill covered the left of the Christian host as they advanced. The Moslems were on the heights that crown the western bank of the sea of Galilee, north of Tiberias, and were scattered through all the passes and defiles, so that as soon as the Christians were fairly advanced on the plain, the great number of the enemy, and their skill as horsemen, enabled them to surround the army of Guy, and pour on them unceasing volleys of arrows. THE BATTLE. 359 It was the morning of July 4th, 1187, that the Christians advanced over the plain. Annoyed by the shafts of the Saracens, and their constant sallies on both flanks, they yet advanced steadily to the middle of the plain, intending to cut their way through the ranks of the enemy, and gain the shore of the sea. It was here that Salah-e'deen came down on them like a thunderbolt, at the head of twenty thousand horsemen. It was one of the most terrible charges on record. But the Christians, closing up their ranks, received it as the rock receives the sea, and it went back like the foam. Now high up among the Christian host, the Holy Cross itself was elevated, and men knew for what they were to fight and die. Around it, to use the words of Salah-e'deen himself, they gathered with the utmost bravery and devotion, as if they believed it their greatest blessing, strongest bond of union, and sure defence. The battle became general. On all sides the foe pressed the brave knights and their followers. The latter fell by hundreds, from exhaustion and thirst, for they had been short of bread and water for a week. Twice did Salah-e'deen* repeat that tremendous charge, penetrating into the ranks of his enemies, and fighting his way out again without breaking their array. Night came down on the battle-field while its fate was yet undetermined, and they rested for the morrow. What wild, despairing prayers went up to God before the Cross of Christ that night, we may not know, until those vials of the elders shall be opened. Long before day, by the admirable disposition of his army, Salah-e'deen had decided the battle even before it was fought. * It is difficult to tell from the expressions of the chroniclers, whether Salah-e'deen led these charges in person or not, although the inference would seem to be that he did. 360 THE BATTLE. But he had not decided how many of his host were to be slain on the soil of Galilee by the swords of the Christians. As the day advanced, the two armies beheld each other. Salah-e'deen waited till the sun was up, and then " the sons of heaven, and the children of fire, fought their great battle." The Christians fought as they were accustomed. Their heat and thirst were terrible, and increased by the enemy setting fire to the dry bush and grass, from which the strong wind blew a dense smoke toward them, nearly suffocating them. The scene was like a very hell; knights and devils contending among flames. Again and again, the bands of Templars threw themselves on the Saracen front, and endeavored to pierce their way through its steel wall, to reach the citadel of Tiberias, but in vain. The cry of the battle-field went up, among smoke and flame, before God, and he permitted the end to come. " Holy Cross!" shouted the grand-master of the Templars, as he fought his way toward the banner of the kalif, followed by his brave knights. "Raymond for the Sepulchre!" rang over the clash of steel in the front of the battle. "Ha! Ha! Renaud -Renaud Chantillon — Carrac- No rescue! Strike, strike!" shouted the proud retainers of the old knight, who were revelling in the blood of the conflict. By this time, in the centre of the field, the fight had grown thickest and most fierce around the True Cross, which was upheld on a slight eminence by the bishop of Ptolemais. Around it the bravest knights were collected. There, Geoffrey of Lusignan, brother to the king, performed miracles of valor, and the Knights of the Temple, and the Knights of St. John, vied with each other in bravery. As the fray grew darker, and shafts flew swifter around them, and one by one they fell down before the ST. GEORGE! 361 holy wood, the stern, calm voice of the bishop was heard, chanting "De profundis clamavi ad te Domine, Domine exaudi vocem meam!" in tones that overpowered the din of battle, and reached the ears of the dying even as they departed. Nearest of all to the cross, was a man wielding a sword which had already done fearful work on the Saracens. The sign on his back was not sufficient to distinguish him from other soldiers, but they who fought by his side well knew the brave precentor of the Sepulchre, Bishop of Lydda, the city of St. George. How many souls he had sent to hell that day it is impossible to relate. He and four others remained around the old Bishop of Ptolemais, who was fainting for loss of blood; for many arrows had pierced him, and his life was fast failing. "Bohemond for the Cross!" shouted the young Prince of Antioch, as he swept the Paynims down by scores. " St. George! St. George!" shouted the holy bishop, his bright eye flashing around him. He caught sight of the tottering Cross, as the Bishop of Ptolemais went down dead. Springing toward it, he seized it with his left arm, and with prodigious strength threw himself into the faces of the foe. The lightning is not more fierce and fast than were the blows of his sword, as he hewed his way along, followed by Bohemond of Antioch, and Renaud of Sidon, and one unknown Knight of the Temple. The latter pressed forward to the side of the brave bishop. Bohemond and Renaud were separated from them, but the two fought on alone, in the midst of thousands of their enemies. At length the unequal contest was well-nigh over. The eye of Salah-e'deen was fixed on the dense mass that surrounded the cross. He smiled bitterly as he saw it trembling and ready to fall from the hands of the gallant bishop, who held it with his left arm, while with his right he cursed the Infidels with the curse of steel, that 16 362 LAST KNIGHT AT THE CROSST damned them then, there, and forever. Well might the Soldan believe that as long as he held that holy wood, so long his mighty arm would remain strong, and blood replace in his brave heart the floods that issued from his wounds. But he grew faint at length, and yet shouting in clear tones, " St. George! St. George!" knelt down by the cross, shielded by the stout arm of the brave Templar, who fought above him, unwounded and undaunted, though he now found himself last knight at the cross of his Lord. One glance of his eye over the plain told him that all was lost; and nothing now remained for him but to die bravely for God and for Jerusalem. Far over the field, above the summit of the Mount of Transfiguration, he beheld the heavens opened, and saw the gates of pearl. Clear and distinct above the clash of arms and loud cries of the field of blood, he heard the voices of the angels singing triumphant songs. So he took courage as the darkness of the battle gathered blacker around him. For now, as the Bishop of Lydda fell prostrate on the ground, the cross had nearly fallen, and the Paynims, raising a shout of triumph, rushed in on their solitary foe. But they rushed through the gates of hell, sheer down the depths of death, to everlasting perdition. Down came the flashing axe on head, and shoulder, and limb; down through eyes, and chin, and breast; so that when they went to Hades in that plight, their prophet had difficulty in recognizing them even as of mortal shape. The dead lay all around him. He trod down his iron heel in their faces, and crushed it in their chests, and laughed as he dealt those more than human blows with cool, calm aim, but lightning force and velocity. No sound but the clashing steel was heard in this part of the plain, where for a while it appeared as if the saint of the fallen THE CROSS IS LOST. 363 bishop were standing over him in arms for the cause of the Sepulchre. But every inch of his armor bristled with arrows that were drinking his blood; a well sped javelin had made a hideous opening in his throat, and the foam from his lips was dropping red on his steel breast-plate. Looking up once more, far over hill and plain, he saw again the battlements of heaven, and a shining company that were approaching even to his very front. The battle-field was visible no longer; but close beside him the divine eyes of the Virgin Mother were fixed on him with the same look that she of old fixed on that cross when holier blood than his ran down its beam. But that was not all that he saw. There was a hideous sin on the soul of the Knight of the Cross. To expiate that sin he had long ago left the fair land of France, where he had lordly possessions, to become an unknown brother of the order of the Temple. And now through the fast-gathering gloom he saw the face of that one so beloved and so wronged, as she lay on the very breast of the matchless Virgin; and the radiance of her countenance was the smile of heaven. Though he saw all this, the gallant knight fought on, and his swift falchion flashed steadfastly above the melee. But then there was a sudden pause: his lost love lay warm and close on his breast, lay clasped in his arms, on his heart of hearts! He murmured a name long forbidden to his priestly lips, and then, waking one instant to the scene around him, he sprang at the throat of a Saracen, grasped it with his stiffening fingers, and the soul of the Paynim went out with his, as he departed to join the great assembly of the soldiers of the Cross. So the cross was lost on the field of Galilee. Guy of Lusignan, eighth and last king of Jerusalem, with a small band of faithful knights, still held his ground 364 FATE OF THE CROSS. on the hill of I-lattin. When the cross vanished fiom the field, a wail of anguish rose from all the plain, and quivered in the air at the very gates of the celestial city. Raymond of Tripoli and Renaud of Sidon cut their way through the ranks of Saracens and escaped around the fort of Mount Tabor to Ptolemais. All the rest that were living fell into the hands of Salah-e'deen; and the next day, with his own sword, he executed his threatened vengeance on Reginald of Chantillon, hewing him down to the ground, and leaving him to be despatched by his followers. The fearful sacrifice which he then made of the Templars; how they crowded to it, and others sought to be included in the martyrdom, is a well known page of history. Not so the statement of an old chronicler, that " during the three following nights, when the bodies of the holy martyrs were lying still unburied, a ray of celestial light shone over them from above."* The cross which was lost on this field was never regained by Christians. It remained for some time in the custody of Salah-e'deen, and a few years later, that is in A.D. 1192, the same chronicler describes the visits of pilgrims to Jerusalem, where they were allowed by the kalif "to have a sight of the holy cross." t Later than this I have not attempted to trace its history. I have not detained the reader on Mount Tabor any longer than I rested there myself. In fact so interesting was the view that I found great difficulty in tearing the party away. The descent of the mountain, while it was much more rapid than the ascent, was no less dangerous. One of the horses had a bad fall, and I came near breaking my own neck twice before I reached the foot. We rode slowly across the plain toward the sea of Galilee, which, of course, was not within sight, on account * Geoff. de Vinsauf, ch. v. f Geoff. de Vinsauf, ch. xxxiv. BED O U INS. 365 of the depth at which it lies in its basin, below the surrounding table-land. As we approached the brow of the sharp descent of the basin, not yet looking over it to the blue sea, we saw two Bedouins riding swiftly from the northward down the slope of the ridge, as if to intercept us. Whitely and myself were half a mile in advance of the party, riding on at a fast walk, anxious to see the waters of the lake. We did not pay special attention to the Arabs except to remark the flashing of their spears in the sunlight, which we saw at.more than two miles' distance, but when they paused in the road before us, just where it breaks off from the plain and begins to fall toward the sea, we looked to our pistols, loosened them quietly in our shawls, and though neither of us intimated any apprehension of trouble to the other until afterward, yet we both believed that they intended an attack. They stood, one on each side of the path, their horses' heads facing us, and their, spears leaning toward each other, so as to form a sort of arch, high enough for us to pass under. Our walking pace we had increased to a slow gallop, and as we came up with them we took care to let our arms be very conspicuous. Whether they had intended an attack I can not say. If they had, the array of pistol-handles was too alarming. I saluted one as I came up, and Whitely the other, with the Syrian Marhaba (blessing on you), and they replied with the same, reining back their horses and giving us free way to go by without breaking our gallop. Not wishing to leave them on the road for the annoyance of the rest of the party, I wheeled and rode back to them, with an authoritative " Enta men?" (who are you?) Their reply was satisfactory. They were looking for blood revenge. An errand on which most Arabs are occupied all their lives. 366 THE SEA OF GALILEE. While I talked with them, a boy came up swiftly, on foot, armed with a gigantic Mameluke pistol, and informed them that he had seen a party of Bedouins over toward Mount Tabor, whereupon they went off at a gallop, leaving us with the boy. He told us that his brother had been shot the day previous, and these men were in pursuit of his murderers, as he and all the tribe also were. Their tents were down by the lake, two miles below Tiberias. By this time the whole party had come up, and we rode on a hundred yards to the brow of the steep part of the basin. There, far down below us, supremely beautiful, lay the sea of Galilee, a sapphire set in emeralds. We were five hundred feet above it, and the descent was steep and difficult. Right underneath us was Tiberias, with its ruined walls and falling houses, a melancholy wreck of former beauty and splendor. Our tents were pitched on the shore just outside of the walls on the south side of the city. The blue water rippled up to the edge of the canvas, and the path of the rising moon lay across it, as if we could see the very footsteps of the Lord. We walked along the shore till nearly midnight, throwing pebbles into the sea, and watching the circles spreading over the lake. What scene on earth's surface can be imagined more divinely beautiful than moonlight on the sea of Galilee. The hushed air seemed heavy with the presence of angels. The very heavens bent down, as if they loved the spot, and the stars came low to look on their own thrones reflected in its calm surface. In times of tempestuous sorrow, such as all men have known, I had dreamed of the sea of Galilee. In hours of passion, such as human nature is liable to fall into, I had hushed my heart by the fancied voices of the wind over its waves. In feverish visions, when the phantoms of disease made my brain wild, and all manner of hideous PEACE! BE STILL] 367 imaginings came to frighten and madden me, when the faces of friends assumed the features of devils, and even the best beloved of faces put on a worse than Medusa-like countenance, I have calmed the fever aiTd restored the healthy action of my brain, by simple firmness in thinking of the murmur of the ripples that broke on its beach, whose music, I have often thought, must be nearer the sounds of heaven than any other this side the upper blue. And now I found it even so; and as we sat down by the shore of the sea that night and listened in silence to its voice on the pebbles at our feet, all human passions and emotions were at rest, our souls were hushed, the " peace! be still" of his voice was audible as of old, and our hearts heard it and were calm. Let him who ridicules the idea that there is hallowed ground, sit down by the sea of Galilee in the light of the moon and stars, and if his soul denies the influences that are on the sea, and in the air, around, above, and within him, I am content that he shall take his verdict. The man does not live that can laugh at the story of the Passion, seated in Gethsemane, nor who can forget the blessing of the pure in heart on the moonlit shore of Gennesaret. When I was a boy in the up-country (how often I wrote that same sentence, and uttered it aloud in Holy Landit was so strange that I-that boy-was wandering among Bedouins in the land of the Lord), when I was a boy, there was an old man, a good and kind old man, who was accustomed to come once a week to the old house, and always to take me on his lap, and, in a broad Scotch tongue, to say to me, "Wully, Wully" (yes, I was the Willy, I, the black-bearded horseman whom the Arabs knew as Braheem Effendi-was the boy Willy, who looked in wonderment at the old man who had come from "ayant the seas"); he would say, " Wully, when ye're grawn to be 368 T' H OLD MAN'S MEMORY. a mon, mayhap ye'll go a wanderin' up and doon the hills of the warld. But doan ye forgit that gin ye're theersty, there's the sea o' Galilee, and gin ye're hungry, there's the loaves that fed feeve thoosand there by the sea, and when ye get tired and tired out, and want to lay your head doon on any stoun and rest it, but the stouns are all hard, there's Heem that sayed on the same sea,' Cume unto me all ye that labor, and are heevy laden, and I wull geeve ye rest. " Through what long years of wandering my memory went back to the old man's voice and the old man's face. Long ago he, having well done the labor of living, entered the promised rest, and found the sea of heaven broader, and deeper, and fuller than even he had dreamed. The wild March winds were blowing over his grave, that grave that holds, as well, the brown locks of his darling Jeannie, Jeannie Stuart of holy memory, and the wail of the tempest among the pine-trees around them does not disturb their profound peace. And I-how changed-with forehead already in early manhood marked with care and sorrow, weary long ago, but for the joy of pleasant company along the uncertain and varying path of life, I sat by the Gennesaret of Galilee on earth and thought of them in the land of eternal, and holy waters: Galilee beyond Jordan of the Gentiles that are saved! I lay down in my tent to sleep, but the murmur of the waves invited me, and I could not resist. I stepped outside the tent, and all was silent, still, and gloriously beautiful. The white moonlight lay on the ruined walls of Tiberias, and on our group of tents, and on the blue sea. A dozen Bedouins lay sleeping near the camp fire, and the servants and muleteers, rolled up in their heavy boornooses, had forgotten the pilgrims. I walked slowly down into the sea. The clear water flashed like diamonds around me as I lay down in it, and SLEEP. 369 it closed over me, and then I floated on the motionless surface. After that baptism, I slept such peaceful sleep as no man can know of that has not done even as I. 168 22 8hipllecko on 6aliiee. WERE you ever cast away on the sea of Galilee? Riding in the railway carriage from Lausanne to Lake Neuchatel one day last summer, I was thoroughly annoyed by a man of the genus American, species ass, sub-species dandy, who had seen a part of Europe, and, in virtue thereof, was acting the courier to two ladies and a gentleman of quiet demeanor, late arrivals from the West, who were seriously impressed with the young man's " traveled accomplishments." I was talking quietly enough on my side with an English friend, but my vis-a-vis, for the dandy sat facing me, was one of those people who demand the audience of all within earshot. He talked me down with his wonderful adventures in Mnilan and Venice, Vienna and Berlin, manifestly thinking us excelled in greenness only by his own companions. Miriam was the only other person in the carriage, and she was buried deep in a late American paper. I pursued my way as well I was able, talking in the ear of my friend, who had been like myself something of a wanderer, and, at length, as there was a sudden lull in the storm of words, I heard myself saying aloud, " It was the day after I was cast away on the sea of Galilee-" Seeing the start of astonishment which the words caused, I lowered my voice to the end of my remark. SHIPWRECKED ON GALILEE. 371 The effect of my observation, however, had been prodigious. It was vain to attempt a continuation of conversation with my friend when such a battery of eyes and mouths were leveled on me, for my countrywomen stared with their fine eyes as they have license always to do, and the dandy was seized with a collapse of the lower jaw that was, for the moment, alarming. I looked out of the window-spoke in French to my friend-did all I could to make them think they were mistaken, and finally took to grunting Arabic, but all in vain. My New York elderly gentleman had made up his mind"Ah-excuse me-sir. I think you are an Englishman." "No, saar." "Ah-but you speak English." " A little." "Ah-I beg pardon sir-but one meets with such curious incidents in traveling. I thought I heard you make such a very singular remark just now. Were you really ever cast away on the sea of Galilee, sir?" Miriam opened her eyes, looked at him and the ladies, and subsided into quiet as I replied, " Yes, saar." "' Upon my word, it is the most curious circumstance I have ever met with-extraordinary-wife-Susan. Did you hear this gentleman remark that he had been shipwrecked on the sea of Galilee?" " Was it in a steamer, sir?" asked Susan, with more of wickedness than ignorance in her eyes. And so I was in for it, and she pumped me dry before we reached Soleure, whither we were all bound-and she left me the comfort of only this reflection, that, until they see this, if they ever do see it, they will imagine their traveling companion was Braheem Effendi, a Turk, and the son of a 372 THE FISHERMAN'S BOAT. Turk, Moslem and Hajji, whose ignorance about America it was their delight to enlighten. Susan was pretty, though. There is but one boat on the sea of Galilee. A crazy old craft, built with a high, sharp bow, and a high, sharp stern, carrying one mast and a latteen sail, bent Egyptian fashion, on a long yard. Her model would be well enough if she were thirty feet long and the same width as now. But being only about fifteen, and nearly as wide, she is something like a whale-boat shut up twothirds of its length, spyglass fashion, or a tub elongated a little into a two-pointed vessel. But she has the advantage of being very broad, very deep, and very safe. There is no danger of carrying too much sail on her. Canvas being unknown, her sail was a ragged piece of cotton cloth, of which at least one third was missing in spots, so that the worst that could be apprehended from a gale was a ripping of the rest, and a total " solution of its continuity." For oars she had one sweep, twelve feet long, which had wandered over here from Haifa, and another broken piece of one, the fragment being, say, seven feet long. The boat was built as I had seen boats in Nubia, where timber is scarce. Much ingenuity had been practiced in putting her together, for her planking consisted of small hewn pieces of wood, of various sorts and shapes, roughly but perfectly adapted to their several places and to each other with an ax or similar weapon. It was, in fact, just such a boat as a man would be apt to build who was set to work to construct one with an axe and some nails for his tools, and a pile of sawed and split fire-wood for his timber. Immediately on our arrival, we sent to the proprietor of this craft to forbid his departure on any expedition. Our Scottish fiiends, having arrived a little before us, had already secured the boat, and very kindly sent us SIMON PETER'S SUCCESSOR. 373 word that there was ample room for all of us. It is exceeding pleasant to remember the frequent interchanges of courtesy with Dr. Bonar and his party, which continued so long as our routes lay together. Many delicious noonings we had together, when we paused for luncheon on hill-side or under rock-shadows. The successor of the fishermen of Galilee was a tall, gaunt, hard-featured Arab, or fellah, who had Bedouin connections, and not one whom we could have selected for any resemblance to Peter. He wore a blue shirt, loose drawers, white once, years ago, but woefully muddy now, and a turban that looked like the habitation of colonies of insects. He had two young men, boys rather, for his assistants, that appeared as little likely to grow to the dignity of apostleship, as he. But who can tell? The camel-driver of Mecca was not less villainous in origin, and he rules, even now, as no man or God rules the souls of men, and is obeyed with a devotion that Christians might imitate with benefit. Little did Sheik Ibrahim know or care for the mighty men of ancient times who had preceded him, in the humble occupation of fishermen of Galilee. He never heard the voice of the Lord walking on the waters, nor dreamed, on stormy days, of the power that calmed the waves of that sea. In point of fact, Sheik Ibrahim never had been caught out in a storm, and in all his life passed on the sea he had never left the land when there was the faintest shadow of a cloud over head, or more than a child's breath of wind on the water. But he had fallen into the hands of the Philistines when he let his boat to us, for we were no, long-shoremen, and were not given to asking beforehand what the weather would be. He brought the boat around the tower, at which the south wall of Tiberias ends in the sea, and as she was too deep to reach the shore, he and 374 ON THE SEA. his Arabs carried the gentlemen into the boat. I had learned in Egypt to have a horror of just that sort of personal contact, and preferred to wade off myself. Miriam did not wish to go with us, but preferred remaining at the tents, and strolling through Tiberia.s. I left Abd-el-Atti, therefore, with her, and, with Dr. Bonar and two of his party, we made a company of six in the boat, beside the three fishermen. We got away about ten in the morning. The sky was deliciously beautiful, and the sea like a dream. There was not a breath of air on the water, and the sail hung idly from the yard, so that Sheik Ibrahim, with a glance of intense satisfaction at the weather, furled his canvas in his own peculiar style and took to his oars, promising us a safe and speedy crossing of the deep. We had taken ship to go over to the other side. Our object was a sail on the sea, and our intention to explore the opposite shore. But after our Galileans had toiled hard for one hour, it was manifest that they could not row us across in four at that rate, for though the sea was not more than six miles wide, we had not advanced one of them as yet. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I can not say enough, nor can I imagine where those travelers carried their eyes, who have described the scenery of the lake as tame or uninteresting. The first great characteristic of it is the deep basin in which it lies. This is from three to four hundred feet deep on all sides except at the lower end, and the sharp slope of the banks, which are all of the richest green, is broken and diversified by the wadys and water-courses which work their way down through the sides of the basin, forming dark chasms or light sunny valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are rocky, and ancient sepulchres open in them, with their doors toward the water. They selected grand spots, as did the Egyptians of old, for burial places, as if they de THE OUTLET OF THE JORDAN. 375 signed that when the voice of God should reach the sleepers, they should walk forth and open their eyes on scenes of glorious beauty. On the east, the wild and desolate mountains contrast finely with the deep blue lake; and toward the north, sublime and majestic, Hermon looks down on the sea, lifting his white crown to heaven with the pride of a hill that has seen the departing footsteps of a hundred generations. On the north-east shore of the sea was a single tree, doubtless a terebinth, judging from its shape, and this is the only tree of any size visible from the water of the lake, except a few lonely palms in the city of Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more attention than would a forest. The whole appearance of the scene is precisely what we would expect and desire the scenery of Gennesaret to be, grand beauty, but quiet calm. The very mountains are calm, and if a tempest were abroad on the sea, and a poor fisherman were storm-tossed and at his wit's end with fear, one would suppose he had but to look up at that lordly head of Mount Hermon, and hear the voice of the stiller of the storm lingering around its stately summit. A light breeze springing up from the northward, we determined to run down the sea to the outlet of the Jordan. Accordingly we shook out the sail, put up the helm, all the helm there was, and a very poor one (but of that hereafter), and went down before the wind. In about an hour we had run as far south as the falling off of the hills, within a mile of the Jordan. Here the wind failing us, we went ashore on the west bank, and walked down to the outlet. For nearly two miles from the outlet, northward, there are scattered ruins on the bank of the sea, but these abound mostly at the point where we landed, and where the hills retire on both sides of a level spot, on which I found many evidences of an ancient city, walls of houses, 376 BATHING IN JORDAN. and two fragments of large columns. There is also a large ruin of a stone building immediately at the outlet, in a point around which the water flows as it leaves the sea. One side of the point is, in fact, the sea and the other the Jordan. The exit of the Jordan from the sea of Galilee is exceedingly beautiful. There is nothing to mark it, no high hill or overhanging banks, or trees; but still the clear, bright water, flowing out at first slowly, as if reluctant to leave the holy lake, and then running swiftly, as if in haste to rush downward to the far off Sea of Death, is very beautiful. To enjoy it more perfectly, as I am accustomed always to do if I have opportunity, I bathed in the lake and the stream, and yielded myself to their soft influences. I entered the lake a few rods above the outlet, and drifted slowly down into the stream. It leaves the lake by a course nearly due west, narrowing at first to a width not exceeding seventy feet, and here it rushes swiftly along; but immediately below it spreads out again, and runs deep, and still, and slow. I forded it at the immediate outlet, and found the water in the deepest part just up to my neck, so that my beard lay in it as I walked for a rod or more. On the opposite side, around the foot of the lake, the shore was very much surf-beaten. The water was bold and deep all along, and the beach covered with small pebbles, white as snow, and worn by the water to the shope, size, and appearance of sugared almonds, such as are common in candy shops. The resemblance was so perfect, that a handful of them, which I gathered and brought home, have never failed to deceive any one to whom I hand them. After lingering some two hours or more at this beautiful spot, we found that the boat had come on down, and was now near us. We returned to her, and directed our way for home, A STORM ON THE SEA. 377 The wind had now freshened from the north-west, and I saw, in three minutes, that Sheik Ibrahim knew as little about the boat as he well could. He had never attempted to sail on the wind, and was frightened at the very idea. I took the helm out of his hands, trimmed the rags down as well as I could, and laid her as close as she would go. But it was a dead failure from the first. We ran three or four miles up the west coast in good style, and then there came down on the sea such a gale as the lake knew in times of old. The illustration of Scripture which we had was worth all the subsequent annoyance that it cost us. It was sudden, swift, and violent. A moment before, we were sailing along pleasantly over the rippling water, and now it was lashed to foam by a fierce blast that literally came down into the basin, and ploughed up the waters into deep and difficult furrows. I did not believe it possible that the little lake could get up such a sea as now rolled and tossed us. It was manifest instantly that we were not going to make headway against it. I put the helm hard down, but she paid no more attention to it than if it were no helm. I looked over the stern now for the first time, and to my horror and amazement I saw that it was no helm. I don't know whether she ever had a rudder, but it was now only a rudder-post, and nothing more. I rigged out the solitary sweep over the stern, and endeavored to steer with that and keep her head to the wind, but she lay off for the east shore, and rolled and pitched so that we found that on that tack we should make the east side of the lake on the most desolate part of the shore, and that would never do. I shouted to Ibrahim to haul down his rag of a sail, and take to the oars; but he was too much frightened to be of any service, and the boys were curled up in the bottom of the boat, in a perfect state of fatalism. 378 TOILING AND ROWING. We were all enjoying the scene; danger there was none to any one at all experienced in boating; and the recollection of the storm of wind that once came down upon the lake when He was there to rebuke the wind and the raging of the water,* and of that night when the disciples were in the midst of the sea, toiling and rowing, tossed with waves, and His footsteps walking over the waters calmed them,t occupied our thoughts and our lips. But we were fast driving out to sea; and, while some of us hauled down the sail, others got out the unequal oars. Kicking up the boys, I made them take hold and pull, threatening them with condign punishment if they did not obey. They "toiled and rowed," but we made stern-way, and I began to feel uneasy. The tents were about two miles from us, visible on the shore, but I questioned whether we could be seen from them on the rough sea, with the dark back-ground of the south-eastern hills, and I knew that Miriam would begin to be uneasy as the evening approached. I sprang to the sweep, and pitching the Arab into his favorite place in the bottom of the boat, threw myself down on it in old fashioned home style. Had the wood been a stout ash, I should have sent her shoreward fast enough; but as I lay back, crack went the oar, and over I went, head down and feet skyward, and a sudden increase of wind, one of those outbursts that is always ready to catch a boat in a tight place, took her off like a flash, and away she went before it. "Where now?" asked Whitely, with an accent of despair. " To the devil, certain." "Profane dog." * Luke, viii. 22, and parallel passages. f Matth., xiv. 24, and parallel passages. LAND OF THE GADARENES. 379 " Not a bit of it-I mean to the seven devils. Right there away is the scene of the miracle; and, as sure as you're alive, we are bound to the land of the Gadarenes." It was our only hope. We made sail again, and let her go. She rolled, and pitched, and tumbled, and creaked, and groaned, and tumbled, and pitched, and rolled, and we took to reading our Bibles, as shipwrecked people are apt to do, though our motive was not the same, perhaps, and, just two hours after we put her away before it, she plumped up on the beach at the mud village of Samak (i. e., Fish), in the Wady Es Samak, on the south-east shore of the sea. The villagers, notoriously bad scamps, came down to meet us in a crowd, and among them a reformed Bedouin on horseback. I call him a reformed Bedouin, as he was Bedouin by origin, but had become a soldier in the regular army, and was, as a consequence, half Arab and half thorough scoundrel. We lost no time in securing his services to go along with us to the Jordan, and ferry us over on his horse, for it will be noticed that we were now in the lands beyond Jordan. Hastening our steps, for the sun was declining, we reached the east side of the outlet, and I directed the Arab to the ford I had found in the morning. He preferred to try his own way; and the first person that he took on his horse behind him went in with a plunge over every thing. The second had a similar experience; and I, having tied my clothes, pistols, and fowling-piece in a bundle on my head, walked over as I had done in the morning, laughing to myself as my beard swept down the gentle flow of the current, and touching my lips to the water to kiss its bright and holy surface. Laughing, I say, for was it not an odd scene after all? I had crossed a hundred rivers just so at home, when hunting; but who would have dreamed of crossing the Jordan in that style? 380 BEDOUIN TENTS. So we came over the Jordan; and the last rays of the sun were gone, and gloom was settling down on the lake, as we found ourselves all on this side, and ready for a walk to the tents. Scratching a note on my tablets to Miriam assuring her that we were all safe " at the bottom of the sea," and begging her to send the horses to meet us, and to have dinner ready at nine o'clock, I sent it by the Arab, and we then started off. Some one has said that Tiberias is four miles from the outlet. We walked very fast, and the way is not at all crooked. We were two hours and a quarter from the Jordan to our tents. Half way up, under the steepest hills on the west, we had to pass the black tents of the Bedouins, of whom we had met some specimens the day previous, before our arrival at Tiberias. We had been specially warned against them as dangerous; but there was no other road, and we formed in double file and passed in front of the camp without pausing. One man came out and shouted the qui vive of the East, " Enta men" —who are you? and we made no reply, but pressed on. They knew who we were of course; but six men, with the small arms carried by Franks, were too formidable a party for a hundred Bedouins to attack. Balls from pistols will hurt some one, and an Arab has a holy horror of being shot. We were not disturbed. We had passed the hot baths, and were within half a mile of the tents, when we met the horses. The loitering dog of an Arab had walked his horse most of the way up, and had not gained twenty minutes on us. But we mounted very willingly, and went into camp at a gallop. Miriam had passed the day quietly, visiting the Jewish synagogue and one or two Jewish families in the city, and especially the solitary old Greek priest who is located here, into whose house she was persuaded to go by his A LOST DONKEY. 381 wife and daughter, who wished much to see the Frankish lady. She underwent the usual examination, and was not a little interested in their simple manners and their wonderment. The Bedouin who had brought my note to Miriam, now demanded pay for his services, which, notwithstanding his slowness, we gave him liberally. But no liberality reaches the heart of an Arab, especially one of this reformed class. He vociferated for more, and when it was refused, grew boisterous. Next morning Selim's donkey was missing. Had it been Betuni's, I should have regarded it as a serious loss to the daily sources of amusement, but Selim's was a very slow donkey, with no special points to interest me in his behalf. I contented myself with backing Selim's application to the governor of Tiberias for indemnity, the loss being under the walls of his city. But we never heard of the animal again, and charged him to the account of our Bedouin acquaintance. 1e U i 0e of ibe_0 ia -. SUNDAY morning rose on the sea, a calm, still, beautiful morning, that reminded us of summer Sabbath mornings in the up-country long ago, when the air was quiet and still, when the whistle of the quail came up joyously from the stubble-field; and if you listened at the right moment you could hear far over the hills and valleys the sound of the church bell in the village, musical and clear. I can hardly remember now how that Sunday passed. It was a long, delicious dream. We read over all the passages of the life of Christ that were connected in any manner with the sea. We wandered among the graves of the Jews, close by our tents. Most of them are marked with broken shafts of columns that once supported the architecture of old Tiberias. These are carved with Hebrew legends, and' lie prostrate on the graves; for here, as elsewhere, the children of Israel are forbidden to erect upright tomb-stones. Toward noon we walked a little way up the hill-side, and sat down under the shadow of a ruined wall, the wall of an ancient Christian church, and listened to a sermon, that was rather a talk, in simple but eloquent language, from our companion, Dr. Bonar. I can not forbear relating an amusing mistake that one of my Arabs made while we were sitting together on the hill-side in the morning. We had selected a spot not far CARPETS AND CIGARS. 383 distant from the tents, among the ruins of old Tiberias, under the shadow of a high wall, and on the ruins of it. As we gathered here, and just before the doctor commenced the simple service, I told the Arab, who had come with Miriam's donkey up the hill, to go back to the tents and bring me a carpet to spread on the ground for her to sit on. He went down, and just as we were commencing to sing a hymn he returned, and handed me, to my horror, a bunch of cigars. It was impossible to explain the incident to my astonished companions; and I did not know but our Scotch friends might imagine it customary in America to "smoke in meeting." I was obliged to rest under the imputation of having sent for cigars till our service was ended, and then informed them that the Arabic word segada was so like cigara that the stupid fellow had misunderstood me, and thought I wanted to smoke while the doctor preached. Nearly a mile south of Tiberias, on the lake shore, are several hot springs, over which, from time to time, since the days of the Roman emperors, bathing-houses have been erected. Of those now standing the last was built by Ibrahim Pasha, of the material which the old city left lying all around them. The chief bathing-room is in oriental style, a deep, circular bath with a dome overhead supported by columns that were once the ornaments of Roman palaces. There is a small bathing-room for a private bath adjoining this. I sent down in the morning, to have the bath thoroughly cleaned out, and fresh, clean water let in. Toward evening we walked down and bathed. The temperature of the water was about a hundred and twenty. It was by a slow process of boiling one foot and then the other, and then letting ourselves slowly down in, an inch a minute, that Whitely and I finally succeeded in measuring the depth of the bath, which was just five feet. I boiled myself half an hour and 384 BUYING WINE. came out a new man. It was one of the most refreshing baths I have ever taken, and I added an improvement to the usual style of bathing, by coming out and going down to the sea shore, where I plunged into the cold water. That was magnificent. From the time of leaving Jerusalem, Miriam had suffered a severe pain in her left shoulder, which was either rheumatism or neuralgia. It was a great affliction, and so severe at times, after a long day's ride, as to be almost intolerable. She bathed here and never heard of the pain again. We attributed the cure to the waters, and I mention it for the benefit of any traveler who may hesitate to try them. I have already related my success at Nazareth in getting wine. We had exhausted the supply of our excellent friend, the superior of the Convent of the Annunciation, and I proposed to follow his advice here at Tiberias. Late in the evening we went into the town to see the Jews, for of them alone can wine be purchased. The Mussulmans never make or use it, and the Jews throughout Palestine have a regular monopoly of it. The moonlight lay like a blessing on the old city. The walls, lying still in the sad ruins that were the result of the earthquake in 1837, were picturesque and beautiful in the pale light. We entered the city through a breach and a long, dark, arched building. I did not go to examine it by daylight, and don't know what it was. We went directly to a house that was kept as a hotel, by a Mr. Wiseman, and he offered us specimens of various sorts of wine. The first tasted like spoiled beer, the second like spoiled cider, and the third was poison. We then commenced a regular cruise among Jewish houses, and were, at length, fortunate in meeting an old lady in a moonlit street, who took us to her own house where she assured us she had good wine. BUYING WINE. 385 It was a clean place, and a neat room into which she showed us, and there was in it a young girl of rare beauty. Such, I thought, as I looked at her, might have been the beautiful mother of Benjamin. She was tall, slender, yet with a full form and graceful; her face was white and delicate, and she had an eye to haunt a young man like my friend, and even to revisit the dreams of an older one, like myself. While we talked with her, the old lady had gone out and now returned with a glass of wine. It was much better than the best of Wiseman's, but it was poor stuff. I told her so, and she brought a better article. Whitely sipped it and looked over the top of the glass at Sarai-that was her name-and praised the wine, and I bought it. After we had left the house, I told him frankly I didn't like it much, and was going to look for better. We knocked at half a dozen houses, and, at length, scared up a family who answered our query for wine with an affirmative, and a young woman, bidding us wait, ran out, like a ghost in the moonlight, and soon returned with the same old lady. She was a sister of Sarai and this was her mother. She laughed at finding us looking for better wine than she had sold us, and told us she had better yet at home, whereat we laughed and went back with her, not unwilling to see Sarai again. Alas, Sarai sat in a corner with her husband, a filthy-looking dog, and the wine was a poor consoler for such a discovery. But it was a very decided improvement on the last, and we bought another gallon, and went away. I had still a notion that there might be better wine in Tiberias, and, as the moon was bright and the Jewish interiors might possibly show up something more of the Sarai sort, we went on around town and, at length, hit on another family who could sell us wine. So we sat down in a dingy room, and the mother went out and came back with — 17 386 A GALILEE WINE-CELLAR. Sarai! Identically. And she laughed the gayest imaginable laugh, and said, in her musical Teutonic-for Sarai was German, and her voice made even German musical —she said her mother had better wine than we had tasted. And so we went back in a high state of indignation at the old woman, which all passed away as we followed Sarai's exquisite form, and saw her face in the moonlight of Tiberias. Such, ere she sinned, might well have been Mary of Magdala, if indeed she was so great a sinner, which is much to be doubted. Such might have been Miriam the mother of the Lord. The old lady laughed again at my indignant remonstrances, and I followed her now to her reservoirs, not unwilling to see a Tubareeyeh wine-cellar. It was a cellar, three or four feet below the level of the court of her little mud house. It was filled with large earthen jars. Each one would hold half a barrel. They had large open tops, on which were earthen covers. I opened one after another, and tasted every variety of Galilee wine. Some was new, and raw and unpleasant, the bitter taste of the grape-seed predominating, others were ripe and more like a Beaune claret sweetened with sugar. One jar was much like dead champagne, and that which she thought best of all was heavier than old port, thick, oily, and crusty, very pleasant to taste but cloying immediately. I never have seen any thing like it in wine elsewhere, but, I found it the favorite among the Jews in Jerusalem and here. She had eight or ten kinds, and some of them evidently the jars from which Wiseman's poison came. When I returned into the house, Sarai's husband, who was a boy of eighteen or nineteen, produced a silver coin of Ptolemaic times, which he wished me to buy at a large price. He told me that a boy at Safed had recently found a hole full of them. These holes, full of coins, turn up occasionally in Holy Land, the buried treasures of an SAA I OF TIBERIAS. 387 cients, whose dust has long ago become part of the dust around their gold. The'moderns, however, know very well the value of old coins, and since the discovery of Alexandrian gold coins at Sidon, the goldsmiths of Beyrout have been manufacturing them from the old patterns, so that the supply is enormous. Not even the beauty of Sarai could persuade us into paying her husband's price for a coin of which I had already a specimen, and having sent our purchases of wine to the tents, selecting enough to last us as far as Damascus, we came out into the moonlight, and strolled along the shore of the sea till it was high noon of night. 24m WE left the sea of Galilee with much the same regret that we had on leaving Jerusalem. Three nights on its quiet side had endeared to us the associations with its shores and waves far more than the reading of its history possibly could, and we had but this comfort in going, that we should take away many of the memories that haunt its sacred banks. The music of its waves, to which we slept each night, is " a joy forever," and in years to come the memory of that melody will serve to soothe far better than its imaginations in former times. While the baggage was put on the horses, Moreright and myself climbed the ruins of the wall of Tiberias, and sitting on a tower, overlooked the place and the sea, making some notes of general appearances. The sea of Galilee is from twelve to fourteen miles in direct length from north to south, and about seven in width at the widest part, which is nearer the northern than the southern end. I have already described the general aspect of the scenery around the sea. The eastern shore is in general straighter than the western. That is to say its line is more nearly north and south. There is a great curve to the westward in the line of the other beach, which reachest the utmost point of westing at the TIBERIAS. 889 village of Megdel, the ancient Magdala. Tiberias is about three miles south of this point, and about six north from the extreme south point. It is the only place of importance on the lake. Samak, on its extreme southern limit, and a small collection of huts, called El Houssan, directly opposite Tiberias, are the only other villages visible on all the shores, and these are but mud huts, inhabited by the poorest fellaheen. The Arabs told me of a large village called Fink, lying two hours east of El Houssan, beyond the mountains, but I could gather no particulars of interest concerning it. Tradition locates the miraculous draught of fishes at the northern end of the city of Tiberias, where there is a chapel built and dedicated to Peter, which belongs to the Latin convent at Nazareth. It is supposed also to cover the spot where Christ's last charge to Peter was delivered. The inhabitants of Tiberias are Christians, Jews, and Moslems, and are about equally divided. The native population can hardly exceed, if it reach twenty-five hundred. The Jews are of all nations, and I found them talking Italian, Spanish, and German, while many of them were such recent-comers that they had not yet learned Arabic. The Christians are, with a few exceptions, Greek-Catholic, that is, belonging to the branch of the Greek Church which acknowledges the supremacy of Rome. We found the fish of the lake very palatable, and in taste not unlike the perch and large roach of our own waters. The statement that the Abou-Kishr, a fish of the Nile, is also found here, I think must have its origin in the same name being applied to different fish. I have taken many of the Abou-Kishr in the Nile, and am satisfied that that fish will not live except in a muddy stream. Fish are very choice of their water, and one accustomed to mud, is seldom found in clear water. Nor did I see, 390 EVENTS OF CHRIST'S LIFE. among many varieties of fish at Tiberias, any that resembled the Abou-Kishr. With the history of the city, I will not detain the reader. It is chiefly a history of times since the days of the Saviour. Tiberias attained its greatest importance under the Roman emperors after the fall of Jerusalem, and became the great seat of the Hebrew scholars and of Jewish learning. In the Crusades it also figures largely, but in the later years it has gone to decay. I have already mentioned the hill of Hattin as the supposed Mountain of the Beatitudes. There is certainly no reason for giving it such a name. The fact is stated very barely that Christ " went up into a mountain," and beyond the mere fact that this was in Galilee, we know nothing. That passage in the mountain sermon," a city that is set on a hill can not be hid," has often been mentioned in connection with the city of Safed, which, standing on a high hill far to the north, is visible from almost all parts of Galilee. But it is hardly probable that Christ had reference to this place, inasmuch as there is no evidence of its so great antiquity. The city on the summit of Tabor might well have suggested the idea. There is no doubt that there was a commanding fortress and town on this isolated knoll overlooking the vast plains and rolling land west of the sea and the Jordan. But all this is conjecture. There is one event of the life of Christ which has been located by various hypotheses on every high hill in Galilee. I allude to the transfiguration. The evidence of Scripture would appear to be very decided that this took place somewhere in the northern part of the Holy Land, among the "towns of Cesarea-Philippi." It was in this neighborhood that Mark locates it more nearly than any other (Mark, viii., 27), and the expression afterward used in the 30th verse of the 9th chapter, " they departed thence SHORE OF THE LAKE, 391 and passed through Galilee," appears to imply that they were not in Galilee when it occurred. While Moreright and myself discussed these various subjects, the tents had disappeared, the baggage was gone, and a shout at length called us from our seat on the wall to the late camp-ground, the pleasantest of all our camp-grounds in Holy Land. We rode slowly under the wall of the old city, and ascended the hill, along the bank of the sea. The water was so clear, that from two hundred feet above it we could see large and small fish playing about in it, and all the colors of the pebbles on the bottom. One hour and twenty minutes from Tiberias, we arrived at Magdala, now called Megdel, a collection of mud huts, the sole representative of the city of the Mary whose afflictions have been transformed, in tradition, into sins. Here our path came down to the beach, which was now soft sand, filled with an infinite number of shells, and along this, with our horses' feet oftentimes in the water, we rode for one hour, when we reached Khan Minieh. Our last hour had been over a broad and beautiful valley, bounded on the south by the wild mountainous ridges, in which the ancient robbers found almost inaccessible caverns to hide and fortify themselves in, and whence they were dislodged by men let down from above in baskets, or machines constructed for the purpose. The north side of the plain abuts on the range of hills which crosses the head of the sea. This is the plain and land of Gennesareth, Chinnereth or Chinneroth. For the former name is, doubtless, a corruption of the latter, which is found in the nineteenth chapter of Joshua, as one of the cities of the tribe of Naphtali. Khan Minieh is but a name. There is a beautiful spring of water here, running a few rods into the lake, and surrounded by rich and luxuriant vegetation, and a 392 c A P E R N A U: M. ruined khan, but no other remains. We had passed groves of oleander, in bloom, for nearly the whole hour, and now we found almond and fig-trees, and wild flowers in profusion. The water of the fountain was not pleasant. It was not cold, and the taste was by no means so sweet as to justify the tradition that it is a branch of the Nile. It was in fact a little brackish. I think Dr. Robinson's views of this spot, as the locality of Capernaum, are satisfactory. The location of the place with reference to Gennesareth, and the resemblance of the fountain to that of Capernaum, as described by Josephus, appear sufficient evidence in the absence of direct proof against it, which the other locality at TellHun does not furnish. The argument which I heard used in favor of the other locality was somewhat amusing. " Capernaum was on a high hill," said the gentleman; " because the apostrophe of Christ so implies when he said,'Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven.' "But I imagined that was quite figurative," said I, "and referred to the pride of the inhabitants." " 0, yes, but also to the locality. I should certainly look for a place on a hill. I think there was a literal truth in the apostrophe evident on its face." " But you believe that Christ's prophecy concerning it has been fulfilled?" "Doubtless." "Then I advise you to look for Capernaum in the lowest hollow you can find in these parts, for the curse was,'Thou shalt be cast down to hell,' and that must be as literally true as the first part of it,'which art exalted unto heaven.' " We now ascended the hills which cross the head of the lake, and left its shores. Looking back on it we PIT OF JOSEPH. 39 saw the probable locality of Chorazin and Bethsaida, but they are conjectural wholly. We swept our eyes over the entire lake, as we then supposed for the last time, but all day long, as we went up the hills, we caught glimpses of its silver surface, and it was late in the afternoon before we saw, for the last time, the blue waters of Gennesareth. The way now became difficult beyond parallel. For miles the road lay over rolling hills covered with broken rock, over which any other horses than those would have fallen a hundred times. Path there was none. We found our way northward, as we saw fit, and rejoiced exceedingly at two hours from Khan Minieh, when we saw the walls of Khan Jubb Yusef, where we were to lunch. It was a dismal place. The khan was an immense stone building surrounding a court-yard knee-deep in mud, in one corner of which lay a dead camel. The effluvia was horrible, and we could not enter, but we sat down outside and rested awhile. This khan has been described by travelers as marking the spot where one of the traditions locates the pit into which the brethren of Joseph threw him, and Burckhardt and Dr. Robinson speak of the pit itself as "in a court by the side of the khan." The former describes it as "three feet in diameter, and at least thirty feet deep." This is a mistake. There is a curious outside court, walled in and faced, by the side of the khan, but it contains only an ordinary cistern. The reputed pit of Joseph is a half hour from the khan, which has no connection with it, and only derives its name from the proximity. There is another, and much more likely locality for Dothaim, among the mountains south of Jezreel, and there is every evidence against this in the north country. I have marked this day as one of the most weary in my entire journeyings. If flowers mark the footsteps of the Lord, one might believe that he had lingered around the 17* 894 A GAZELLE CHASE. fountain at Minieh and the hills above it, for their profusion was unexampled. But after this there were none, except occasional bulbous roots, of which we gathered specimens for the conservatory at home. I felt as if leaving the footprints of Christ. As I went northward from Galilee, all interest in that country seemed to cease. The incidents of travel alone interested us, and we ceased any longer to mark spots that were sanctified in the history of the Lord. Nevertheless, we were not yet away from Holy Land, for his wanderings led him to Cesarea-Philippi, and we were going there. Toward evening, as we rode slowly over a long slope descending to a deep wady or bed of a stream, we caught sight of five gazelles on the plain ahead of us. Shouting to the rest to hold up, I wheeled short to the right, dashed down a side valley that joined the other a hundred rods below, and going down this, crossed the dry bed of the brook, and went up the opposite ascent. I had gotten half way up, when a shout from Abd-el-Atti warned me that they were alarmed. The next moment, one of them dashed along the top of the ridge, showing his head an instant only. I gave Mohammed the rein, and he went back into the valley, and down the bed of the stream, like a thunderbolt. Now he took a rock at a leap, and now he went, break-neck fashion, down a steep descent. The speed was tremendous for five minutes, and then a faint halloo overtook me. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Abd-el-Atti waving his hand to signify that they had stopped. I turned up the hill again, taking it diagonally. The horse went over the ridge as I swung my fowlingpiece from my back, and threw it over my left arm. It was loaded with heavy shot. I had been that day killing vultures on the bodies of dead animals in the road, for we were on the great Damascus and Jerusalem caravan route. TROUBLE AHEAD. 395 As I came up on the table-land, I was within a hundred yards of them. They glanced at me a moment, and were off like the wind, bounding twenty feet at the first jump. Shot was quick, but not quick enough for them, and I wasted both barrels on them, and then spoke to Mohammed again. He knew what I wished right well, and the pace was fearful as we went along the edge of the ridge toward a point where I saw they must turn a little, and give me a chance at them as they went down toward the Jordan. It happened as I expected. As they found themselves on the edge of the abrupt precipice, they turned and crossed in front of me, and I sent a ball from my Colt at the large one who led the drove. But I was going too fast for a steady aim, and missed him. The next, and the next disappeared over the bank, and I shouted to Mohammed to stop. He brought up as if he had struck a wall, his feet plunging and sliding in the loose, red soil, and then I had a fair sight at the last but one. He stumbled as I shot, and went rolling down the hill. I rode back slowly, with my game across my horse's neck, and joined the party an hour ahead on the road. Just as I came up with them, we met a Bedouin going down toward Tiberias. He paused, and asked if we were going to Damascus, " Es Shem," and strongly urged us not to make the attempt. He told us that the Druses were in a state of great excitement on the side of Mount Hermon, and were murdering travelers, of all creeds and kinds; that we should never reach Damascus alive, and sundry similar consolatory assurances. We felt much encouraged by his story, and began to think there was excitement ahead. We came so near it as this, that we helped bury a man who was shot by a Druse on the side of Mount Hermon four days after this, but we had no fighting on our own account. 396 MILL OF MALA I-A. All the afternoon, we had been looking down from the hills over which we were riding, on the plain of El Hooleh, and the waters of Merom, now called the lake El Hooleh. Toward evening, we had come up with the lake, though we were much to the west of it, and at length, fording a strong stream of water by a rude mill, we found the time so late that I ordered a halt, and decided to pitch the tents here instead of going on further, as we had at first intended. The stream of which I have spoken, had its source close by our camp-ground. Indeed, the old mill was actually at the outlet of a magnificent spring, a pond of a hundred feet in diameter, nearly circular, which poured out a fine strong stream, amply sufficient for all the purposes of New York city. Such a fountain on Manhattan island would render the Croton aqueduct unnecessary. The pond was filled with fish. They crowded each other, large, noble fellows, quite eighteen inches long, by hundreds. But no inducements of bait that I could invent, would persuade them to touch the hook, and I passed the time till dark in a vain attempt to take even one. Night came down on us with all the beauty of a Syrian night, starry and moony, and the dashing stream made the music to which we slept by the mill of Malaha. I can not say that our dreams that night were different from usual, nor do I remember that we dreamed of home with more or less distinctness than on other nights. I only know, as I have already said, that the day previous had appeared long, and sad, and weary, and that we felt as if leaving Holy Land. The wind was cold and mournful around the tents. Thrice before I slept I walked out into the gloom, and listened to the dash of the strong stream that went hurrying down to the Jordan and the sea of Galilee, to rest a little while there in sunshine, and then go down to OUR BROTH.ER, 397 death in the Dead Sea. There was a stork, which I had shot, lying on the ground before the tent, white and ghostly. The wind fluttered the flag over my head, and soughed over the ropes. I met Moreright once. He, too, was restless. " Is it not a dismal night?" said he. "I don't half like the neighborhood," was my reply.' Rumor speaks of it as not the safest part of Syria." That night was mournful elsewhere. Had we known the bitterness of the cup that those we loved were that night drinking, we had not slept so calmly in our tents on the Hooleh plain. For while we slept, the sun of a southern winter was going westward over the forests of Florida, and among them our brother Charlie, best and noblest of brothers, was passing heavenward by that road, which, dark as it seems to our eyes, is, thank God, no longer or more difficult where he entered on it, than it is above the hills of Holy Land, or his and our home. How we loved that boy, those who read these lines and knew him will well understand; and they will pardon this pause to speak of him. His brief life was brilliant-his memory is blessed. Ardent and ambitious, but no more so than the ability of his fine intellect warranted, he had already won honors that friends might well be proud of; and the future was full of promise. All that is over now, and he has found other fields in which to wander, where, if ambition have power over the soul, its aim is the foot of the throne, where all thirst is perfectly satisfied in abun dant waters. Strange scenes of contrast! We were in tents on the Jordan plain, and the wail of the night wind, and the sound of the dashing stream were around us. They were bending above his couch in the light of the afternoon sun, listening for the last breath of lips whose utterances had always been eloquent of love. Miriam, his sister, lay ;398 P E A CE! PEACE! breathing calmly as the visions of soft sleep stole over her, and if perchance the wind or the dashing stream made her turn restlessly, it was but to sleep more profoundly and dream of the sea breeze at home, and the dash of the waves on the old sea-wall at the foot of the garden, where he and she had gazed eastward in childhood along the silver path of the rising moon, and wondered whether they would ever cross the sea to lands of sunrise on ancient glory. When the sun came up over the hills of the Iowaran, and far above us, white and grand, stood the silver summit of HIermon, with the glory of the sunlight resting on its brow, the darkness had closed in on them, and they sat, bowed with grief, beside the silent form that had been our brother. But he was not there, he was above the summit of all hills of earthly sorrow, above the very stars. 0 sudden change! But now he was in the arms that had clasped him closest from childhood even till nowand she was lying asleep on the barren and desolate plain this side the Jordan, weary with travel over the hills of Holy Land. One moment more, and he was beyond the river, in the land whose fields of exceeding beauty this Canaan never equaled, whose rivers flow with perfect joy, whose valleys are the peace that passeth understanding, whose mountains are the eternal greatness and majesty of God's love. It was not till long afterward, while we were in Greece, that we heard of it. In the same newspaper, handed us by our friend, that noble missionary, Dr. King, we read (of the death of two of our kindred-our father and our brother. There are two spots to which our memories now, and forever till we cross the river, go back with devout earnestness; spots where their eyes, unvailed, undimmed, first saw ls in ourl wanderings. The one, Mount SOURCES OF THE JORDAN. 399 Lebanon, above Damascus, the other the Hooleh plain, by the mill of Malaha. Next day we crossed the plain of El Hooleh, and at noon reached the dark ravine where the Hasbeiyah river comes down from the mountains of Lebanon. We paused for luncheon on a somewhat singular hill at the head of the valley, where two streams of water, brought in artificial channels from the north-west and north-east, met and were turned on the wheel of a mill. These mills of the north of Syria began now to abound, and I was amused at their simple style. The wheel was horizontal, and the water rushing down a spout struck the arms, or spokes, for they were nothing else, and turned it around. Each arm was a flat piece of wood, driven into the upright axle, and presenting a flat side to the passing stream. The upper end of the axle was fixed in the mill-stone, so that there was no bother about the gear. The water turned the stone directly. Where water costs nothing, the plan is very well for coarse flour, and no one in these countries dreams of fine meal. The Jordan, as a river, has its origin in the lake El HIooleh. Above this travelers and commentators differ as to its sources, but there is no necessity for any difference. The lake is supplied by numerous large springs, such as that at Malaha, and one at Souhain, two miles north of the former. But beside these a fine stream of water comes down from Hasbeiyah, which, if the most remote source be taken as the true source, is the true Jordan. East of this, on the south-west slope of Mount Hermon, among its ravines, lies the ancient Panias, now called Banias, at which is a large fountain, of which I shall speak. Between this and the Hasbeiyah river is the site of ancient Dan, now called Tell-el-Khady, where is another magnificent outburst of water. These three are the chief supplies of the lake, and are the sources of the 400 ARRIVAL AT B I A S. Jordan. It is a matter of taste in each traveler to select which he pleases as the true head-water of the sacred river. While we were sitting at luncheon on the hill I have described, our attention was attracted at seeing due south, right down the valley of El Hooleh and the Jordan, in the far distance, a blue hill. Whether this was or was not Pisgah, it was manifest that Moses from Pisgah could see to this spot, and that the whole Land of Promise, from Dan to Beersheba, lay before his eyes. It opened a new and sublime idea to my mind, that of the lawgiver's last view, when I understood that his vision took in Hermon and the hills of the southern desert, as well as Ebal and Gerizim, and Moriah and Zion. We entered the gorge of the Hasbeiyah, and rode up its right bank till we found an ancient bridge of a single arch spanning the ravine. It was a wild and beautiful spot. The foaming river, the old bridge over which our horses stepped cautiously, for the stones were slippery, and a misstep would send us fifty feet down into the boiling stream, the high, precipitous hills, and the screams of an eagle that was sailing down the ravine as if started from her nest by our presence, all made as vivid and picturesque a scene as could well be imagined. We soon arrived at Tell-el-Khady, the site of Dan, and much the finest fountain we had yet seen. It is a broad deep basin, pouring out a splendid stream. No houses or ruins are near. Three fourths of an hour from this, passing through groves of oaks and olives and a luxuriant growth of various trees, we found ourselves suddenly on the border of what appeared to be a collection of ruined stone houses, among which a strong stream was pouring and dashing down precipitous rocks in one white sheet of foam for half a mile. This was CGesarea-Philippi, the modern Banias, and in all ages the reputed source of the Jordan. MOUNT HIermon is the most southern and the highest hill of Anti-Lebanon. It looks down on Palestine to the south, on Damascus and its great plain toward the east, and on the hills and valleys of the Lebanon country to the north and west. On the southern side the hill falls off among many ravines, and its wild gorges lead out to a somewhat extensive plateau, or terrace, which in turn falls off to the great plain of El Hooleh. On this terrace Panias was built, and among the ruins of its ancient buildings the modern Banias is found. On the point of a high bluff of rock which overlooks the plain are the two white domes of a Mohammedan tomb or wely. To all comers from the south this marks, for a day before they reach it, the site of the great spring of the Jordan. On the side of the rock, sixty feet above the level of the highest part of the terrace, is a cavernous opening. Its front is partly filled up with the debris of the mountain, which has fallen before it, and gradually filled it, so that, to enter the cave, you must descend considerably. Within there is nothing. It is dry, except in rainy weather, when a pool forms in it from water running in. At the right of this cavern, on the face of the rock, are three sculptured niches, in which probably statues once stood, with inscriptions near them. 402 FOUNTAIN OF BANIAS. The water flows out below the debris, which fills up the front of the cavern. Possibly in remote times it may have flowed from the cavern itself; but not within many centuries. From under this pile of stone the water gushes out over a space, a hundred feet wide, and nowhere more than a few inches deep. It gathers toward one point, where it commences its descent, and is here a strong stream. It is difficult to state the size of a stream of water so that a reader can obtain an idea of its volume. I may remark of this, however, that it probably pours out more water in an hour than the entire Croton aqueduct could carry off in a day. Its descent from the springs is rapid, and it must fall several hundred feet within a mile. Its course is one strong, foaming current, in which no horse or man could by any possibility stand erect. I desired to take fish in it, and rigged my tackle; but, except within the village of Banias, where its flow is broad and shallow, I could not within a mile and a half find a place where the swift current ceased, or where there was an eddy or a basin in which a fish could lie. A trout fisherman will readily appreciate what a stream it was, when I tell him that the current was so strong for this distance, that there was no place for a trout to lie, not even under the lee of a rock. This is the great source of the river Jordan, and has been esteemed the true Jordan in all ages, though, as I have already remarked, the Hasbeiyah river, which is much smaller, has a more remote source at the fountains near that place. These strong fountains are a characteristic of this part of the world. The great fountains of the Jordan, and those which I have mentioned at Malaha and Souhain, as well as several on the bank of the sea of Galilee, and that of Elisha at Jericho are alike grand. LAST NIGHT ON HOLY SOIL. 403 It was our last night on the holy soil. Here, for the last time, we were treading in the footsteps of the Lord, and, henceforth, in our wanderings over the surface of the world, we were to walk on the common earth that his presence had never sanctified. It was a cold, sad, evening. The tents were pitched in a grove of olivetrees on the banks of the stream, just where it made a bold, white plunge of thirty feet, and roared like a small Niagara. The night passed slowly with wailing winds. All night the olives moaned and the stream roared, now rising in tone, now falling, as if the spirits of the grotto of Pan were among their old haunts. In the morning we parted from our friends, Dr. Bonar and his party, who had been most pleasant companions thus far, and who now turned back. This great fountain attracted the inhabitants of the world in its early days, and, doubtless, here was a temple to Baal long before Pan reigned in the forests. The Greeks gave it its name of Panias, and in the days of Tiberius Caesar when Philip was Tetrarch, he beautified the place and called it Caesarea, adding his own name Philippi to distinguish it from CGesarea on the coast of the Mediterranean. While it held this name it was honored by the visits of Christ, and near it, on some one of the mountains around it, I have no doubt, occurred the sublime mystery of the transfiguration. In the days of Nero the place was called Neronias, but, after this, appears to have resumed its old name, and here, after the fall of Jerusalem, Titus celebrated triumphant games, and caused his Jewish prisoners to fight as gladiators for the amusement of his people. Later than this the Christians made it the seat of a bishopric, and in the times of the Crusades it became the north-eastern key of the Holy Land, and its great defence against Noureddin the Caliph of Damascus, and 404 A RUINED CASTLE. Salah-e'deen his successor. The Arabs have substituted a B for the P in its name, and call it Banias, by which name few now recognize the ancient Caesarea-Philippi. Ruins abound in and around the village, but the most imposing of all these is the great Khulet-el-Banias, Castle of Banias, on a high hill east of the town, one hour distant from it. Riding through the village I bought, as usual, coins, and one beautiful antique cornelian, and we then made our way out to the castle. I have wandered over many of the ruins of feudal times in Europe, and have visited some of the best preserved relics of ancient castles in France and in Germany, but I have never seen as imposing a ruin of those days as is this vast castle. The hill is very steep on all sides, and rises, perhaps, a thousand feet above Banias. It is an isolated, conical peak, surrounded with deep valleys. The ridge of the summit is about a thousand feet long from east to west, varying in width, the eastern end being a little the highest. This entire ridge is inclosed within the walls of the castle, which still frown on the stranger on all sides. Entrance can be had only at the one gateway, dismantled now, indeed, but still capable of a gallant defence in its ruins. The place appears impregnable: one can not imagine how, before the days of gunpowder, it was ever conquered, and yet it did change hands often during the times of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. The keep was at the eastern end, flanked by four massive square stone towers, that looked down a thousand feet into the bed of a mountain torrent. From this the walls run on each side of the ridge to the western end, where are the ruins of large towers, and especially of immense cisterns, cut in the rock and arched over with pointed arches. The workmanship of these cisterns is remarkably fine. A subterranean passage, which was supposed to lead hence to the city of CASTLE OF BANIAS. 405 Banias, is now choked up. From the ruined tower at this end the view over the plain of El Hooleh is very fine, even to the distant hills of Safed (of which we could see the castles), Tabor and Gilboa. But most of all our eyes were fixed on the little village at our very feet, where the Lord said to Peter, " On this rock will I build my church," and whence the waters of the Jordan flow, as in his days two thousand years ago. It would be vain to deny that our minds and lips were much occupied with imaginary histories of the castle on which we now stood. Could its stones but have voices we should hear tales of romance that would keep us listening forever. The light feet of beautiful women had moved along these pavements in knightly days, and mailed men had trodden these ruined halls in times of doubt, and strife, and despair. Could but the fair love of Raynor Brus spring into life before us, what a vision of beauty would it be. For Raynor Brus was lord of Banias when the castle fell, and the wail of despair that rang down these wild gorges of the mountain when the Turk rushed into the lady's bower, sounded in my ears again as I leaned over the wall and looked far below, and wondered whether she cast herself headlong down to escape a fate worse than death to a Christian lady. The morning passed by as we yet lingered. A pistolshot on the hill-side two miles to the southward, gave us notice that Abd-el-Atti was waiting at the appointed rendezvous, and we remounted our horses to descend the hill. The castle was inhabited by a family, among whom were two women wearing the horn, which is seen as a peculiar costume in this part of the country and throughout Lebanon. It is a high support for a vail or headdress, usually made of silver, being a round tube, three inches in diameter at the bottom and two at the top, placed on the head over the centre of the forehead. They were 406 A RUN DOWN HILL. very good-natmued about allowing Miriam to examine it, and begged moderately when we departed. I said little about the difficulty of the ascent to the castle. It was nothing to the going down. But our horses were safe on ice if the angle was within forty-five degrees, and we gave them loose reins, and freedom to find their own way down. There was one spot where the descent became suddenly more steep. Mohammed had kept his feet and his temper well till he reached it, and then his self-control was gone. He could not stand it, and, to my very near overthrow, he went off like an arrow. There was perhaps three hundred feet of descent to be accomplished, and down we went. I-e must have cleared thirty feet at every leap, and, looking behind me, I saw the bay and the chestnut following. There was a grove of olive-trees ahead, and we went through them, dodging the limbs with difficulty. I believe the only accident of the descent was Miriam's loss of a part of her riding-dress on a bush, as she went over it. It was next to miraculous that we reached the bottom alive. Our route now lay over the south-east side of Mount Hermon. For some hours we continued to ascend, until we were among thick fogs, and nearly frozen with cold. It was late in the afternoon when the weather partially cleared off, and the wind was now exceedingly piercing. We were approaching the country in which we had been assured we should have danger. We had looked carefully to our arms in the morning. We did not much else with them in all our travels than to look at them. Yet their presence when others looked at them was always impressive; and there were several instances in which I think I should have suffered but for the silent arguments of the handles of pistols in my shawl. I rode this day, somewhat rudely, it is true, across a VIEW OF BANIAS. 407 field of beans just springing up. I had missed the path, and was obliged to cross this to recover my way. A native, apparently a Druse, hailed me with loud shouts that were home-like. It was right pleasant to be warned off a man's lot of land. This was the first fellah, in all the East, whom I had met that had enough spirit to do it. It was a matter of necessity for me, however, and I laughed and rode directly toward him. IHe swore at me in decided Bowery style, and even when I came near him continued his vociferations; but the sight of the civilizers calmed him much, and I passed him in silence. Toward sunset, the road, which had been over high land, in close proximity to the snow banks on our left, began suddenly and rapidly to descend in a mountain gorge, and at length we reached the fork of this with another coming down from MIount Hermon. At this fork, down in the depth of the ravine, was a village whereof the name is Beit Jin, the abode of the evil spirit. \ >\'; - l&e beb^ of -i0ho 0o. " HA, Mohammed, thou seest not an open grave for the first time!" The horse had sheered suddenly, and nearly dropped me prematurely into the open bosom of earth; for a grave was dug at the very side of the path, and not yet occupied. As we entered the village, a loud wailing, that filled the mountain gorge, and echoed from its sides, greeted our ears with strange effect. It indicated the death of some person of importance. We rode down the gorge to the lower end of the village, near a stone building that answered the purposes of a mosk. We dismounted in a grove of large trees, which we did not recognize in their leafless state, but which we afterward learned were English walnut, the fruit of which is vulgarly known in America as Madeira-nut-and on the bank of a strong mountain torrent, whose origin was a large spring higher up the valley, known to the natives as Ain-el-Hemy. Here we waited the arrival of the tents and baggage, which we had passed on the mountain. This was a most picturesque site for a village. The two mountain gorges, which came down to a point, went on to the east in one deep ravine, whose sharp sides stood up almost perpendicularly eight hundred feet; so that looking eastward we saw the sky cut down to a triangu A MOSLEM VILLAGE. 409 lar shape, and against it the sharp lines of the rocky cliff, while north, south, and west the blue was on the hill-tops, a thousand feet above us. The village was on the middle bluff, and on the north side of the ravine. The south side of the south branch, and of the main ravine, was occupied by the graves of the villagers. The living were over-against the dead. The inhabitants of that half of the village on the middle bluff were all Shereef, descendants of the Prophet, while the ordinary Mussulmans lived on the north side of the stream. This is the river Sebarini, which flows down to the great plain of Damascus. We climbed the bluff to examine some rock-tombs over the village of the Shereef, facing down the ravine. One was very large, containing nine apartments, separated by square stone columns supporting arched roofs, and each chamber containing couches similar to those around Jerusalem. There were some very curious tombs near this, entirely different from any thing I had seen or heard of in any other part of the world. They were hewn into the perpendicular face of the rock, and shaped for the reception of two sarcophagi. The front or doorway, which was of the same shape and size as the interior, was almost coffinshaped, about six feet high, but in the longer sides of the coffin, about half the height of the door, were elbows, making the upper part suddenly a foot wider than the lower. Thus one sarcophagus could be placed in the lower part and another above it, resting on these ledges or elbows. While we were looking at the tombs we heard the wailing in the village below us suddenly grow louder, and saw women running up and down the street with disheveled clothes and faces exposed, indicating the utmost abandonment to grief. A few moments later a procession 18 410 A BURIAL. was formed in front of one of the principal mud houses, and with loud cries and wailings marched toward the grave, the occupancy of which I had escaped. They carried four large, gorgeous silk banners, whose vast folds waved furiously in the wind that swept down the valley. By these we knew that a descendant of the Prophet had gone to his ancestor's place. Four strong men carried a bier on their shoulders, upon which lay the body of a man, with his face exposed. We descended the hill, and reached the burial-place just as the procession did. It was our intention to stand at a distance and witness the ceremonies; but so soon as they saw us approaching, the group of a hundred men and women parted, leaving an open line up to the head of the grave. An old man, the sheik of the village pro ter., walked down toward us, and led us to the side of the shallow resting-place, near which the dead man was now lying on the bier. From the first we had observed that there was something unusual in all this scene. I had seen some scores, not to say hundreds, of Moslems hurried into the grave, but I had never seen as slow and impressive mourning as this; and the fact that we were received with such marked attention added to my conviction that it was not an ordinary occasion. There were four old men standing at the head of the grave, whose turbans and white beards made them seem remarkably venerable. One of them, as we came near, laid his hand on my shoulder, and in a broken voice, full of pain and yet full of passion, said, " Mafish Sultan, Mafish Pasha, Bus Druse"-" there is no sultan, there is no governor-nothing but Druses." The whole truth flashed on me in an instant. This man had been shot by a Druse. Then, before they buried him, the old man addressed us across the grave; and we THE DRUSES. 411 stood, three Americans, surrounded by a hundred wildlooking Moslems, while he related to us, in simple and touching eloquence, the story of their wrongs. There was no romance about it at all. It was a simple, stern history of trial, trouble, wrong, and death, and we were appealed to as foreigners who might aid the villagers in obtaining justice from the government, which was refused to their solicitations. Beit Jin is a Moslem village in the heart of the Druse country. The Druses are originally an offshoot of the Mohammedans, and. trace their origin to the Egyptian crazy Kalif, El I-akim. No man is able to say what is their creed, or what their worship, for it is conducted in profound secrecy in hidden places, to which no Moslem, Christian, stranger, or uninitiated Druse is admitted. None but the faithful of their own sect, and few of these, know any thing of their worship. With the rest, it is blind faith that it is all,right, and they don't know whether they worship God or the devil. But enmity to the Mlussulman has always been a part of Druse faith and practice, and as Beit Jin has always been regarded as a nuisance from its isolated position among them, there had now been going on, for a long time, a war of extermination against its inhabitants. Fifteen had been shot within three months -shot down in the fields by assassins lurking behind rocks. It was no unusual thing for a bullet to come down through the side of a house in the village, in the night, sent at random from some high rock a thousand feet above the village, by a Druse. This man, now dead, had been the most valiant defender of the village, and with his own hand had killed five Druses. This morning, while walking in a field on the edge of the village, he was shot dead by an unknown foe. The villagers had in vain appealed to the Pasha of Damascus for protection. All that the 412 THE BURIAL. pasha did for them was to collect the annual tax. He cared nothing for their troubles, and the sheik was now at Damascus endeavoring to procure aid against their foes. Such was the story that the old man told us over the pale face of the dead man, to which he pointed as a mute but powerful witness of its truth, and the others, his brothers and the brothers of the silent witness, bowed their heads in solemn asseveration that it was true. When he had concluded, they addressed themselves to the task of burying their dead, and lifting the body from the bier, laid it down in the shallow grave. He was a tall, strong man. His features were set. in a rigid expression of defiance, and it was a relief to have that fierce countenance covered out of sight. They laid him on his side, with the palm of his right hand under his cheek, his face toward the grave of the Prophet and the holy Kaaba at Mecca, for thus the Prophet himself lies at AIedinah, and his followers lie thus around that centre of the Moslem world. They placed sticks over him, pushing the ends into the ground on each side of the body, and arching them above him. It is customary in Constantinople and other places, where they can procure boards, to place them in the grave, one end over the feet of the body and the other nearly at the top of the grave. The earth is then heaped over these. By this means a place is left in which the dead man can sit up erect when the two angels come to question him, as all good Moslems expect to be questioned. But this was neglected here, and the little covering of sticks being completed, they threw in some brush, and then the earth. Before doing this, all the company sat down on the ground, and we sat down also, and the old man led them in a droning song that was terribly melancholy. Then the grave was filled, and we walked away to our tents. MIRIAM S TENT. 413 I can not say that the circumstance made us very comfortable in our tents. I had had some experience in a very common oriental plan of annoyance, which was based on the fact that the government always holds a village responsible for the lives and property of travelers resting in it. If any knowing Druse should see fit to send a ball down on a roving expedition through our tent, he might get his Beit Jin enemies into a scrape, out of which they would hardly extricate themselves by attempting to prove that a Druse did it. " You should have guarded the strangers better," is the government reply to such a plea. The night was cold and cloudy, and a gale of wind swept down the valley, threatening to tear the tents away from over our heads. I ordered the men to watch during the night, and after one of our merriest evenings in the tent, over coffee and chibouks, we separated. My tent was on the outside of the three. Whitely and Moreright were in the middle, and the kitchen tent next the village and the bank of the stream. Miriam was soon sound asleep. It is astonishing how easily a delidate woman can accommodate herself to circumstances. She would have taken cold at home if a window were left an inch open, and here, on the side of Mount Hermon, with a tempest blowing and flapping the canvas, filling and swelling the tents, straining the cords, and whistling over them, a mountain stream brawling and raging before the door, she lay on a small iron bedstead, raised a few inches above the bare, damp ground of the valley, with the full consciousness of the presence of lurking enemies on the hill-side, who might at any moment send the messenger of death down through the thin wall of our home, and yet she slept as quietly, serenely, and calmly, as if at home in our own land. I felt uneasy, and could not sleep. The pegs of the 414 AN ENEMY. tent-cords jerked out several times, and the tent had nearly gone, but Selim and Dib, two of the muleteers, were on the watch, and replaced them. At length, about two o'clock, they gave out, in a terrible gust of wind, and as no one touched them, I knew that my guard were asleep, and sprang out just in time to rescue the whole establishment. Driving in the pegs, I went over to the kitchen tent and found the guard oblivious under its lee. I kicked them up, and returned to my own place, but paused as I was entering, to glance oyer the sides of the valley, lit now by the misty rays of a full moon, shining through a haze that threatened a storm. There was one rocky point that I had noticed before dark as commanding our position most beautifully, and on this I fixed my eyes now more intently than elsewhere. Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface of the flat rock? The moonlight certainly shone on something, though I could not see distinctly what it was, that was not rock. If it were a man why did he not now drop me? He had a beautiful shot as I stood out in my black boornoose against the white tent. I was not altogether easy at that instant. I had the sensation of an entering bullet in my throat, breast, brain-I couldn't tell exactly where it would hit-but I felt it somewhere generally, as a hoosier might say. At all events I could not go to sleep with that fellow lying on the rock, and now I began to reason on this wise. If it is a man he must be an enemy. A friend would have no business there, and a villager would fiot be there. He can't be there with reference to any one else, for his position commands our tents and not the village. He must be watching us, and if so, it is for no good-and as I reasoned I had gone into the tent, taken out my small volcanic pistol, which carried a ball an immense distance and was much preferable to Colt's for sharp THE COOK'S BRAVERY. 415 shooting, and returned to the front of the tent. I continued my reasoning. Shall I call Selim? No, for the Druse, if it be one, will see that we are talking about him. Shall I send a ball up at him? If I do I must hit him, or he will hit me, as certainly as I fire. In short, I must bring him down, so here goes, and I threw up my pistol and sent a conical ball, whistling as those hollow balls always go, into the very brain of the man, if it were a man, but, as it proved, into the breast of a gray wolf that was waiting for a chance at the bones of Selim and Betuni. The yell of his pain went down the valley with the sound of the pistol, and he came rolling and tumbling, tearing his own flesh and yelling with agony, almost to my very feet. Selim despatched him with a knife, and I left him lying before Hajji Mohammed's tent, to stiffen in position and frighten my worthy cook, when he should turn out in the morning. I had no more restlessness after that, but slept soundly. I was roused, at daylight, by a shout. It woke me and then ceased. There was a quiet hush in the air and on the tent, a soft, low murmur that contrasted strangely with the howling tempest in which I had fallen asleep. The next moment I heard a scuffle and shouts from several of the men. I understood it at once, and sprang to the door of the tent. There were six inches of snow on every thing. Whitely and Moreright were already looking out. Hajji Mohammed awoke early and, with his eyes half open, lifted his tent door-curtain, and saw the wolf waiting for him. His shout was what I heard first. Ferrajj was roused by it and looked out, and Abdel-Atti, and Selim, and Betuni, with the other men, came around to see the fun. For the cook had seized a knife, and, thinking it was for life or death, threw himself on the enemy, utterly heedless of the snow which lay on him and showed that he was cold and dead. The others 416 DISSIPATION! shouted, and when I looked out there was a confused heap of turbans, loose pantaloons, cook, and wolf in the snow. I didn't think there was so much pluck in the Egyptian. At length they pulled him off, and I found that my joke had spoiled the skin of the animal, for the cook's knife had slashed it terribly. But our position was decidedly cool. It was snowing fast, faster and faster-by nine o'clock we had a foot of it over tents and baggage. To go on was out of the question, since the mules could not carry wet tents, nor, indeed, travel safely in the snow. We accordingly made ourselves comfortable in the tents. We built an extemporaneous furnace of stone and mud, and kept a bright fire going all day, while the snow fell fast and furious. It was a strange scene, as one may well imagine, and a happy one withal, as the day wore on. We had books, but what were books when three American gentlemen and one lady were snow-bound on the side of Mount Hermon? There was one bottle of Marsala, lately discovered in the canteen, kept for a special occasion, and wasn't this just that occasion? There was a plenty of the Galilean wine of Tiberias, and didn't we mull it and make glorious mixtures, wherewith Whitely drank to the bright eyes of Sarai of Tiberias? There was, by some curious accident, a drop of brandy left in my large flask in the luncheon bag, and, with a lemon and some sugar, didn't we have a hot mixture, that took off the chill of the dews of Hermon? and, while this was going on, didn't we send Ferrajj into the village for all the milk and eggs and salt he could find, and therewith prepare a custard, to be frozen with snow and salt into an ice cream, to cool off the heat of the mixture? and didn't Miriam set the custard out in the snow to cool? and didn't Ferrajj come in with the empty dish, a while after, and say, "Mum, the dogs, mum," whereat we all shouted with laughter HIRING A HOUSE. 417 except only Miriam, whose face was terrible to the dogs of Beit Jin, and did we not tell old and pleasant stories and sing old and pleasant songs, and dine sumptuously in the evening, and sleep right gloriously under the fastfalling snow? Yea, all this we did, and, in the morning, the white snow lay deep on tent, and valley, and hill, and fell yet faster than before. But it was warmer than the first day, and the snow began to melt on the tents. This would soon soak them and make them too heavy for the mules, and we accordingly decided to hire a house in Beit Jin " for the winter." It was difficult to procure one, but at length Abd-eIAtti found a Moslem family that were willing, " for a consideration," to let their house to Christians, and clearing them out, bag and baggage, we moved in. The house was a specimen of the village architecture of Lebanon. All the houses are alike. Stone walls, plastered within and without with mud; a roof made by laying long poplar-trees across from wall to wall, piling brush on these, and covering the brush with mud and gravel, which is rolled hard with a stone roller, an instrumient that is seen on every house-top, and usually made of the broken column of an ancient building. There was but one room in the house: of this the floor and sides were plastered smooth, hard, and clean, with good lime plaster. There were no windows. The corner of the room was a chimney; four feet from the floor, there was a sort of wall built across the corner, very neatly and curiously ornamented, by twisting twigs and covering them with plaster. It looked like a huge confectionary ornament. But under this we kept a blazing fire all day, and lived as we had lived the day before in the tents, barring the Marsala and the eau de vie, which we had exhausted, Blessings on the man who invented smoking tobacco. 18* 418 IN PRAISE OF TOBACCO. Who he was remains to be seen, and I have had numerous discussions in the East on the question, whether the Turks learned to smoke from the North American Indians, by way of Spain and the Mediterranean countries, or whether it is an older custom with them. I suppose they must have learned it from the Europeans, or otherwise the Spaniards and Englishmen would not have been so astonished as they are represented to have been at the first sight of a cigar. But, blessings on the first smoker. If he were a North American, and I could find his grave, I would erect a monument over him, " regali situ pyramidumr altius," and inscribe it with a grateful legend. You may prate if you will of the vile weed and uncleanly habit, you who prefer to breathe into your lungs the foul. breath of every feverish throat, rather than the same purified by fragrant smoke; you may abuse the luxury, who know nothing of the delicate and delicious kief, that indescribable calm, that perfect content and comfort that the chibouk inspires. I laugh to hear men talk against tobacco. They might as well preach to me not to love the odor of roses or the fragrant mignionette, as not to grow quiet on the perfume of Tombak, or sleepily happy on glorious Latakea. Our room was twenty feet square, and the ceiling eight feet high. This was the whole house. WVe brought our Persian carpets and Nubian mats, our beds and bedding, camp-stools, table, and table furniture, and stretching one of the tent-cloths across the room divided it, so that Miriam had her part separate. In the evening we had a pleasant incident that is worth recording. We had supposed that none but Mussulmans were in the village. As we sat talking, a boy was ushered in, who wished to see the Howajjis. He was a young Arab, about twelve years old, and had in his hand an old A PLEASANT INCIDENT, 419 and badly-worn book, without beginning or ending. He wanted to know if we had any more of it for him. It was a puzzling question. On examination we found that his book was an Arabic copy of the Psalms of David, and the boy was a Christian. He said he had a father and brother in the village, and they were the only Christians here. He wanted a Bible; he had no book but this, and he knew there was more of it-or if not, there must be more books like it-and he begged hard for one. We sent him for his father and brother, and they came, and we made the boys read aloud, which they did, in countryschool fashion at home, with voices pitched high, and loud intonation. I never regretted any thing more than I did our not having what he wanted; but Moreright promised him a Bible, and sent it afterward from Damascus. This family were Maronites. That night was superb. Standing in front of the door of our house (our house!) on the hill-side, and looking down the ravine, the blue sky contrasting with the moonlit snow, and the high black rocks, the strange village, the gaping tombs in the front of the opposite bluf, I felt an exultation in the splendor of the scene, which I can not hope to make my reader a partaker of. As I stood, looking eastward, a grand meteor went flashing down the eastern sky, right down the ravine, whither our path led toward Damascus, and with this omen of good before me, I slept that night right peacefully. ZVO one as hiqger of ibe. EVERY one has heard of Mohammed's refusal to enter Damascus, lest the enjoyment of one paradise, the full privilege of any man here on the earth, should bar him from the eternal paradise of God. The valley long ago was called Beit Edcenz, the abode of Eden. The beautiful appearance of the city and the plain is vastly enhanced by the wild, mountainous, or desert country through which the traveler has passed to reach it. The streams of the Sebarini, and other fountains, forming the Awaj on the south, and the great stream of the Barrada on the north, come down out of the Anti-Lebanon range, and emerge on a vast plain, which is nearly a water-level for twenty miles by six. The outer and more remote parts of this are grain fields, watered by artificial canals from these two rivers. In the centre of the plain is a vast, dense grove of trees, of every variety of fruit and appearance. Rising among these are the towers and the minarets of Es Shem, the city of Eleazar servant of Abraham, the old Damascus. We left Beit Jin at nine in the morning. The snow was fast disappearing; and as we descended toward the plain, we found that there had been none. At twelve, we passed Kafr Howaran, "a village of the Howaran," or, otherwise, " a village of Houries;" but, as we were in the DAMA.S US. 421 district called Howaran, and did not see any houries, I take it the first is the more likely interpretation. There is a fine ruin in the village, which I glanced at, but did not pause to examine. I believe that this is the traditional tomb of Nimrod, but in this I may be in error. At two, as we were crossing a high ridge of the rolling land which connects the side of Mount Hermon with the valley of Damascus, we caught a distant but fine view of the city, and hoped to reach it by night; but evening overtook us at Artous on the plain, and we encamped here. Next morning we rode on over the plain; interested in observing men opening the canals, and'turning on water by hour-glasses, and at length coming between fences built of mud, by a process of boxing up mud in the shape of giant bricks, four feet by three by one, and letting them dry in position, and among groves of apricot, and walnut, and almond-trees, now in fragrant bloom, and at length to the gate of the city that is called the heart of the Orient. Through long winding streets, densely crowded bazaars, by the open doors of steaming baths and dirty coffee, houses, we passed to the house of one Germanus, kept as a hotel, where we were to lodge. He showed us through a court-yard, with a fountain in the centre, and orange and lemon-trees, loaded with fruit, around it, into a large room, of which the central part was on a level with the court. One side of it was an alcove, raised by two steps, on which were diwans. The other two sides were also alcoves, in each of which was a bed. The ceiling was thirty feet high, gilded, and ornamented with arabesque patterns, and in the centre of the room was a bubbling fountain. Fountains are the enemies of the visitor in Damascus. Wherever he goes he meets with dashing water, and it is hard work to prevent his being put in a room with a bub 422 A O SEi O F Y E Y E bling, gurgling fountain, to keep him awake all night, and give him a rheumatism in the morning, if he be inclined to such out-of-joint complaints. We rejected the room instanter, preferring one which was only twenty feet square, with a ceiling thirty feet high, and looking much more cozy and comfortable. Having made ourselves at home, shaken out the bends in our knees, which long riding on horseback had nearly confirmed, and gotten out some respectable dress, by way of contrast with our late travel-stained garments, we flattered ourselves that we did not look much like inhabitants of Beit Jin on the side of Mount Hermon. There is little of antiquity in Damascus to interest the traveler. The mosk of Yeye, which is the Mohammedan style of pronouncing the name of John, or, rather, the Mohammedan name of John the Baptist and all ancient Johns, is an immense building, which was once a Christian church. It was probably built in the time of Justinian, and originally dedicated to the Baptist. When the Moslems became masters of the city, it was at first divided between Christians and Moslems, but at length converted-in the Moslem style of conversion, by steel and fire-into a mosk, still dedicated to John, whose head is said to be in some part of it. Entrance to it is forbidden to Christians; a prohibition amounting to nothing, since there is little object in going further than the doorway, whence we could look into the great court, surrounded by columns, and paved with stones worn to glassy smoothness by the knees and the bare feet of the worshipers. Near the mosk, spanning the street which leads to its principal entrance, and on the line of a cross street, both of which are roofed over in the style of eastern bazaars, are the remains of a grand pediment, supported on four massive columns, which once doubtless belonged to a AROUND DAMAS CUS. 423 temple. The space between the two middle columns is much greater than between the others. The columns are visible in the streets below, one of which passes between the middle pillars, but we had to enter a door and climb a narrow dark stairway to the roofs of the houses, over which we made our way some distance to the upper part of the pediment, being then on a level with the capitals of the columns. The architecture is of the florid Corinthian, abounding in the ruins of northern Syria. The pediment Was broken by a great arch springing from the second to the third column, suggesting the idea that it may have been a triumphal arch, but this is an unusual shape for such a structure. The remains are imposing. Their solitary appearance, towering above the roofs of Damascus in lonesome grandeur, is very impressive. We rode out of the city one day to make a complete circuit of it, taking as our guide Ibrahim, an old Jew, who made his home in Germanus's hotel, and who is a character well known to travelers who have visited the city. Mounted on the white horse of Ferrajj, he rode in advance of us, first down the " strait street," on which stood the house of Judas, with whom Paul lodged, and then out of the Pilgrim's gate. We rode a little way under the wall of the city, glancing up at the spot where tradition said that Paul was let down when he escaped, and then turning to the south, we went out to the outer city wall of the Protestant cemetery, which lies a half a mile or so from the city, and near the spot pointed out as the scene of the conversion of Saul. Looking at the latter, which is marked by a sort of arch or grotto open on each side, dug through a conglomerate that seems much more like gravel than like rock, and which has stood in this position for some hundred years, appearing all the time as if 424 HEART OF ORIENT. it were dug yesterday and would fall to-morrow, we rode on to the east among the gardens and groves that surround the city. It was a wilderness of beauty. Coming as we did from months of travel in the desolate land of Canaan, where a dry, cold olive grove was a delight to the eyes, and where fruit-trees and blossoms were as rare as angels' visits in these modern days, we were in an ecstasy of admiration at every thing. The air was loaded with perfume. The groves in which the apricot abounded were gay with blushing blossoms. The whole scene was one of fairy land, bowers for princesses and gardens of delight for kings. Now we began to realize some of the stories of Arabian Nights, and appreciate the descriptions of oriental gardens. But still the city itself, Damascus within the walls, was not as " oriental" as Cairo. Cairo is the perfection of the East, and he who has seen it will see here nothing in external appearance so answering his expectations of the Orient. Nowhere else will he find those dark, narrow streets, with lofty houses, and interlacing windows, nor those exquisite lattices of strange and elaborate patterns, every one of which was a day's study. But within the houses themselves, and outside the walls of the city, Damascus is magnificence. Returning from a three hours' ride on the north side of the city-we had gone around the eastern end, crossing the Barada as it flows out of the city-we found ourselves at the gate of a private place, concealed from the road by a high stone wall, but commanding a view of it from its overhanging windows that projected above the street. The story which I am about to relate, and which came to my knowledge behind the wall, within this inclosure, is no fiction. There are realities that surpass romance. If you wish a history of passion, the story of a wild and reckless life, the life of one, young, beloved, beautiful, and no A TALE OF PASSION. 425 ble, sacrificed to the mad passion of a woman's love, a story of western life surpassing the tales of the Orient, one of this year in which I live and write, surpassing those of the days of Haroun-el-Raschid, all that is here. It was a strange place to hear the story, but I heard it even there. Among the fair ladies in the court of St. James, there were none more fair and beautiful than Ianthe, daughter of a line that was ancient and noble in the days of the first Charles, and that has, in all times, claimed rank in England second only to the blood royal. I do not testify from hearsay when I say that she was beautiful, for I have seen her on her white Arabian of the Khamsa, stately in the decay of splendid beauty, splendid yet, and I have seen her picture, by an artist of no small renown, taken when she was eighteen, and the bride of one of the proudest lords in England. Her face was one of gentle and exquisite beauty. I could not believe it possible that one so beautiful could sin so deeply and have so dark a fall, nor did I realize it but by my old resort in remembering that the star of the morning, on the right hand of God, fell, and I could not expect that she would be more proud of her lineage than Lucifer of his throne. The story of her love and marriage is not for these pages or these years. There are hearts in old England that cling to her yet, despite her wild career, and the tale would shock them were it printed as I have heard it. Nor would I tell the tale at all but that I have seen it printed in an English volume, and in the English papers from time to time, until she has become public property in every sense of the word, and I can not, therefore, see any reason for suppressing it. She married the man she did not love. His name is known to the world. He is a peer of distinction, -426 TH EF O0 LD S TO Y. second only, I believe, of the line, but bearing a name that he has made distinguished on both sides of the world. I shudder when I compare the present with the past. She was very young, and very gentle, and very beautiful. Let us not discuss the long-ago discussed question, whether such marriages do not charge on their originators the sins that follow them. She whose wealth was untold, whose presence in lordly mansions was a joy, whose face was a light even in the blaze of London beauty, whose home was the abode of splendor, luxury, and magnificence, had yet a woman's heart and a woman's love-and, woman-like, was betrayed and abandoned. It was the old story, the old and horrible story. She sacrificed all for him, her first love, a German baron, and as very a hound as ever missed his proper place, and was born into life a man. So soon as the House of Lords had granted the divorce which her husband applied for, she went to Italy and met this German dog. He made her the toy of an hour, and then abandoned her forever. But the change had come over her that comes so often over the wronged woman. She was a child no longer, and she who had been the delight of royal assemblies, the gentle girl of Cumberland, the young and radiant bride of the brilliant court of St. James, worshiped as a star, beautiful, but unapproachable, glorious, but distant, warm, loving, maddening in her radiance, but yet a pure star of those azure distances, she became the wild devotee of passion, the priestess of pleasure, a beautiful, magnificently beautiful, Bacchante, There were no limits to the extravagance and recklessness of her life. Possessed, by the terms of the divorce, of an income sufficient to maintain a style of living equal to her tastes, she was the leader of that large class which is found in Italy, made up of the victims of modern H ER FAL L, 42 7 society and of their own sins, in which beautiful women find no difficulty in surrounding themselves with circles of brilliant wit, and all the accomplishments that make the passing life one of gayety and pleasure. Her devotion to a gay life was complete and absolute. The star that had been as pure as Merope before her fall, became a mortal form, beautiful, but polluted, moulded after the divinity of Eve, but free to the embraces of all her sons. Let us pass over years whose history is reserved for the blackness of darkness. There was in the service of king Otho of Greece a certain Count, who was noto verstockecd with money. There were also at Athens two ladies who led easy lives; one, the celebrated Duchess de P, and the other the English countess now bearing the name of a husband to whom she had been married in Italy, but whom she had abandoned. The count proposed to marry her, and she assented, and became his wife. But the queen was scandalized at the connection, and gave the count notice to quit her service or discharge his wife. He thought it hard, for with the wife he had married an income of over seven thousand dollars a-year, which was a princely fortune there; but the queen was inexorable. Thinking that the office and position at court were a permanency, and the wife quite the contrary, especially judging from the past, he obeyed the royal mandate and moved out of his lady's establishment. It is charitable to suppose that at this time the mind of the beautiful lady had become shattered. Yet there are those who knew her best who deny it, and assert that she remains sane, but that her wild propensities are the result of her early life, and first great trial. It was enough to madden any woman: and one so young, and one so worshiped, might well grow mad to find herself a 428 THE COUNTESS IANTIHE wanderer. Had there been then one to take her hand and hold her back from perdition! But there was none. Why or how she went from Greece I do not know, but she was next heard of in Damascus; and there the romance of her life ceased, or dwindled down to the ridiculous. It sounds well in England, indeed, and if it is wicked, it has, nevertheless, a tone of adventurous life to hear that Ianthe, Countess of —-, has married a sheik of the Anazees, and lives in a tent on the plains of Palmyra, among the ruins of Tadmor in the wilderness. But alas for the truth of the story! Going down to Palmyra from Damascus she was attacked by Bedouins. Her guard was a small party of Anazees, under one Medjuel, an inferior sheik, if sheik at all, a miserable, dirty little Bedouin, whom one would kick out of his way, and who, if once caught on the mountains of Lebanon by the Druses, will have a bullet through his head in a twinkling, and die unknown, and rot unburied. According to the lady, he performed prodigies of valor in her defence, and brought her safely back to Damascus. Here is what she says of it. I copy exactly from the register of Germanus's hotel, in Damascus: " J'ai passe dix jours dans cet hotel, pendant lesquels j'ai ete parfaitement satisfaite des bons soins du maitre. Je prends aussi cette occasion de recommander le Scheik Meidjuel chef des Anazzes a tout voyageur quo desire entreprendre le voyage de Palmyre Fayant trouve parfaitement capable et digne de confiance sous tons les rapports. " COMTESSE "Damasce, 13 Juin,'53." The name after Comtesse had been something like Peritoki, which was her name in Greece; but it was erased and written over with another name, by her own hand, at a later date, and this was so blotted as to be illegible. The countess had a way of marrying. She had gotten MARRIAGE TO A BEDOUIN. 429 into it by a sort of habit, and could not keep out of it. She astonished Medjuel one day at the hotel in Damascus, after her safe return from Palmyra, by telling him that she intended to marry him. He was so frightened at the idea that he vanished, and was seen no more. She hired certain of his tribe to bring him back, who found him at Palmyra, and persuaded him to return. She renewed the proposition, and at length obtained his consent by showing him the wealth she was able to bring him. The English consul interfered to prevent such a disgraceful occurrence, but she laughed at him. The resident Turkish governor was induced to take it in hand, and sending for Medjuel, told him that the woman had several husbands living already, and warned him of his intended interference with their rights, and of the duty he should feel to allow their claims if any of them came after her. Medjuel was again scared, and again disappeared. She sent for him, but in vain, and at length she went after him herself. She found him on the desert near Palmyra, and was there married to him by the Bedouin ceremony, without other witnesses than his Arab companions. She then purchased, in his name, a fine house and gardens outside the walls of Damascus, and made it her home, being there part of the time, and in his tent the rest of it. It was at the door of this villa that we now paused for a moment, not hoping to obtain admittance; but having knocked, we were not a little gratified at the sight of a European face within the doorway. A French maid, the companion of all the lady's wanderings, was in charge of the house. Her mistress was absent at Palmyra. She very politely invited us to enter, and showed us the establishment. It would be tedious to mention all the adornments of 430 HER BOUDOIR. the rooms and grounds, but there were two in which we lingered with more interest than elsewhere. I think I may escape the censure of one who interferes with the privacies of domestic life in describing these rooms, since the life of this lady has already been made quite as much a matter of public notoriety as that of Lady Hester Stanhope, whom I think she, in some respects, desires to imitate. They opened on each side of an open alcove. The one was her bed-room, the other her boudoir. The former was furnished in gorgeous style. The hangings were of the heaviest damask, the floor carpeted with the most costly fabrics of Persian looms. It was a reminiscence of her early life that she had revived in Damascus, by importing from France this costly furniture, which I have never seen surpassed in the bed-chambers of royalty in European palaces. But there were reminiscences of her girlhood in the boudoir that must sometimes have thrilled her now cold heart. There was a portrait of her father, a brave and gallant servant of the king, wearing the uniform of his high rank, and looking kindly on the strange scene. There was a portrait of herself, in a gorgeous frame of purple velvet and gold, and there she could see what she once was when worshiped as the star of St. James. There was a picture, containing portraits of two children, long since dead, her children, the children of her brief honored married life-one of whom, I have heard, lived to be the affianced wife of a royal prince, who died before the marriage, but I do not know if this be true. In the corner there were books, some of which were the familiar books of Christian children, "Daily Food," and similar collections, and one, " Marriage au point de vue Chretien" (!) and Lynch's "Dead Sea Expedition," and Robinson's "Biblical Researches," and many others that I recognized. A DAUGHTER OF EVE. 431 On the table lay several magnificent folios, bound in dark morocco, and on the side of each was a coronet of gold, with the simple name, " Ianthe." They were filled with oil and water-colored drawings of her own, sketches of home-scenes in old England, of views in Switzerland and elsewhere in her wanderings. "Madame prends toujours son diner ici," said the lady's maid. "Avec le Scheik Medjuel?" " Certainement." "Et comment?" "Sur le tapis-comme-ga," and she sat down on the carpet, with her feet out of sight, and showed us precisely how the countess now lives and how she eatsfrom a platter on the floor, Arab fashion, with her fingers, and with her Arab hound of a husband opposite to her. She has expended large sums of money on the place, all of which, of course, she has given to Medjuel. When the whim changes she will go. He contracted with her that she was never to require him to go west of Damascus before he would marry her. Verily there be daughters of Eve in Beit Eden, who, taking not their mother's lesson, lose themselves for trifles. ___I, 28. ONE morning, as Miriam, Whitely, and I were strolling up the great bazaars of Damascus, looking very much as verdant people look who visit the city for the first time, and stare into shop-windows, with open eyes and mouth -only the shop-windows were all doors, or, rather, the shops were nothing but windows, immense open windows that opened into little closets full of shelves, each with a gray-bearded Turk sitting in solemn silence with chibouk to his lips, on the front of it, as we were thus walking along, intent on silks and shawls of all rare and shining varieties, we were surprised by an address in English. " Why you no tell me you no want my house?" Looking around, I recognized a young Armenian Christian, whom I had seen before. We had talked of taking a house in Damascus. Why not? We had done so in Jerusalem for a month, and in Beit Jin for a day, and why not in Damascus for a week? We did not like Germanus's arrangements. We found withal that we could not make a purchase in Damascus, large or small, without Germanus or his brother, or Ibrahim, or some one of the family suddenly appearing at the moment the sale was concluded, and in time to ascertain how much we paid and what commission he should collect. For Germanus has a plan that hotel-keepers may DAMASCUS KHANS. 433 do well to profit by, of charging all merchants a commission on all goods purchased by lodgers at his house, whether he goes with them to the shops or not. We went to look at Meluk's house. It was a perfect little gem in its way, furnished in the perfection of eastern splendor, with damask diwans and Persian carpets, silver narghilehs and amber-mouthed chibouks. He was very polite withal, and offered us the house freely, but, at the same time, telling us that there were reasons why he should prefer that we should find a place elsewhere, the chief of which was a ceremonial observance the family was then engaged in, on account of the recent death of his father. We could not say we did not like the house, and left him without an answer. He accosted us in the street, and now, for the first time, we learned that he was the largest silk manufacturer in Damascus. He took us into his room. It was in one of the large khans which abound here. They are built uniformly around a large covered court, in the centre of which is a fountain. In this court camels deposit their goods. Two galleries run around this, from which small store-rooms open. He showed us quantities of the rich and exquisite goods of Damascus, heavy silken scarfs of all the brilliant eastern dyes, wrought with gold and silver; there were forty different patterns, each seeming more beautiful than all the others, rich goods for dresses, table-covers, diwans and cushions, all of heavy silk, made more heavy with gold. There was a blaze of splendor that surpassed any thing I had imagined. Gay and gorgeous as are the silk departments of our American shops, there is nothing in Europe or America to compare with this little second-story dark room of the Damascus khan. Germanus kept similar goods at the hotel, but asked higher prices. We had not been five minutes in the 19 434 DAMASCUS HOUSES. room of Meluk, when old Ibrahim waddled in, to see that we made no purchases without his knowledge, and, at my particular request, waddled out again, with a message to Germanus, to keep him at home, blacking our boots, and not send him after us except when we told him to do so. The market for these Damascus goods is in the Turkish hareems. Few of our ladies imagine the splendor of dress which the oriental ladies indulge in. Diamonds, turquoise, pearls, and amber are as common in the hareem of a wealthy pasha, as paint in the dressing-room of a ten years old belle, and the ladies tear up and trample on silks that a Broadway or avenue promenader would sell her soul to possess. These silks have never been seen in the American market, and the fair purchasers of such articles have yet to see more splendid products of the East than they have hitherto dreamed of. A subject of never-ending wonderment with me was the origin of the immense wealth of Damascus. For immense it is. There are hundreds of men who sit all day long on the fronts of their little cupboard-shops in the bazaars, selling five, ten, or fifty piastres' worth of goods in a day, who live in palaces that surpass the most costly American houses, and reach the fabulous splendor of the Arabian Nights. Externally, all the houses of Damascus are alike, plastered over with a yellowish stucco, or mud, and showing no windows on the street. They present, therefore, only dead yellow walls on both sides of the way as you pass along. The doorway of carved wood is of more or less beauty. This opens to a court, paved with various-colored marbles, and adorned with a fountain, over which hang oranges and other fruits in luxuriant beauty. The house of a wealthy Jew is said to be the finest in A JEW'S PALACE. 435 the city. I was in it one morning. It is built on the general Damascus plan. A cross, the four arms of which are of equal length, is the ground plan of the court. The arrhs of the cross are raised a foot or two from the level of the court, and arched over, making four alcoves, fronting on the central fountain. The corners are then built up withl lofty and gorgeously adorned rooms. This house was built of the finest Italian marble, brought on mules from the sea coast. It was carved in all manner of quaint arabesque patterns. Clusters of golden fruits and flowers hung from the sides of the rooms and the ceilings. The doors were finely carved and gilded. The furniture was superb. One of the alcoves was furnished with a single diwan, which cost sixty-five thousand piastres-a New York lady might be contented with a sofa worth three thousand dollars, especially if it were as this was, a mere cushion of silk and gold, without any wood or iron about it. The entire house was furnished with silver articles-bowls, pitchers, narghilehs, perfume-bottles, cups, water-goblets, and every thing that could be made of this metal. But, by way of illustration of oriental manners and customs, I may add that the lady who presided in this palace, and who, being a Jewess, had no scruples about being seen by strangers, received us in a dress of calico, outrageously dirty, while her trowsers, once clean, looked as if she had dragged them through all the mud of Damascus, and her hair had been destitute of a combing for a month. Notwithstanding this, a diamond, worth the price of a German principality, shone in the centre of her forehead, and another, on her finger, would have bought a New York up-town establishment, ladies, dresses, and all. The cost of building this house in Damascus had been fifteen hundred thousand piastres (about seventy thousand 436 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. dollars) at the time of our visit, and was yet to be much more before it should be completed. We saw several other Damascus houses, some of which had inner courts and fountains, and groves of orange and lemon-trees, among which the ladies of the hareem rested in the long sunny days. I can not linger any longer in Damascus. I can not speak of the baths in which the lazy Turks dreamed away the long days, nor of the kiosks on the banks of the Barada, where they smoked hashish, and forgot the Prophet, nor of the vailed ladies that jostled against you, as you walked along the streets, or that threw up their vails when they met the Franks, by chance, alone in a quiet street, and let the full lustre of their fair faces, and large, black eyes, flash with bewildering splendor on him, nor of the long mornings wasted on the shop-fronts of a Turkish vender of silks, smoking his chibouk, drinking his coffee, and beating down his prices, nor of the evenings in the house of Mohammed Effendi, the sword-merchant, who piled his floor with ancient Damascus blades, and Cashmere shawls (known to western purchasers by the very curious name of camel's-hair), old china, cufic dishes of metal, rare jewels, coins, and ten thousand odd things of vertu, nor how we climbed the walls of the old castle that forms so large a feature in the view of Damascus, and thence looked over the valley, and up at the hill of the Seven Sleepers-I say I can not pause to speak of these. I believe that the story of the Seven Sleepers is of Christian origin, and was first related of certain youths of Ephesus, who refused to abjure their religion in the times of the Emperor Decius. But Mohammed (Koran, chapter xviii.) adopted it, and changed it materially, and the Moslems of Damascus locate the scene of the sleep of three hundred and nine years on the side of the mountain over AMERICAN MISSION. 437 looking their city, where is now the mosk of the Seven Sleepers. I shall not pause to explain, in full, the reasons for abandoning my projected journey to Nineveh. Enough for me to say that I was disappointed at finding that, in the present state of the war, it was the height of madness, especially with a lady in the party, to attempt to cross the country east of Damascus, given over, as it now was, to roving bands of robbers, lawless, and owning no allegiance to any government or God. I abandoned the plan, therefore, with reluctance, but satisfied that I was doing the best under the circumstances, and that at another day I might be able to accomplish what I now left unfinished. It was with reluctance that I turned my face toward Baalbec and the Mediterranean. There was an awful row in the entrance to the courtyard of the hotel just before we were ready to start, which, on examination, proved to be the process of reducing the price of sundry goods which the dragoman of some newly arrived travelers was purchasing. The market-man made an exorbitant demand, and the dragoman thrashed him till he named a fair rate of bargain and sale, and then all was quiet. I can not take leave of Damascus without expressing my admiration of the mission of the Scotch Presbyterian church, in America, which is established here. I had the pleasure one morning of attending the school of Miss Dale, connected with the mission, and of observing the scholars' proficiency in their several studies. I was deeply impressed with the value and success of her labors. The position occupied by the entire American mission among the natives, and the high respect felt and expressed for them constantly, was a source of pride and gratification to all American travelers. I was particularly struck with the affection expressed for Dr. Paulding, 438 A CAMEL DRIVER'S GOAD. both here and at Zebdani, where he usually passes the summer, and the great grief which his intended departure had caused. He and Mr. Fraser called to bid us good-by as we were departing, and while we sat on our horses and talked with them a few moments, an old man came up with an armfull of camel goads, of which we bought three. Moreright lost his in Beyrout. Whitely, I am iorry to say, left his in a wine-shop between Civita Vecchia and Rome, where we stopped as we were posting up one hot day of the next summer, and I brought mine home. It is a stick worth possessing, a simple almond branch with a cross-piece for a handle, a limb being cut off with one branching from it, and the handle pointed sharp on both sides: with one side the driver can hook it in the camel's nose and draw his head down, or with the other he can goad him on. The peculiar interest in the stick is, that it is the same precisely that we find delineated on the Egyptian monuments as used three thousand years ago. We rode around town an hour looking for shot. I was out of the article, and had much difficulty in procuring some, but after a long search I found precisely what I wanted, and thereby hangs a tale which will appear hereafter. As we rode out of the gate of the city, the guard standing in the archway presented arms, expecting a bucksheesh, and got it, and we then rode on across the valley toward Sulghiyeh, the chief suburb of the city, which lies at the foot of the northern mountains, and is a peculiarly sacred place from its old mosks, and as the burial-place of many saints. Passing the village, we paused on a knoll behind it that commanded a view of the plain, which may well rank with any view in the world. This, and the view we had a half hour later from WHEELED VEHICLES. 439 the summit of the hill, are celebrated in travel and story, being the same that frightened Mohammed away from Damascus, lest he should lose heaven. The Awaj, or crooked river, coming into the plain from the south-west, and the Barada, from the northwest, water it, as I have already stated. The latter river is probably the ancient Pharpar, and if so, the former is undoubtedly the Abana. But nothing can be affirmed of either. The Barada flows through the city, but is a yellow, muddy stream before it reaches the walls, although in the mountain it is very clear and fine. Both rivers flow eastward to the great marshy lakes which lie twelve miles from Damascus, and are there lost. The sandy soil and the rays of the hot sun absorb or dissipate the waters. There was an old ruined mosk close by us, presenting a fine appearance of Gothic and Saracen architecture mingled, and beyond lay the gardens and palaces of the city of Eden. For here of old was Beit Eden-the abode of Eden-and here might well have been the garden of Paradise. We saw in the open court of the fine house of Raif Pasha, two wheeled carriages, one on four wheels, and the other a sort of gig, which are worthy of mention as the first and last wheeled carriages that we saw in Asia. I wonder how they got there, and what he does with them, for there is not a road on which he can use them in or out of Damascus. It was a grand view, and I impressed it on my mind forever. We stood in silence for a long while, gazing on city and plain, and then waving our hands toward the city for a last greeting, turned somewhat sadly away. Betuni had been sitting on his donkey, facing the city also, and the donkey and his rider were alike interested in the view, and appreciated it equally well. 440 BETUNI. As we moved on, Betuni rode up alongside, with a flourish of his turban and his bare, shorn head, rolling and shining in the sunlight, as he shouted, " Good-by, Mr. Damascus, How you do? Good-by, Mr. Damascus," and plumped his donkey directly in front of Moreright, who rode with a free rein, and sat on his horse with perfect grace, and who now rode down Betuni with a coolness that astounded me as much as him. The donkey staggered ten feet and fell, and Betuni was pitched ten further. The donkey was up first, and off like a dark streak of lightning, leaving the road strewed with feed-bags and saddle-bags, boornooses, and other rags of Betuni's baggage, to say nothing of a dozen huge wafer-cakes of bread, two feet in diameter, and as thin as a knife-blade, which Betuni had provided for his luncheon, and used on his donkey by way of a cushion in the meantime. By the time the donkey reached the custom-house, there was nothing to stop him for, and he went by, at a shuffling gallop, while we all followed, leaving Betuni to pick up his traps and come on as he best might. The custom-house was a cavern at a narrow defile of the road, cut through the rock, and not more than six feet wide; an excellent place to collect tolls on all goods coming from the sea, or going toward it. The guard shouted for a bucksheesh as we plunged by him, but we had paid our utmost at the city gate, and so we rode on, up the steep, narrow, winding pass, to the summit of the hill, by the little Dome of Victory (Kubbet-el-Nasr), and here paused for our last view of the magnificent valley. To one arriving here from among the gorges of Lebanon that we were now about entering, it must be indeed a vision as of Paradise. Let me pause, a moment, here. In a distant land, on the summit of Lebanon, surrounded by dark-skinned Arabs, himself wearing the dress of the desert, and the beard of the East, there stood, that calm, SO LONG! 441 still morning, a young man, who, after far journeyings, had at last reached the extreme point of his wanderings, and turned his face once more to his father's home. Many and difficult had been the paths his feet had trodden from the days when that father first taught their steps. They had now borne him to the lands of the patriarchs, and prophets, and the Lord, and he thought to go back laden with rich treasures for the old man's ears, in the happy winter nights of home. Dark countenances looked on him as he gazed for the last time on Damascus. He smiled himself; as he glanced down at his weatherstained garments, and his arms, flashing in the sunshine. He wondered if the old man would know him, should he walk into the house in that strange guise. The morning sun was high up on the plains of Damascus, but it was still dark night in America, and there was a different scene there. As the evening closed in around him, the noble old man had spoken of his absent boy, and asked, " When did he say, in the last letter, that he might be home?" "Perhaps next autumn." " So long-so long!" he murmured, but not sadly, for he was of cheerful mood that night, and lay down to rest right happy, after praying for the wanderers. And in the calm night, when he could not sleep, but did not dream of the presence of the messenger of God, while the companion of almost a half century was talking with him, as in the nights of long-gone years, he ceased to speak. No sigh, or sound, or tremor of the lip, announced the coming change. The angel was in the room, and when the moment came, interrupted the scene, and bade him to the company on the other side of the vail, and he went forth to meet the apostles and prophets. 19* 442 THE HILLS OF HEAVEN. Yea, the grand old man lay dead, and none knew it! and when at length the wife of half a century clasped him in her arms, and laid her cheek to his in the dim light of the night candle, and called him by old names of endearment, then their boy was wandering on the hills of Lebanon, singing a gay song to his horse, and as he climbed a higher steep, his father was climbing the hills of heaven. Cbogipog qfi-Y-0eboiPq. THE change from the rich plain of Damascus to the bleak and barren hills of Anti-Lebanon, was sudden and painful. At Dumar, one hour and a half from Damascus, we came to the bank of the Barada, which rushes hence down a deep and terrible gorge, to the plain. We did not cross the bridge here, but having sent on the tents to await us at Suk el Barada (the market of the Barada), we diverged to the right, for the purpose of visiting the great fountain of the Barada at Feejee. We rode through a desolate country among the hills for three or four hours, pausing only to rest at luncheon, and seeing neither grass nor tree; though I saw some ploughed land which might hereafter be green. At three o'clock we turned to the left, and came down a ravine, to the bank of the river again, at a little place called Messima (or Bessima?). The hill-sides here, as we descended toward the river, were filled with open tombs, one hill being an absolute honey-comb. At Messima I found the remains of an ancient aqueduct, carried down the bank of the Barada, through solid mountains, by long tunnels, the object of which I can not imagine, unless I suppose it to be part of an aqueduct to Palmyra. The work continued below Messima by a rock-tunnel of great skill and labor, of the 444 SPRING AT FEEJEE. extent of which I had not the time to obtain any idea, further than the view we had of it as we rode into the valley. We saw it like a canal in the perpendicular side of the rock, with occasional short tunnels, for some hundred feet, and then it entered the rocks, and must have extended at least three hundred feet before it again emerged. Messima is one of the most beautiful spots on earth, a gem of green valley under lofty precipices. Our road now continued up the left bank of the river. The ravine was one of great scenery. The rocks on each side were lofty, precipitous, and grand. Crags, a thousand feet high, overhung our way. The narrow valley, or bottom of the ravine, was filled with poplar-trees, which are cultivated throughout this country as the only timber for house-building. We saw them first at Belt Jin, planted in rows along the bed of the stream, and on little islands in it. Here the same plan was pursued, so that they grew tall and slender, and, being carefully trimmed, were kept straight and free from knots. There was one hill on the south side that seemed to have been thrown up by an earthquake. The strata were within ten degrees of being perpendicular, running up to the point of the mountain, which stood a thousand feet up in the sky in perfect grandeur. At four o'clock we were at Feejee, and here found what I presume the present state of geography will confirm me in saying is the finest fountain in the world. I had thought so of Tell-el-Khady and of Banias, but this surpassed them both. There is a barren, rocky hill, five hundred feet high, which stands on the north side of the Barada valley. Under the base of this a strong river gushes out of an old and ruined archway. It springs out like a living thing. It is strong, furious, noble in its first plunge; and it goes down the ravine as if it had a great work to accomplish somewhere and were hastening to it. It is very strange SILVER SKULL-CAPS. 445 that all the greatest springs in the world have no outlets, but run to naught-the Jordan to the Dead Sea, and this to the lakes of Damascus. This spring has in ancient times been covered with a temple; and the remains of several such buildings still stand around it. We dismounted on a narrow platform at the foot of the rocky mountain, which was built to support a small. four-sided building. The front of the platform was of large stone in five courses, supported on an arch of five large stones. This arch was about twelve feet wide and five or six high. From this the river comes. Within the arch the spring had hollowed out a sort of cavern, where it roared and boiled furiously before it came out. On the level at the side of the spring are the side-walls of a building which had formerly an arched roof, now gone. A niche for a statue remains in the rear wall, and two others in the sides of the front entrance. Over the fountain in the side of the rocky hill is a cavern, reminding one of the same peculiarity at Banias, and suggesting the idea whether both may not be artificial, having been attempts to provide an outlet for the spring, at a higher level, which were abandoned almost as soon as commenced. Neither cavern appears to have any of the ordinary characteristics of a natural grotto. The village of Feejee is a few rods below the spring. Young girls began to come down to the spring, each having in her hand a curious silver bowl, with silver chains and coins attached, with which they dipped water and gave us to drink. After a drink all around they applied them to their original purposes, being neither more nor less than coverings for their dirty heads! —a solid silver skull-cap!-the form of bridal presents in AntiLebanon, which every bride expects on or before her marriage! Miriam's inclination to throw back the water she had 446 ABILA. been drinking out of the silver cup was overcome by hastily mounting her horse and starting at a gallop up the valley, an example that we all followed. As this road is seldom traveled, I give the distances here for the benefit of future travelers. From Dumar to Feejee, without pause, in three hours. We left the fountain at half-past four. The stream of the Barada was now much more than half diminished. 5 o'clock, Dayr-el-Kerrim. 5.15, Kafr-e'-Zait, and opposite Dayr Anous or Anoun. 5.35, Kafr Hassaneeyeh, on the opposite side. Here we saw before us the lofty cliffs of Abila, which we were approaching, and under which the tents were to be pitched. Whitely and Moreright rode on ahead of us, while Miriam and I loitered slowly along. Abila is a noble cliff, on the summit of which there is a table of good land, on which a few trees find root and fringe the edge of the lofty precipice. The Moslem tradition locates there the grave of Abel, who they think was murdered by Cain at Zebdani. Adam carried the body about with him until, taught by the example of a raven, who dug a grave and buried a dead bird before him, he too buried his dead in the first grave of earth. The similarity of the name Abel to Abila will strike the reader; and it is very possible that the tradition arose from the name of the hill, which it bore before the days of the false prophet. But it might well be that Paradise was hereabouts. This, of all hills on earth, would be a fit one whereon to build an altar to God. The blue sky of the evening rested on its very summit; the clouds swept calmly and lovingly by. At 5.50 we were at Kafr el Ow-e-meet, and, turning short to the left, we crossed the Barada by a low, ruined stone bridge, and entered the road from Damascus to Beyrout. Continuing up the valley ten A MARONITE FAMILY. 447 minutes, we were at Suk Wady Barada, where the tents were to be; but we did not find them till 6.10, when we were almost on top of them. They were pitched in a niche, cut in the rocky hill-side, for the floor of some ancient building now wholly gone. The platform was sheltered on three sides by the smooth rock walls; a more beautiful spot for a camp could not be selected. A party of Maronites-grandmother, father, and mother, and a host of children-had placed themselves under our protection for the night, and were curled up in the corners of the rock in a picturesque little group. I threw myself on the ground, and watched the coming darkness steal over the mountain tops, fall into and fill up the valley. Betuni had not gotten over his morning's mishap, and was abusing the horses generally, wherefore he got a kick from Mohammed that sent him in a heap into the Maronite group, whence he sprang to his feet and spit at Mohammed, the horse, with all the venom conceivable. I shouted at the scene, and then Betuni stumped up in front of me, in all the glory of a new pair of morocco boots, with enormous crimson tops, and began to address me in the Betuni style; the more he talked, the more I shouted with laughter. Miriam came out to see the fun; Whitely and Moreright stood behind him, and helped provoke him to more furious anger; and, in the midst of all, Ferrajj came with his white eyes and teeth and robe, to announce dinner, to which we hastened. While we sat at the table, with coffee and pipes, Betuni's head appeared under the canvas. "One cigarra, Mister Wittely; one cigarra, for Betuni." And when Whitely had thrown a cigar at him, he attacked Moreright for a pair of socks, to wear under his boots; and when he had got them he retired, and in five minutes we heard a row at the camp fire, and Betuni was 448 TOMB OF ABEL. in fresh trouble. His mishaps only ended with the day; but what that row was I never knew, for I slept tremendously. I have described our camp ground. The nature of the building which had formerly occupied it, I can not even guess. But that it was in or near the ancient city of Abila, there can be little doubt. In the morning I attempted to climb the hill, but gave out a thousand feet above the camp. Moreright pushed on, and found the tomb of Abel; a mound, thirty feet long, surrounded by the ruins of an ancient temple, and covered with a Mohammedan structure of the nature of a wely. The Moslems have gigantic ideas of the patriarchs. The grave of Eve, at Jedda, on the Red Sea, is about a hundred feet long. That of Joshua, on the Bosphorus, is of similar size. Noah's resting-place, on the east slope of Lebanon, at Maalakha, where we were a few days later, is more than eighty feet long; and the traditions of the size of Adam represent him as so large that, in traversing the world's surface, he left footprints on only such places as are now occupied by cities, while the intermediate country was untouched in his gigantic strides. From a seat on the hill-side I saw our mule caravan getting away, and one by one disappearing up the ravine. When I came down the hill, Miriam sat on her horse waiting for me, and Whitely stood near. Moreright was on the hill, and had not yet appeared; but at length we heard his shout from the'sky, and saw him walking along the summit looking for a spot where he could safely descend. By nine o'clock we were all in the saddle. The hill-sides were full of tombs, the abandoned sleeping-places of the ancient men of Abila. A little way up the ravine we examined some of them. Abilene is mentioned in Luke, iii. 1, as the tetrarchy ANCIENT HEWN ROAD. 449 of Lysanias, and "Abila of Lysanias" is mentioned by Josephus. We have, however, no history of the city of which the neighboring remains attest the splendor. As we advanced, the ravine became very narrow and picturesque. We at length reached a lofty stone bridge of one pointed arch, under which the Barada foamed and dashed down the rocks. We crossed, and now observed the hills above us, perforated with the doors of tombs. The hills on the north side approached the stream here, and through the rocky bluff was cut a broad and fine road, which would put to shame modern railway cuttings. Underneath it, lower down the hill, was the tunnel of an aqueduct, which passed through the bluff, and was carried a long distance by a channel cut in the side of the perpendicular face of the rock. We traced it afterward for some miles up to the point at which it had evidently received the water of the stream for the supply of Abila. I passed an hour here examining the road, and aqueduct, and the tombs, which are on the receding hill-side above them. The entire length of the cutting for the road was about five hundred feet. It was fifteen feet six inches wide, the sides perpendicular and smooth, the floor a perfect level. It crossed the spur of the mountain, and ended abruptly at a precipice, thirty feet high. The continuation must have been on a track supported by large stone columns, of which many were lying, broken to pieces, on the hill below, as well as large stones that probably formed part of the way. The inscriptions which are carved on the sides of this cutting, and repeated on the hill-side at the other extremity of the tunnel of the aqueduct, have been repeatedly copied and published, but it may be interesting to some readers if I give my own copy of them here, which in some respects differs from any I have seen, probably be 450 INSCRIPTIONS. cause I copied the western inscriptions, while others have taken the eastern. The difference is chiefly in the arrangement of lines, and in the addition of the letters I T, which are wanting in Dr. Robinson's copy, in the last line of the smaller inscription. The smaller inscription was on a smooth tablet, with an arched top, directly under a niche, which had once held a statue. The other inscription was on a large oblong tablet, below the surface of the wall; the last line was outside of the tablet, on the slope of the rough stone. By tablet, in both cases, I mean simply the natural rock smoothed and bordered with a bead or other ornamental edge. The following is the larger inscription: IMPC A E SMAVRELAN TONINVS AVGAR MENIACVSET IMPCAESLAVRELVERVSAVGAR MEN I ACVSVI AM FLVMINIS VIABRVPTAMINTERC SO MONTERESTITVERVNT PE R IVLVERVM L E G PR PRPROVINC S Y RE T A M I CVMSVVM INPENDIISABILENORVM And this is the smaller: PROSALVTE IMPAVGANTO NI l IETVER IMVO LVSIVSMAXIMVS'1LEGXVIFF QVI O PE RIIN S TI TI TVS TOMBS IN THE ROCKS. 451 I walked through the aqueduct for three hundred feet or more, creeping where it was a tunnel. It was very uniformly twenty-six inches wide and four feet high; but where it was not tunneled, it was often a narrow cutting, twenty feet deep. The tombs on the side of the hill, above this place, are of great interest. A flight of twenty steps, cut in the rock, led up to the front of three, which opened on the same platform. One of these had sixteen burialplaces, and these were remarkable as having the same style of arched places of deposit, as I observed in the tomb of Helena at Jerusalem, and in the curious tomb which I have described at Aceldama. The places of deposit, however, were deep in the rock, and it was very evident that each grave was covered with a large stone, tightly sealed, for the outer room had two small perforations, for light and air, opening out at the sides of the doorway, indicating that it was used for occasional visits by the living, who might sit within it. The same was remarkable of one of the tombs at Aceldama, where there were small square windows between the first and second chambers. The most curious tombs here, however, were those which abounded along the hill-side, where the excavation was perpendicular, as if a single grave were to be dug in the rock seven feet by two. Three feet below the surface this widened to four feet and a half or five, and two graves were then continued down, side by side, to a depth I could not ascertain because of the earth that partially filled them. These couples of graves were repeated all along the hill-side, and in some places they were as thick as graves in an old church-yard. Many of the excavated tombs were large and roomy, with graves in the floor and at the sides. The tombs reminded us very forcibly of those around Jerusalem. 452 AN AQUEDUCT. Returning after an hour here, I found that Miriam had gone on with Abd-el-Atti, leaving Betuni with the horses, to wait for us. I much desired to explore a dark ravine that came down through the hills below the precipitous termination of the cut way, but had not time. The aqueduct continued for more than a thousand feet in the hill-side, as we rode on up the valley. A gallop of twenty minutes brought us to the head of the ravine, a broad green plain, where the Barada made a plunge of seventy feet, in a fine cascade. There were remains of two ruined bridges across it, above the fall, and here we found the ruins of the dam which was the commencement of the aqueduct. Hence the Beyrout road continued westerly, crossing the river a mile above this fall, at a fine large mill, the best that I have seen in the East. This is Tahoun el Takea. We turned to the right, leaving the mill and bridge on the left, our destination being Baalbec, to reach which, we made a detour of some days to the northward. While we paused to examine the ruined bridges and dam, Moreright had gone on, leaving Whitely and myself alone. The horses were in fine condition, and we had now a better road before us than we had seen for two days. Giving Mohammed the rein, I led, with a shout, and Whitely followed. The splendid animals strained every nerve, and went off in grand style. The Prophet himself would have been satisfied with their appearance, and pronounced them of the best blood of the Khamsa. For ten minutes the brown kept close on my flank, but then, as the ground became a little heavy, he dropped behind, and, a moment after, I heard a cry from Whitely. Looking around, I saw that his saddle-girth had given out, and the next moment he WOMEN OF ZEBDANI. 453 was off. I spoke to Mohammed, and he brought up in that cannon-ball-against-a-rock style, that the Arab horses alone can imitate. The bay stopped as suddenly. We lost ten minutes by this accident, and had now a long gallop to overtake the party, whom we could see four miles ahead of us. As we approached Zebdani, the scenery became singularly home-like. There were fences, and, most striking of all, old-fashioned, high-post gates, that looked as if they would open and let me into that shady lane, down which I used to loiter in the summer evenings of the long-gone years, or into the grove where the robins sang, close to the old house. The valley was luxuriant with fruit, olives and mulberries. On the side of the mountain, at our right, was Bludan, the summer residence of the Damascus missionaries, looking right pleasant in the valley. The tops of all the hills at the left, as well as right, were covered with snow, although the valley was warm and green. We overtook Miriam among the trees and hedges of Zebdeen, or Zebdani, at the head of the valley. She was sitting under the mulberry-trees, in a field, at the side of the road, and the entire female and juvenile population of the town were around her. She happened to be sewing a rent in her riding-dress, and the needle attracted the admiration of the women, who were all working on embroideries for the Damascus market. In a moment she had a dozen applications for the desired treasures, and her pocket needle-case was soon emptied. There is no gift which travelers can take to the oriental women more eagerly sought for and more gratefully received. There was one beautiful little girl among the crowd. Her black eyes haunted us afterward. When we rode on, she followed by the side of Miriam's horse, shouting 454 MACARONI. her delight at the long grave sentences of English which she addressed to her, and which seemed to go to her heart, though she did not understand them. The family, whom I have mentioned, as sleeping near our tents, in the valley of the Barada, had amused us considerably, in the morning. They were Maronites, from the neighborhood of Baalbec, who had been down to Damascus, in search of work, and were returning without having found it. They were very poor, but very worthy people. Abd-el-Atti, although a Mussulman, took much interest in them, and, in the morning, dosed the entire family, from grandmother to baby, with arrakee, of which he had a bottle presented him in Damascus, by Meluk, in the way of commission on our purchases. Then he packed the young ones on a baggage-mule, and sent the entire lot of them off with the train. As we left Zebdani and mounted the hill north of the village, we found one of the children, a fine-looking girl of fourteen, resting by the side of the road, with her brother, two years older, to guard her. Abd-el-Atti put her on his horse, and walked for an hour, and then she managed to keep up with us as we went slowly on to Sulghiyeh, where we found the tent pitched among an immense display of macaroni, vermicelli, and various other eatables that lay around on table-cloths spread on the ground. One of the mules had fallen into the Barada, and soaked his load, which was in a doubtful condition in consequence. Abd-el-Atti boiled the stuff in a heap and made a grand mess, which he gave to the Maronite family, in consequence whereof the old man, who lay just outside my tent, slept so soundly and so loud that I had to shout to him a half dozen times before morning to take a little resting spell and give me a chance for a few winks. What a glorious night that was in the tents, even as all the nights were glorious. Our dinner-table was always FERRAJJ. 455 set in Whitely and Moreright's tent. Dinner occupied an hour, and after dinner Ferrajj brought the chibouks, and Hajji Mohammed perfected such Mocha as might have intoxicated gods that were susceptible to ambrosial influences. The table stood across one side of the tent, and two beds across the other sides. We sat on camp stools, or lounged on the beds for sofas. Books were piled on the table after the dinner was cleared away. It was a favorite joke of Betuni-which he sometimes repeated when on his mule along the road-to come in with the large copy of Robinson which we carried in the luncheon saddle-bags, open in his hands, reading aloud, "Tomorrow we go seven hours Sulghiyeh-to-morrow we go six hours Baalbec," certain that his monkey face would be greeted with abundant merriment. Ferrajj was omnipresent. "Ferrajj, more hot milk." "Yez, zur."'"Ya-Ferrajj, haat elKetub akmar." "Aiowah Howajji." "Ferrajj, tell Betuni to see that that saddle. girth is strong." " Yez, zur." "Ferrajj, hang my ridingskirt by the kitchen fire." "Yez, mum." "Ferrajj, some coffee; fill my chibouk; bring me another mouth-piece out of the red saddle-bags; and while you're there, find the small Greek Testament that is somewhere in the large bag, and tell Selim to rub Mohammed's shoulders well with arrakee and warm water and-" "Come here, Ferrajj. " Yez, zur;" and the black head would come through the canvas, for we always shouted to him in the kitchen tent, and some fresh orders would be given, and he would remember every separate direction, nor omit an iota of it all. $0s 1e' 6^ of fbe 35nu FROM Sulghiyeh to Baalbec the road was picturesque and wild. Sometimes we went along precipitous hill-sides, looking down a thousand feet into the ravines, through which loud brawling streams went swiftly toward the Mediterranean, and at others we traced the course of such streams with the hills far above us. We lunched in a deep, warm, sunny valley, cooling our wine with snow that we had brought from the high ridge of the mountain as we crossed it, such were the changes of climate from hour to hour. Our route lay through the mountains of the Anti-Lebanon range, from which we at length emerged on the great plain that lies between it and the true Lebanon, whose lofty and grand hills, snowcapped and magnificent, now towered in the western sky. As we came out on the plain, the grand ruins of Baalbec were visible before us, and we rode on at a rapid pace toward them. If all the ruins of ancient Rome that are in and around the modern city were gathered together in one group, they would not equal the extent of the ruins of Baalbec. The remark may seem strange, or even extravagant, but I believe it to be literally true. And yet a mystery hangs about these mighty relics which time will never unfold. Who laid up these vast walls, who carved these I ki? A?~7~~:~~.... -!il iV A 4 VIA,LRA N O I O I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'i VIA~~~ DOOOA NEA: OU IEDHUE IMMORTALITY. 457 stately columns, who walked these halls and worshiped in these temples? is almost as dark a question as who built the pyramids of Sakkara, or who slept in the sarcophagus of Cheops. Standing in the Temple of the Sun, and looking up to the sky through its shattered roof, I asked the question of the blue air that knows so many mysteries, and received the answer of the sky. Somewhere beyond or this side of the blue-somewhere, there are immortals that know it all, whose knees once pressed these marble floors with the devotion of worshipers, whose voices once echoed in these arches in hymns of praise. Altars and worshipers are dust, and the sun, day by day, looks down through the broken roof on the deserted and ruinous fane that they built to his worship, and laughs with his soft summer laugh at the memory of their wind-scattered incense. And there to-day it seems not strange that men should worship the sun, who, with the same smile, looks down on the ruined temple as he looked down on the templebuilders thousands of years ago. There is something in the heart of man that worships the immutable, more than the invisible. The creature of the day reaches out his arms and longs to embrace that which was born a thousand years ago, and adores that which will last a thousand years to come. But that which changes not, as the years change-that which stands up firm above the shifting sands of the desert of life-that which looks down from a clear sky beyond driving mists — he bows down before that, and of that he begs immortality. For, after all, the innate religion of the human heart, of which so much is written and so much said, is the desire for eternity of existence, which men in a state of nature but guess at, and dimly understand. It was not so strange that the men of old times worshiped the sun and stars. 20 458 B AALBEC. I, too, half worshiped the sky that night as I sat in my tent door, under the lofty columns of the Temple of the Sun. The modern village of Baalbec is situated on the north and east of the great temples, on the level of the plain, above which the latter are elevated. The platform of the temples, which I shall hereafter describe, is bounded on the east by the eastern colonnades of the great Temple of the Sun, which runs along the edge of it, and of which many of the columns and the carved ceiling are now fallen and lying in fragments below, forming an immense mass of ruin. Outside of these our tents were pitched; I had intended to place them within the temple. As we approached the vast pile, and entered the old Saracen wall which surrounded it, I paused in silent wonderment before the ruins. We went in silence around the sustaining wall of the platform on which the ruins stand, looking up at the massive temples-that were piled on it; on the north side I found a dark archway, and we all rode into it. It was a long cavern in the platform, built of immense stone, arched overhead, and as we rode into it two or three hundred feet, the busts of men looked down on us from the dimly-lighted vaults, as if in wonder at this strange entrance of horsemen to their silent abodes. Returning, we continued around the temple, taking the wall of some fellah's garden at a flying leap on the northwest corner, and so coming down by the other side, where we saw and were astounded by the great stones which have been so frequently described. I had been long familiar with Egyptian grandeur, but I confessed at once that Egypt knew nothing to compare with these. Returning at length to the place at which we had entered the village, I attempted to mount the fallen columns and massive stones, which lay heaped up on the eastern side of ANCIENT HELIOPOLIS. 459 the inclosure, and gain access to the temple platform itself. In this I succeeded. The horse Mohammed would go into the second floor window of a New York house, if I rode him at it seriously. He leaped from stone to stone like a cat, and climbed up forty feet of debris that I could with great difficulty have accomplished myself. I found a better path down, but not practicable for the loaded mules; and accordingly I directed the men to pitch the tents under the eastern colonnade of the great temple. Certainly I could not have desired a spot more picturesque. A stream of clear water ran close behind us, and when the moon rose, late at night, and shone on the grand columns of the temple and its gray old walls, the scene was sufficiently grand. I shall not attempt to sketch the supposed history of Heliopolis. That it was a city of early Phenician origin I think may be taken for granted, from the name Baalbec, and that it was greatly beautified, in the days of the Roman emperors, may be inferred from the present magnificent ruins that are evidently of that period. Thus much we may safely affirm, but more than this must be conjecture. If the reader will bear with me a little, I will endeavor to give him such a description of the ruins as will enable him to form some idea of their magnitude, and conjecture, almost as well as those who have visited them, the name and character of their founders. The site of these ruins was originally a plain, extending miles to the north and to the south. They are situated a half a mile from the eastern side of the valley. On this plain a platform has been elevated, by building a sustaining wall of immense stone, and arched galleries or passages, as well as arched chambers, on which earth has been heaped and leveled. The platform thus erected 460 IMMENSE STONES. is of irregular shape, one part in the main being a large rectangular parcel, and another hexagonal, extending north-eastward from the first, and yet another rectangular piece against this. The height of the upper level of the platform from the plain may be thirty feet, sufficient to command a view limited only by the distant mountains of Lebanon. On this platform were erected numerous splendid temples, courts, chapels, altars, and places of study and of prayer. In the days of its glory it can hardly be doubted that it was, with one exception, the most magnificent temple in the world. Not, indeed, so massive, grand, and imposing as Karnak, but in its airy beauty, the richness of its Corinthian columns, the splendor of its high cornices and friezes, and the light heaven-aspiring character of all its architecture, it must have been the most brilliant and beautiful of all the places of heathen worship. Commencing our view with the outside of the platform wall, at the south-west corner, we find the great stones which form the most celebrated feature of Baalbec. Of these there are just twenty, and as I have seen hitherto no full and accurate account of these stones, although many imperfect and inaccurate have been published, I shall not apologize for stopping to describe them. Though they are but twenty very rough stones, they are, nevertheless, among the most interesting relics of antiquity in the world. They are in two rows, one on the south side of the great platform, and the other on the west (west side and north, as they are sometimes called). Commencing with the row on the west side, and going southward, I found ten stones, measuring in order as follows (the first one is comparatively small, and I have lost the measurement): the next, 30 feet, then 31, 30.6, 30.6, 32, 30.6, 30, 32.4, 30.6. IMMENSE STONES. 461 Each stone is thirteen feet high, and ten feet six inches thick. The thickness varies an inch or two. This wall stands alone, and has never been carried up. There is no structure on it, but the stones are gray and time-worn. A doorway has been cut through one of these stones, which admitted me to the space between it and the sustaining wall of the platform, which is built of beveled stone. This space is grass-grown and level, and from it I climbed to the top of the wall of large stones. They were smoothly cut, fitting exactly against each other, but at the point of the junction of each two stones, they were notched on the front in a peculiar manner, and for purposes which I shall hereafter mention. The notch was about four feet long up and down the line of junction, about a foot wide and eight inches deep at the top, running to a point, and out to the edge of the stones at the bottom of the notch. This row of stones continues to the south-west corner of the platform, which, by a rough wall, is projected so as to rest on the corner-stone and the next one to it, and on these a high sustaining wall is built. The height on this corner of the whole platform must be about forty feet. The corner-stone in continuation of this wall, is of the same class as the others, but not so large. It is about thirteen feet each way. But after turning the corner, we find that this stone projects about two feet beyond the line of the wall above it, and is beveled or worked off to the face of that walT. Then follow six stones, precisely similar to those we have described, whose entire length is 189 feet. But these also project, as does the cornerstone, and are worked off from about four feet below their upper sides to the line of the wall above it, instead of having a perpendicular face with the peculiar notches I have described in the others. But the wall above these last six stones is the wonder 462 IMMENSE STONES. of Baalbec and the world. It consists of three stones, exactly covering the six below them. Their length is therefore one hundred and eighty-nine feet, and I measured them three times without being able to detect a difference in them, though there may be an inch or two as described by others. The height of these stones, on the face, is thirteen feet, just that of the stones on which they rest, and the depth must be guessed at. In the plans of Casas, which I have before me, it is given at sixteen feet four inches (French of course), and it may be fairly estimated at fifteen feet. It is true that on these stones the wall of the platform is continued up. But that wall has manifestly nothing to do with the original design of the layers of this cyclopean structure. There is nothing else in or around Baalbec which bears any relation or resemblance to these stones, or indicates the existence of the same grandeur of design and power of execution. I say there is nothing like it in or around Baalbec. I am wrong. In the quarry, a half mile from here, lies a stone sixty-eight feet some inches long, seventeen wide, and fourteen feet six inches in thickness. The end of this has not been trimmed off. This done, would reduce it probably to the average length of the three now in position. There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that this stone was to be placed in position on the wall at the western side, in continuation of the three on the south, connected with them by a corner-stone. The notches I have spoken of, were the commencement of the working down of the upper part of these stones, which were left solid until the large stones were in position on them, when they were to be sloped up to them, as I have described those under the three great stones. But I apprehend no one can see any indication that the THE STRUCTURES. 463 other works of Baalbec are of the same age, or by the same persons with these gigantic rocks. The contrast between them and the Roman wall above, is greater than between the Roman and the later Saracen walls laid upon them when Baalbec was made a fortress. Who, then, built these two walls? Who cut these twenty stones-sole memorials of a work that was magnificent in its design beyond any other work on the face of the earth, but abandoned in its very commencement? I have no doubt that they are of an age long preceding the Roman Empire, an age of giant thoughts, such as planned the Pyramids, or the mighty columns and architecture of Karnak. The Romans found them here, the evidence of an unknown race and a forgotten power, and on them built their gorgeous temples. Storms beat on the airy structures of the Romans, and they stood firm and bright in the succeeding sunshine. But earthquakes came and shook them down, and the works of the giants laughed at the earthquakes, and stood firm while shattered capitals and architraves were rained down on and around them. In building their platform, the Romans, or whoever continued the works at Baalbec, used the fa.th wall, but preferred not to use the western, leaving it exposed, and, apparently, useless, running their wall about twenty feet inside of it. This wall is of beveled stone, and may be of more ancient date than the Roman temples. Of this it is impossible, at present, to affirm any thing. I confess that my subsequent examination of the galleries and chambers under the platform, led me to think that the immediate predecessors of the Romans were men of intermediate power, more like,the hewers of the twenty stones, but not nearly so great in their ideas. On the highest part of the platform, in the south-west corner. of it, stood a grand temple, of which only six 464 RUINS OF BAALBEC. columns, supporting part of the architecture, now remain. These columns are each seven feet six inches in diameter, at the base, and are alone left of seventy that formed the peristyle of a temple of the most elegant Corinthian style. They are visible throughout the extent of the plain of Baalbec, over which the temple must have shone with great brilliancy. The floor of this temple appears to have been terraced up toward the south side, as it ascends in that direction, and the pavement remains. It is a remarkable fact that, under the temple, the platform has, so far as now known, no chambers or galleries. An excavation would, doubtless, open interesting rooms. I tried various methods of obtaining access, but all in vain, though I am satisfied that such exist, and, doubtless, judging from such as I found elsewhere, of great splendor. In front of this temple was a large quadrangular court, surrounded by exquisite little semicircular temples, all gorgeously carved in florid Corinthian, and each having five dead windows or recesses for statues, and small semicircular seats or niches under them. The latter are strangely and beautifully carved; one has al eagle among stars forming the top, another a winged globe, many had scallop-she6i, beautifully cut. This quadrangle was filled with various buildings, of which the ruins lie in it. It opens into a hexagonal court also surrounded with niches for statues, and this into a grand portico, flanked by two square towers, of which the ancient form is totally lost by the Saracen changes. I presume that the grand steps to the temple led up from the plain here, but they are now gone, nor is there any trace of them. Returning to the great temple, and descending to a lower level of the platform, on the east, we came to the great Temple of the Sun, the walls of which are still standing. It had a peristyle of thirty-six columns, plain shafts TEMPLE OF THE SUN. 465 with elegant Corinthian capitals, and foul inner columns fluted, making forty in all. These are mostly fallen and broken to pieces, but on the north-west side nine remain standing, and support the ceiling of the peristyle. This ceiling is composed of immense stones, elaborately carved in compartments, with fruits, flowers, and busts of gods and goddesses. Entering the temple by a hole in the Saracen wall that closes it, we find a grand doorway which was square, the top being trilithic, two stones resting on the pilasters or side posts, the middle one keyed in between these. This middle stone has been shaken from its position, and the outer two, opening a little, have let it slip down, but it is caught by the width of its upper part, and thus hangs, threatening destruction to whoever passes under it. On the under side of this stone is carved an eagle, whose wings, or the tips of them, are left on the other stones. The tips touch two cupids, one of which scaled off when the eagle fell. The other was battered by the early Christians, whose Vandalish propensities are so noticeable in Egyptian temples. The eagle's bill holds a wreath and bundle of flowers. Within, the temple is battered and bruised, and defaced with the names of hundreds of modern travelers. Still it is gorgeous, and was glorious. The carving of the oakleaves and acorns, of the delicate bead-work, and of the intricate and innumerable patterns and ornaments, surpasses all the work in stone that I have seen elsewhere. Wreaths, festoons, and garlands are wrought all over the walls with the utmost skill and taste. On the east side of this temple there are yet standing four of the columns which support a very perfect specimen of the frieze, but no description can convey an idea of the elaborate nature of it. Bulls' and lions' heads alternate with oak leaves and grapes, and various other patterns, 20* 466 UNDER THE PLATFORM. The top of this architrave is disfigured by a rude stone wall, piled on it by the Saracens, the object of which I am at a loss to guess at. There are many other ruins of buildings on the great platform and connected with it, but I pass from them to the vaults below. I postponed an examination of these until the third day of our visit, having devoted a part of the previous day to finding an entrance under the great temple, which I have already stated was without result. There are three great galleries under the platform. Two running from north to south, and one connecting these two. Besides these, there are a large number of chambers, all built in the same massive style. The lower rows of stone are very large-much larger than any thing seen in the Roman structures above ground. The arches are, in many cases, evidently built on a plan quite different from that which was adopted in laying these stones. The only room of special beauty to which I obtained access appeared never to have been visited before by any traveler. Walking up the eastern gallery I observed a sort of window, into which I mounted by Whitely's shoulders. It was all dark. I lighted a piece of paper with a match and threw it in. It fell ten feet, and showed me a hard floor for an instant, on which I jumped, without stopping to calculate how I should get back again. I lit a candle, and found on the ground a considerable quantity of straws, blown in through the hole at which I had entered. Gathering these together, I called Whitely and Moreright to come in. They came as I had, helping each other. Then I touched my candle to the pile, and it flashed up brilliantly, long enough to show us a lofty square chamber with arched ceiling elaborately carved, in the style of the ceiling of the peristyle of the Temple of the Sun. There were places for statues on the side INSCRIPTIONS. 467 walls, and a doorway that once opened out to the outer ground, but now closed with large stone, probably in Saracen times. Thus much I saw, and the fire vanished. We helped each other out, and walked up and down these vast subterranean halls for nearly two hours before we were called away. The eastern gallery opened up at its extremity, directly into the platform near the smaller temple, and appears to have been used for processions. Frequent busts appear in the key-stones of the arch, but all of them are so much defaced as to be unrecognizable. I have not pretended to give a full account of the Roman ruins in Baalbec. Enough is accomplished if I have given the reader a general idea of their grandeur and extent. Inscriptions have been diligently looked for at Baalbec, and two were found on the pedestals of columns in the front of the smaller temple. I could not find them, and presume they are now lost. They are said to have been as follows: 1. MAGNIS DIIS HELIUPOLITANIS PRO SALUTE ANTONINI PII FELICIS AUGUSTI ET JULIE AUGUTSTA MATRIS DOMINI NOSTRI CASTRORUM SENATUS PATRIL * * * COLUMNARUM DUM ERANT IN MURQ IN LUMINATA SUA PECUNIA EX VOTO LIBENTI ANIMO SOLVIT. 2, MAGNIS DIIS HELIUPOLITANIS * * * ORIIS DOM, INI NOSTRI ANTONINI PII FELICIS AUGUSTI ET JULIX AUGUSTIE MATRIS DOMINI NOSTRI CASTRORUM * * * NTONIAN2E CAPITA COLUMNARUM DUM ERANT IN MURO INLUMINATA SUA PECUNIA * ~ * I give these as Dr. Robinson copies them from Wood and Dawkins. I, however, found the remains of two Greek inscriptions in one of the small chapels or oratories on the west side of the great quadrangle, which I] think have escaped 468 INSCRIPTIONS. observation. They were on projecting sills or slabs, which did not mark the statues, but rather appeared to mark the seats of priests or teachers, but so little remains of them, that much must be left to conjecture in determining their meaning. I give them with the letters in position as I found them, marking the ends of the line as the ends of the stone. There was but one line possible on each stone. 1. [0 nOEI NE lI W 2. IT OT OL ANAA A And these are all the records, in characters known to men, that are left on earth of the might and majesty of Baalbec. Miler: 31. De Bogey of Xeb6oTHE afternoon and evening of our arrival at Baalbec were devoted to strolling around among the ruins, catching here and there views of peculiar beauty, resting on fallen columns or broken capitals, and losing ourselves in the wilderness of ruins. In the starlight the four columns above our tents towered in the dark air with awful grandeur; and later, when the moon was up, the scene was only equaled by moonlight on old Thebes. The next afternoon Miriam held a levee in her tent. The inhabitants of Baalbec are chiefly Christian and Metaw-Ali (followers of the false prophet Ali, Mohammedan heretics). Two or three of the little girls who wandered down to the tents from the village reported the kind reception they met with from the Frank lady, and a halfdozen neatly-dressed girls of thirteen and fourteen came down to see her. These were followed by six girls of rare beauty. You might search a long while and not find in any land six such beautiful daughters of Eve in one small village. They were all alike in their tall, lithe forms, the soul of grace, with that soft languor which is esteemed perfection of beauty in the East. Their faces were of different moulds. One, Warda (Rose) by name, was of exceedingly proud and queenly countenance. Her eye was black and fine, her complexion white and clear, 470 ROSE AND SUZAIN, her features straight and regular, her eyebrows arched and black; lips, rich and red as the flower whose name she bore; teeth like pearls, and a chin that made a susceptible man like Whitley positively crazy when he remembered it. The namesake of Miriam was a soft and languid beauty, with an eye that said little, but looked as if it might be roused to anger at a word. Suzain was like Warda, but had red cheeks and laughing eyes, and an arm that was rounded in the form of Cleopatra's. Alila was a pale girl, of marble beauty, that expressed no interest in the strangers other than cold curiosity; but the fifth was a laughing, rattling coquette, full of the devil, and willing to evince it constantly. One of the younger party who had preceded them having gone home, told her mother of Miriam's reception of her: the latter returned with her daughter on an odd errand, and found the group of beauties on the carpets in the middle of the tent, laughing gayly and chatting with their hostess as if they had known her all their lives; for she had picked up enough of Arabic to sustain such a conversation. The mother had heard of the glory of the Franks, and wished to see if there was a chance of getting a Frank husband for her girl, a black-eyed, laughing child of fifteen. Here was a chance for Whitely and Moreright, and Miriam sent for them instantly. We were all up among the ruins when Ferrajj came with her message, and went down to the tents, much wondering what we were sent for, but nothing disappointed when we saw the group of beautiful girls on the floor of the tent, whose eyes flashed laughingly on us. as we entered. Miriam stated the lady's proposal, but Whitely not only intimated by his looks, but distinctly affirmed, that such a proposition from Warda would receive much more serious consideration, MARRYING FOR LOVE. 471 I have never seen more graceful or refined young ladies than these five appeared to be. It is true they sat on the carpets, but that was their custom; and they wore trowsers, but that was not because they were strongminded women. They talked unblushingly with strangers about marrying them, because that is the sole end of a young woman's life in the East. Alila was engaged to be married, and took no interest in the conversation. The others joined in it, and talked as pleasantly, gayly, and gracefully as refined, educated ladies would be expected at home to converse on indifferent subjects. This was the more remarkable as they were not children of the wealthiest classes, although their parents were persons of character and comfortable property. Warda looked up at Whitely with her large, black eyes fixed full on his face, and he actually blushed at being so fixedly stared at by so beautiful a woman of nineteen, and marriageable at that. "I don't think he can be serious," she said at length, very quietly. "Why not, Lady Rose?i" (Sitt Warda), I asked. "Because I have heard that the Franks marry for love; and he has not known me long enough to love me." " Do you never marry for love?" "How can we? We marry when our parents get us husbands. We have nothing to do with it ourselves. Alila don't know what sort of a man her husband is. He lives at Maalakha. She never saw him." "Are you happy, Lady Alila?" "I-yes. Why not?" I give the reply of Warda in, as near as I can recollect, her very words. It is a singular instance of an expression on the part of an eastern lady, of some discontent at 472 SALAH-E'DEEN. the custom of her fathers in the manner of disposing of her hand. "I wish I had a name like Miriam or Warda, that could be turned into English," said the rosy-cheeked coquette, with a naivete that was very amusing. She did not like the admiration that the queenly Rose was attracting. But, like it or not, it was a necessity. " Do you think, if I should stay here long enough to know you, that you would love me?" She looked up into Whitely's eyes again and said, quietly and calmly, "I wish you would try it." Ah, maiden-white rose of the valley of Lebanon-it is sorrowful to think of your melancholy life, your withering heart. Could one but bring you to a land of warm hearts, a land where the majesty and glory of woman's beauty and purity is triumphant, you would make a queen among women, and would learn the value of your own gentle soul. But all that beauty, and gentleness, and innate pride is to be the toy of a passing hour, and then follows the drudgery of woman's miserable life, to be a bearer of children and carrier of water-for long, cold years-and then death and oblivion. I shudder when I think of the fate of those six brilliant girls. Toward evening we walked up to the Mosk of Salahe'deen, in the village north of the temples. Before reaching it we passed a ruined circular temple, of elaborate Corinthian architecture, which stood together on so feeble a tenure, that I have little doubt that the recent earthquake in the Levant will have overthrown it. In the Mosk of Salah-e'deen is a grave, in the ordinary Turkish style, standing among a forest of columns that support the walls of this place of prayer, where tradition and a tablet say that the mighty foe and fiiend of Richard of the Lion Heart lies sleeping that deep sleep that falls on all alike. I know of nothing to falsify the tradition. MORA LIZING. 473 Here rests a great man. The age has come in which justice can be done to his memory. I could not stand among those columns by that simple, unadorned tomb, and fail to hear the noise of the battle around the gates of Jaffa, or the last wail on the plain of Hattin when the Holy Cross went down. The mosk itself is a most barbarian structure, built of the columns of ancient Baalbec, without reference to size, shape, or uniformity of capitals. Two fine porphyry columns lie on the ground, broken to pieces, and I have seen in St. Sophia, at Constantinople, other very fine porphyry columns, said to be from Baalbec. The mosk is about 120 feet by 200, half an open court, and the other half arched cloisters, built on three columns. The tomb of Salah-e'deen is near the north-east corner of the cloisters. An oil lamp was burning near it, kept there by some Moslem devotee. We strolled about the town and among the ruins until the sun went down over the hills of Lebanon, leaving a crimson glow on the eastern summit, and giving a new and more beautiful light than we had yet seen to the ruins around us. Here, were one disposed to moralize, was the place for it. Here were temples, of which no man could name with certainty even the god to whom they were dedicated; here' were shrines, that were visited by myriads of men and women, old and youngborn even as we, dead even as we must die-who lived, and moved, and talked, and thought, and ate, and drank, and slept, and perished, even as we must do, and their names are erased from the rolls of time. But I confess that I did not so much moralize as I did speculate, and this was the result of my speculations. That the twenty great stones seem to have been hewn and placed where they were by some one who had heard of, or seen the grandeur of Egypt, and desired to surpass 474 WAR DA, THE ROSE. it. Such a person might have been Solomon, the son of David, and son-in-law of a Pharaoh of Egypt. That the next builders had seen the glory of Solomon's temple, had admired its lofty situation on the hill of Moriah, and had knowledge of its subterranean supports. In pursuance of ideas thus derived, they commenced, and perhaps completed the erection of a platform, with such crypts and galleries as w.e have described, and perhaps built on it some form of temple. That in later times the Romans extended this platform and the galleries under it, built great chambers below and greater temples above; and last of all, Time and earthquakes shook them thundering down. And all this is mere conjecture-guess-work-nothing more. I wandered up and down the ruins, pondering on these things till my brain was weary. Then I said, " Let the dead bury their dead," and returned to the tents, where I found Miriam in close conversation with the beautiful Warda and the gay Suzain, and I welcomed the bright faces of the three, as pleasant contrasts to the gloomy old forms that had haunted me for hours before. So ended the second day at Baalbec. ge 8fophi. AT first we decided that we would go, and then that we would not, and so we passed the early morning hours among the ruins. The weather was threatening, but still it did not rain, and, at last, we broke up the camp, sent the tents and baggage on to Zahleh, and rode down to the quarries, where we examined the remaining large stones. There is one very large one, and several others, of the inferior or second size which I have described, lie around it. Then we rode on, down the plain, toward a structure which, at a distance, had presented the appearance of a small ruined temple. It proved to be a Mohammedan tumular structure, consisting of eight granite columns, taken from old temples, some of them placed upside down, supporting a circular architrave. We examined it, without dismounting, and then rode on. But the storm now burst on us with fury. At the very first dash of the sharp rain-drops the horses wheeled their backs to it, and we bowed our heads while it swept over us. It was a pitiless rain-storm-cold as a Labrador breeze, and perfectly blinding, when we attempted to face it. " Interesting view of Baalbec-hey, Whitely?" In spite of the seriousness of the thing we shouted with laughter, at the appearance we presented, four in a 476 HOSPITABLE NATIVES. row, back to the wind, and faces to Baalbec, motionless, as if taking a last look of the ruins. But it was no laughing matter. The tents had gone on long ago, and it remained only to see if we could overtake them, before the ground became too hopelessly soaked to allow of our pitching on the plain. As soon as there was a lull in the first blast, we faced it and pushed on. The recollection of that day is like the memory of a bad dream. I can not, at this distance, realize that its occurrences did actually take place, and that we, and especially Miriam, survived it. The rain increased in violence and was mingled with sleet, which cut our faces wherever they were exposed. Our water-proof clothing was good protection for a few hours, but, at length, streams trickled down our faces and into our necks, and we became thoroughly and irretrievably soaked and drowned. Then we grew sullen and silent, and, at last, seeing a group of low mud huts on the plain, we shouted all at once, and made a stampede for them. We threw ourselves off at the first door, and rushed into the dark hut. A palace would not have been more welcome, nor could a palace have given us a warmer reception. They helped us off with our clothes, they kindled a blazing fire on the little fire-place, in the very middle of the floor, they made hot coffee and gave it to us, rich and reviving, and when we were warm, and dry, and grateful, they didn't ask for bucksheesh, and refused it when offered, so that Whitely had to give a dollar to the baby for a charm, and, just then, a streak of sunshine tempted us out on that accursed plain. The streams that flow into the Leontes were swollen and strong. The first was difficult, the second was worse, and at the third, and no less than five after that, we surrounded Miriam's horse, for she was the weak one of the A TERRIBLE DAY. 477 party, and pressed steadily and slowly across, against the swift and increasing current. Again we were wet, and now no shelter presented itself. On, on, on, the rain growing fiercer, and the air colder. I began to think of falling from my horse myself, and but for the presence of that child and her brave bearing, I should have selected the lee of a bank and sat down in despair. At length the chestnut horse grew restive. It was the first instance since she had ridden him in which he had behaved illy with her. I afterward found that it was owing to the manner in which Selim had put on the saddle. I rode up at her right side and as I did so, the horse deliberately lay down in the mud, and threw her six feet off on the wet, soft ground. It was the climax of woe. The storm was fierce and furious. No sign of human life was visible. We were in the centre of a vast plain, night was approaching, and the storm increasing rather than diminishing. I now sent Abd-el-Atti on to overtake, if possible, the baggage train, and stop it at the first habitable village, which I understood was Maalakha. He left us, and we rode slowly on, the worn-out animals with difficulty lifting their feet out of the heavy mire. At last we saw a village ahead of us, and, picking up courage, the horses sprang forward. Descending a slight incline, dashing into a stream that ran strong up to our saddle-girths, we crossed it side by side, and rode up a little eminence, confident of finding our men and our rest. The disappointment was bitter when we found that this was Ablah, and our people were not here, but Miriam bore it best of all of us, and refused to dismount. The rain poured in torrents, and snow and sleet cut our faces furiously, as we entered Maalakha, an hour and a half further on, just as thick darkness was falling on the mountains. 478 SHELTER AT LAST. Abd-el-Atti had secured for us a house, belonging to a Greek Christian, one Nama el Hadad, and a boy met us at the entrance of the village to guide us thither. Cold, shivering, well-nigh dead, I stumbled and nearly fell, as I dismounted, but gathering enough strength to take Miriam in my arms, I carried her into the hut and laid her on the floor. The house was similar to the one at Beit Jin, but in place of the broad fire-place in the corner, there was only a pan of coals in the middle of the room. The fumes of the charcoal, the smoke from half-burned wood, the dim light of a lamp, consisting of a cup of oil with a rag hanging over the side of it, made the place as gloomy and disagreeable as could well be imagined. Not even the idea of a shelter from that pitiless storm of Lebanon was sufficient to revive our drooping spirits; and when the baggage came to be opened, and we found every thing saturated with dissolved leather-shirts that looked like buckskin, collars that might have been mummycloths, and the various articles of a lady's toilet that might have served the purposes of seven generations of Arabs without seeing soap, for all resemblance they had to a Christian lady's dresses-the depth of our despair was attained. It was not till then that we recovered our voices or our spirits; but the appearance of Whitely, as he stood looking at a pair of slippers which he held in his hand, and which were filled with the solution of a felt hat and a box of tooth-powder, three cakes of Piver's most delicious Imperatrice, and a box of Malta cigars, changed our desperation to furious fun, and we made the village ring with shouts of laughter that frightened the inhabitants out into the driving rain to see what the Franks were doing in the house of Nama the Greek. Fortunately, there was one water-proof bag that contained enough of Miriam's baggage to enable her to get GREEK CHRISTIANS. 479 warm and dry. Rigging a curtain across the room, we had the beds and bedsteads brought in, found them in a dry condition to our great surprise, and arranged our room with some show of comfort. Dinner helped not a little. Hajji Mohammed outdid himself on such occasions, and proved himself an Alexander of cooks. The family, into whose house we had now come, were Greek Christians. We saw only the mother and two sons-one a boy of thirteen, the other a young man of twenty-two. From the moment of entering the house, I was satisfied that we were no longer among honest Moslems. I had now traveled seven months among Mussulman people of every name and shade. I had carried large sums of money, some of the time in open baskets (for in this way I had carried copper coin into Nubia), valuable clothing, arms, and ammunition-had left my boat or my tents often without other guard than my Arab servants, who had free access to every thing; I had absolutely ignored locks and keys, and traveled with open bags, and had never lost a farthing by the dishonesty of a follower of Mohammed. It would not have been difficult at any time while I was in Syria to rob me of a hundred pounds in gold, or of any quantity of valuables. But I would trust a Mussulman with my purse and my life in preference to any other man on earth. Sad as it is for a Christian to be driven to such a conviction, I am compelled to admit it. An Arab, finding you traveling through his country as a stranger, without having applied to his tribe for permission and protection, regards you as an enemy, open to plunder. Such is the law of his fathers, even to Ishmael. But once having placed yourself under his protection, or confided in his honor, you are safer than in your own house in New York. For there burglars may enter, but 480 A DOUBTFUL FAMILY. the thin covering of the black tent, with its law of hospitality, is a perfect guard against loss, rendering safes and safety-locks useless. But I was now for the first time in a Christian house, and I had not been here ten minutes before I began to suspect my hosts. After dinner, as we sat talking by the table, the boy asked me to lend him a knife to mend a pencil. I had none that was sharp enough, but Whitely took out of his pocket a very elegant and expensive traveling-knife, for which he had paid two pounds in England, and handed it to the boy, who thereupon disappeared. An hour afterward he remembered the knife, and asked for it, but the boy was gone. His mother, however, came in from the other room of the house, in which our servants were stowed with the family, and said that the boy understood the knife to be a gift. This we told her was a mistake. The older brother, Mousa, by name, came in with her, and added his assurances, but there was a bad. look out of Mousa's eyes that I did not at all like, and I told them very quietly that the knife must be brought back. They said the boy had gone to a house in another part of the town, but they would send for him, and he would be back in half an hour. It was approaching bedtime, an hour later, when we observed that the boy had not made his appearance. I shouted for the woman. She and Mousa entered. She again pleaded the boy's mistake, and begged that he might be allowed to keep it, saying that he would grieve very much, and his tender feelings would be hurt. It was, then, manifest that there was no intention of returning it, and, accordingly, I took out my watch and laid it on the table before me, where already our entire stock of arms lay piled, and gave them three minutes in which to produce the knife. The change from quiet ques FLEAS IN FORCE. 481 tioning to stern demand took Mousa by surprise. He stepped forward, fixed his eyes on mine with a fierce expression, and perceiving no change of my features, he drew the knife out of his bosom and laid it down before me, and went out. At the same moment, the boy himself, who had watched proceedings through a hole in the wall, came in blubbering terribly. Whitely, who thought it possible that our imperfect knowledge of Arabic had led to the mistake, threw him a dollar as a quietus to his grief, and sent him away. We then prepared to sleep. Of the horrors of that night, the " infandum dolorem," I am unable to describe the sum, or the half. If the king of the fleas resides at Tiberias, the largest city in his empire is at Maalakha. An hour after midnight I got up. I had not yet closed my eyes. My movements attracted Miriam's attention behind her curtain, and she spoke. Whitely and Morerighl groaned aloud. No one of us had thus far winked one second of sleep. I had filled my bed with an Egyptian preparation, which had hitherto been efficacious, but what was poison to such a host? I counted forty-eight of the dead on my sheet, and the next morning there were fifty-three more, making a hundred and one that I diminished the population of Maalakha that night, but sleep was out of the question, and we passed the night in mutual condolence and groanings. Next morning the storm had changed to snow, and the prospect was worse than ever. At daylight I sallied out and made a search for a better house. I found one directly in the rear of our present quarters, not fifty feet fiom them. It was a clean, neat mud house, white-washed, and inviting in appearance. The wrath of our first hosts was dire when we moved, but it was accomplished rapidly, and we felt as if in a small palace when we surveyed our 21 482 TOMB OF NOAH. new arrangements. It was true that we missed sundry articles, a coat of Miriam's, and two silver spoons from the canteen, a knife and two forks, a handkerchief and a table-napkin, the whistle of my whip handle, Moreright's entire whip, and various other little things, which we charged to profit and loss. Only one napkin Miriam had seen Madame Nama tucking behind a cushion, and sent Ferrajj to find and bring it out, which he did. Moreright went off to Kerak, a little village through which we had passed on our way a half hour before reaching Maalakha, and there found the supposed tomb of Noah, a hundred feet long, in a Moslem inclosure. He then went further among the mountains with a guide, and discovered a temple and some strange excavations in the rocks, chambers on chambers, to the number of forty or fifty, and a man in armor on his horse, led by another man, cut in colossal relief on the rock up on the mountain side, all which I much regretted that I had not accompanied him to see. I passed the forenoon within doors, and when the storm held up a little I climbed to the top of the hill, for the village is on a steep hill-side, and the flat roofs of the houses are like terraces. Hence I looked down at the valley between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and traced the course of the direct route from Damascus to Beyrout, which we had left on the other side of this plain and behind the opposite hills. Jebel-Es-Sheik, Mount Hermon, stood white and glorious. It was a delight to look on the summit and remember with what calm beauty it looked down on the sea of Galilee; for it seemed as if even there I could get some of the reflected lights of that divine spot. Zahleh, the principal town of this part of the Lebanon district, is almost a part of Maalakha, for it lies adjoining it, in a semicircle, like a theatre, at the head of a valley, of which Maalakha commands the outlet. The houses ex LEBANON HILLS. 483 tend almost to one another. The stream in this smaller valley was fierce and strong, winding no less than thirteen times within the half mile between Zahleh and the foot of the hill where I sat, and then flowing out to the great plain that was now one vast sheet of water. The reader need not be told that this is drained by the Leontes. The population of Zahleh is said to be ten that of Maalakha, fifteen hundred; but this is ] ing the fleas. TH rose bright and ear on the third morning THE sun rose bright and clear on the third morning, and we gathered our forces early for a start. The mules were loaded and despatched. Our horses were waiting. The villagers crowded around, and I looked to my arms, as usual, before mounting. My fowling-piece I feared had been wet with the rain of the last day's travel, and I drew the charge, and called Ferrajj to bring me the flask of powder and shot, which were usually in the luncheonbag. But they were not there, and no one knew where they were. I sent Abd-el-Atti, with a search-warrant, into Nama's house, and after diligent examination, he discovered them, stowed away behind a water-jar and some other furniture, and after blowing up the family generally, brought them to me. The powder-flask was nearly empty, and the shot had disappeared. This was past endurance. I could have gone quietly if they had stolen my purse, but powder was worth ten times its weight in gold, for my purposes, and I walked out into the crowd around the doorway, determined to settle accounts with the house of Nama. Mousa was standing on the low roof of his father's house, looking furiously at the scene; for Abd-el-Atti's last words had not been confidential, and the entire crowd knew the terms on which we were parting with them. ROBBED AND INSULTED, 485 "Where is my gunpowder, you infernal scoundrel?" I demanded, shaking the empty flask toward him. "How do I know? Do you mean to say I am a thief?" And he jumped down into the crowd and approached. "I mean just that. You, and your father, and your mother, and your family, for untold generations, are thieves, and have been thieves, and will be thieves, to the remotest posterity." There is nothing lost by a wholesale family denunciation in the East. He sullenly protested his innocence, but made no violent demonstrations. I saw, however, that the majority of those around, being Greek Christians, were his friends and supporters. " Where is the governor of E'Maalakha?" I demanded. "' Gone to Beyrout," answered a dozen voices. "Where is the sheik of the village?" "Here he is." They brought up a well-dressed man of forty, and I suspected the trick on the instant. "Will you curse the cross of Christ?" I paused a moment. " No? then you're a Christian, and no sheik of this village." By this time, all were in the saddle but myself, and had gone on. I was alone in the crowd, and finding that it was hopeless to attempt any reparation of damages in such an assembly, I sprang into the saddle, shouted a threat of vengeance at Beyrout, and rode down the hill at a gallop, while a cry of derision announced the triumph of the villagers. My party were riding out of the village on the plain, and I was overtaking them rapidly, when I caught sight of the doorway of a better-looking house than the others, before which stood two soldiers. Reining up with a jerk, I demanded if this were the governor's residence. It wvas; and I sprang to the ground, threw my rein to a 486 APPEAL TO THE GOVERNOR, soldier, and, entering the court-yard, inquired the way to the governor's room, which I entered without ceremony, announced in the usual way as Braheem Effendi, the American traveler. Suleiman Bey was on his bed, in morning dress, surrounded by his officers, receiving their reports. At the moment of my entrance I heard the venerable sheik of the village, a plain-looking Arab, relating the fact that a Frank party were in the town; and the governor welcomed me with much consideration, A chibouk and cup of coffee were handed me. The usual exchange of polite phrases and oriental compliments brought matters to the point immediately. His excel lency did me the honor to hope that I had been comfortable during my visit at Maalakha. Before I had time to reply, the rest of my party came in. They had waited for me on the plain; and when I did not arrive they had turned back, recognized my horse at the door, and entered the presence. The governor remained seated on his bed, bowed very politely, and welcomed them, ordering coffee and chibouks; and I then stated the history of our visit to the Greek house, basing my complaint not so much on the value of the articles stolen as the violation done to the eastern law of hospitality, which makes it the duty of the host to protect his guest even against the officers of the law, and to the extent of sacrificing his own family and life, Two soldiers were despatched to bring the offending family to the diwan; and while they were gone we smoked and drank coffee, and chatted with one another, and with the governor. Moreright was a man of too kind and gentle feelings to yield readily to convictions of the guilt of others; and in this instance he had, on the previous day, used pmuch argument with me to convince me of the possi? 'THE GOVERNOR'S EXAMINATION, 487 bility that I was wrong in believing them to have committed the minor thefts. He now urged me to withdraw the complaint which he feared was, after all, founded on a mistake. But I was of another way of feeling; and when the soldiers returned with Nama and his older son and namesake, I reiterated my descriptions of the young man Mousa, and sent them back after him. They brought him at length, He was the picture of virtuous indignation. He steal the gunpowder! Not he! He was as innocent of evil intention as his namesake the Prophet; and he would not give the governor a chance for a word, so violent and incessant were his asseverations. " Stop him!" at length shouted Suleiman in an ecstasy of impatience; and a sharp blow on his lips from the flat hand of a soldier hinted to him the propriety of taking turns in making a noise in that presence. The crowd around the house was now increased to more than five hundred, but the countenances that had been so exulting and insulting a few moments before, on the hill, were changed. Some of the same men even forced their way into the governor's room, keeping off from the carpet, and a group of thirty heads were on the upper verandah, or landing-place, outside the door, striving to see what was going on. The governor was on his bed, I sat on a diwan opposite to him, Miriam, Moreright, and Whitely on cushions in a semicircle, on the carpet, and behind them a dozen soldiers, three or four officers, and then some twenty or more of the people crowded within the doorway. A finelooking old man, richly dressed, and evidently a friend of the governor, sat on the edge of his bed. The secretary and the sheik of the village, with one or two officials, finished the group on that side of the room. A very elegant brazier, heaped up with coals, stood in the middle of the carpet. All who were of sufficient rank to be 488 COURT OF SPECIAL SESSIONS. on the carpet were smoking, even Miriam who, in courtesy, had taken the proffered chibouk and touched it to her lips. I have been particular in thus describing the room, that my reader may have some idea of the appearance of a court of special sessions in Syria. Silence obtained, I stated the case briefly and gave my testimony. A Mohammedan court requires no oath. The servants confirmed what I had stated. The prisoner, on being called on for his defence, began vociferating as before, and the mother, who had not been brought into court, began a wail outside that was absolutely deafening. Finding that there was no defence, Suleiman quietly whispered to the officer nearest him. I could not hear the words, but the crowd understood it perfectly. They cleared the room in an instant, and Mousa howled and implored, and begged, and besought, and at length shouted that he would bring the powder and shot, and, thereupon, the sentence was suspended. His father and brother departed in company with an officer, and, after a brief delay, returned with two papers, which were handed to the governor and by him to me. I smiled as I opened them. The trick was too palpable: they had gone to a shop and bought Turkish powder and some shot, which they hoped I would accept. They would then produce witnesses to prove that I was wrong. Suleiman looked at me enquiringly, and I threw the papers back to the prisoner's feet, with an emphatic denial of the stuff. "Take him out," thundered the governor, now thoroughly aroused. He was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting, screaming, but he was carried out to the piazza before METHOD OF EXAMINATION. 4 8 the door, where we could see the operation, and laid face down. One man sat on his back and one on his legs, the latter holding up his feet, while a third laid on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide koorbash, that whizzed through the air at every stroke. Poor Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the second were on their faces, begging and wailing, now embracing my knees and now Whitely's; while the brother, outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's. Even Yusef, the honest fellow, whose house we had occupied the second night, came and asked me, on his knees, to relent, and, last of all, Betuni-the dog had lost a feed-bag in their house and had been loudest in his denunciations that morning-besought the Howajji to have mercy on the fellow. At the fifteenth blow he shouted his confession and'the punishment was suspended to hear it. He was brought in, and then said that he had taken the powder and shot and that it would be found hidden in such a place. We sent and found it, as also the other missing articles. There were some valuable things, that we had not then missed. Moreright breathed freely as they were brought in, and smoked his chibouk with infinite zest, now quite relieved of doubt. And now the just anger of Suleiman Bey was excessive, and he appealed to me to know what punishment he should inflict on the culprit family, to restore our good opinion of his place. I declined interfering, and he, in the first place, ordered the dollar which Whitely had given to the boy, to be returned. Whitely protested against this, but as the order was peremptory, he took it and tossed it across to the governor's secretary who pocketed it without so much as a thank-you. The entire family were now in custody, and their friends were renewing their intercessions for them. The same hounds that had been loudest in their laughter at me on 21* 490 0( TI A N G E D F A C ES. the hill were on their knees now, and the scene threatened to descend into the ludicrous if we waited any longer. I told the governor that, so far as we then knew, two hundred and fifty piastres (about ten dollars) would cover the value of the stolen articles, and I requested him to fine the family that amount as part of the punishment. I asked him if there were any poor Mussulmans in the place, and he said there were a plenty. I begged him to distribute the amount of the fine among them, inasmuch as the criminals were Greek Christians. He promised to do so, and to add such punishment as the flagrant offence against the laws of hospitality, as well as the laws of God deserved. Sending the entire family to prison, he then cleared the crowd out of his room, insisted on our taking another cup of coffee, and followed us to the doorway with the most distinguished politeness. The mass of people in the court-yard was dense and immovable. There were no shouts of derision now. As I mounted, Yusef once more begged me to interfere and have mercy on them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the crowd and I couldn't find one drop of pity in my heart for them. And Betuni, the scoundrel, now convinced that his feed-bag was in Nama's possession, and totally oblivious of his late merciful feelings, sitting on his inimitable donkey, high up on the top of his horses' feed and his accustomed store of bread-cakes, shouted at Yusef: " Let the dogs be whipped; stop bothering the Effendi. Don't you understand justice here? Teach them to rob travelers next time-I think my feed-bags will be safe if I stop at Maalakha again-Y' Allah!"-and he pioneered the way to the gate, and the crowd parted to let us follow. So ended the cause of the Sultan against Nama and Mousa, tried in the court of special sessions at Maalakha, Suleiman Bey, P. J., on the second day of April, 1856. LAST VIEW OF MOUNT HERMON. 491 What more is left to be written? We climbed the eastern slope of Lebanon by a long, tedious, and dangerous road. Torrents roared in the deep ravines; cascades, that were Alpine in height and beauty, came pouring down out of the snow-banks all the day, till we had gotten up to the snow, and then went over the edges of precipices along which our horses' feet found uncertain footing in their swift currents. We rested for luncheon over the ruined castle of Abilias, that commanded the road from Damascus, where it commences the ascent of Lebanon, and then we went up higher and higher, till at three o'clock, suddenly, like a vision of another world, we saw the blue Mediterranean sweeping far away into the clouds, and vessels that seemed like birds in the air. It was a moment, somewhat like that on Mount Scopus, when I saw the last of the noble summit of Jebel Es Sheik. AMy eyes would no more rest on any hill or valley sanctified by his presence, whose life and death made Holy Land. So long as I slept within sight of Hermon I felt that I was not yet wholly separated from the soil of Canaan, and that I was on ground which had at least enjoyed the sight of the same hills that his eyes rested on. But henceforth I must look up to the stars as the only companions of my wanderings on which the Son of Mary had looked when he was a wanderer, and a shadow that I can not well describe, but which, I believe, my reader understands, fell over me, when at length the lofty mountain with its white crown disappeared from view. It was long after dark when we reached Khan Sheik Mahmoud. Ferrajj had taken the responsibility of pitching the tents on the roof of the khan, finding the ground around too wet. The roof was of the usual materialbrush covered with a foot of mud and gravel rolled hard. The pegs were easily driven in, and so we finished our 492 BEYROUT. travels in Syria-having slept in pretty much every sort of house and place-by sleeping on the top of a khan, over the heads of a hundred Arab muleteers, mules and camels. Six thousand feet below us we saw the lights of Beyrout, on the shore of the sea, and we slept to the music of a gentle mountain breeze that brought us dreams of home. The road next day was execrable. It was the concentration of all the badness of the roads we had previously traveled. Lucky man, who has never a worse road to travel than the top of Orange county stone walls, or the bed of a mountain torrent. The streams rushed swiftly all the way down our path. Several times we rode down cascades of thirty to fifty feet descent, where it seemed incredible that the horses could find footing. No expressions can be found to convey a just idea of these roads of Syrian travel, for, as Whitely remarked, " If one say but half, he will be accused of romancing and will not be believed." Ragged from head to foot, stained with the red mud of the plain of Baalbec, and sun-burned to the true Bedouin shade of color, we entered the pine groves of Beyrout, and getting up for the last time a faint sort of gallop, we rode up, in a straggling line, to the gate of the city, but instead of entering it, we skirted the southern side and reached the hotel of Demetri, on the sea shore, where we were rejoiced once more at the appearances of European comfort. I scarcely think my best friend would have recognized me in the guise I then appeared in. The waves of the sea came dashing over the rocks at the very front of Demetri's house. I sprang from my horse, hurried to the room Abd-el-Atti had prepared for me, for he, as usual, had come on ahead, and then I LAST GA L L OP. 493 rushed out and down to the rocks, and plunged into the glorious surf. Was it not magnificent! How I laughed at the laughter of the waves, how cheerily I shouted to them, how I tried my voice, if perchance it might go echoing and glancing along from wave-top to wave-top, right westward to ears far distant! How I lay down on the breasts of the waves, and was rocked to and fro by their glorious heavings! But the book is full. I must pause just here. Beyrout had much to interest me during the week that I remained in it, but I have not space to describe any of this. The noble American missionaries (Dr. Smith especially, who has but just now gone to God, where Arabian and American Christians talk the same language, but where, I doubt not, he finds the reward he so well deserved for his untiring labors to make the word of God here intelligible to one as to the other), were our friends, and we enjoyed their hospitality with the utmost delight. I rode out to the pass of the Nahr-el-Kelb, where the armies of successive nations and centuries have marched by and carved their tablets as they passed, until the rocks of the hill bear more such inscriptions than perhaps any other pass in the world. Returning along the sands of the sea, we had a glorious run of seven miles to Beyrout, with the spray dashing cool and delicious over our foreheads. That was my last gallop with the good horse Mohammed. I wonder what is his fate. Whether he wanders around Tadmor in the wilderness, or is down in the desert of Sinai. What Bedouin rides him in the Howaran, what fierce desert fray my good steed was in last night, under what palm-tree he stands in the starlight, what childrens' tiny fingers feed him crusts of bread on the slopes of Lebanon. 494 THE GOOD HORSE MOHAMMED. The steamer for Constantinople lay at anchor off the port. The breeze was off-shore, and a boat came up among the rocks in front of the hotel to receive us and our baggage. It was a still, delicious morning. The sunshine lay on Lebanon like a glory. The muleteers and servants gathered around the boat. It was hard parting from the companions of seven months of adventurous travel between Nubia and Damascus. Ferrajj was gleaming in the splendor of clean white robes. Hajji Mohammed was silent, and I thought not unmoved. Betuni was furious in his grief. They stood on the rocks while Abd-el-Atti helped Miriam to her seat in the boat, and as I looked up at the dark-skinned group, Mohammed, who had been feeding in the open yard around the hotel, came down to the bank with curious eyes, as if he began to suspect something wrong, and looked so wistfully, that, on my honor, it was more difficult to leave him than all the rest; I waved my hand to him and to his companions, for he had been as honorable and faithful as they, and a long easy swell carried us out of the break in the rocks, into the open sea. So I left the Holy Land. APPENDIX. ADVICE TO TRAVELERS VISITING SYRIA. IT is a matter of great surprise to me that so few Americans visit Jerusalem, when it is so easy of access. There is a regular French steamer from Marseilles every two weeks, which touches at Jaffa, on its route from Alexandria to Constantinople, and another which touches on the return voyage. There is an Austrian steamer from Alexandria to Constantinople, and a return steamer also; so that the traveler may leave Alexandria for Jaffa, on any Friday, by one or the other. If he be at Constantinople, he may leave that port on an Austrian steamer one week, or a French steamer the next week, and go down to Beyrout, Haifa, or Jaffa. The American traveler in Europe who desires to visit the Holy City, will do so from Alexandria or Constantinople, as seems best for his own convenience. Advice for his route to Alexandria, and preparations for visiting Egypt, he will find in my volume of "BOAT LIFE IN EGYPT AND NUBIA," In regard to the preparations necessary for a Syrian tour, every thing will depend on the extent of the tour, and the persons composing the party. It is perfectly easy for gentlemen to reach Jerusalem without any preparations, or dragoman. Landing from the steamer at Jaffa, they will find an American consular agent and American missionaries, who will instantly provide them with means of procuring horses. They can ride up to Jerusalem in a single day, if they ride early and late. If there be ladies in the party, preparations must be made beforehand; and for this pur 496 A) DVICE L' A V ELE RS, pose, if the traveler come from Alexandria, he will find it best to complete all his purchases there. There is no hotel at Jaffa. Some one is about to erect or open one. It may be already done, but I have not heard of it. Tents and furniture, dragoman, cook, servants, and provisions, must be procured in Egypt. The dragoman will supply all these by contract. The rates are variable, as the dragoman may succeed in imposing on the traveler. Gentlemen alone, in a party of three or more, should never pay over one pound each; or, if paying more, should require extra good tents, beds, and furniture of all kinds. Gentlemen with ladies will pay a pound and a quarter for each person, and have the finest possible arrangements. The usual form of a contract with a dragoman, for Syria, is for a certain journey, with so many days' rest in various places, at a fixed sum for the entire journey. But the traveler who wishes his own time in each place, will find it preferable to pay his own expenses as he goes along, or to make his contract with his dragoman by the day. If the ride from Jerusalem to Jaffa be too much for one day, the traveler will find a hospitable Latin convent at Ramleh, where they have clean rooms, but no beds or bedding. He can judge by my account of the house of the American agent there, whether to try his rooms. At Jerusalem there are two tolerably fair inns, where board and lodging can be obtained. Elsewhere, in Syria, the tent is the safest dependence, in all weather, for shelter and comfort. The traveler who purposes visiting Syria will need to provide himself with good pistols. I recommend the volcanic pistol, formerly known as Jennings' patent, as altogether preferable to any that I have seen. It is light, safe, and sure, and the ammunition compact and easily carried. For clothing, he will need the warmest, if his visit be in the spring, whicl is the safest season to visit the Holy Land. Saddles, both for gentlemen and ladies, must be procured before going to Syria, and the traveler who consults his perfect comfort, will look out for and buy a good horse, expecting to sell him at a sacrifice when he leaves the country. I have said nothing of the route from Cairo across the desert, because this is now little used. The journey of forty days by way ADVICE TO TRAVELERS, 497 of Sinai, or the long desert as it is usually called, scarcely repays one for the fatigue incurred, while the little desert road, to Gaza, is avoided by the sea voyage. In coming from Constantinople, it is better to enter Syria at Beyrout. Here are good hotels, plenty of dragomans, and all conveniences for the commencement of a Syrian journey. It would be a pleasure to know what traveler is this spring occupying my canvas home, which I left in Beyrout, in which I passed so many nights of tent-life on the hills of Holy Land. It is not uncommon for gentlemen, who wish to travel economically, to visit Palestine without tents, trusting to such lodging as they can obtain in the mud huts of the natives. It is a severe trial to the strength and powers of endurance of any man, and I strongly advise the most hardy not to attempt it. It is this that has sacrificed many noble young Americans to Syrian fevers. Roughing it in this manner, exposed to all weathers, with no shelter at night but the filthy huts of the people overrun with vermin and destitute of beds or covering-pushing on day after day, week after week, the traveler at length sinks under the fatigue, which is greater from the constant excitement of travel in Holy Land, and finds at last a grave in the soil he so venerates. Such graves are among the most melancholy spots pointed out to the wanderer over the soil of Canaan. One grave I well remember that I lingered beside with intensest interest. It was that of a young French lady, who fell a victim to her devotion to a holy pilgrimage, and died in her tent, surrounded indeed by many friends, but destitute of that attendance and those comforts which might perhaps have saved her. Whether Holy Land will ever be more accessible to travelers, is a problem I shall not undertake to solve. There may be a railway from Jerusalem to the. coast some day, but at present there is nothing to warrant such an enterprise. In concluding this volume, it remains only for me to express my thanks to Mr. J. A. Adams for the beautiful vignettes which ornament so many of the chapters. I have elsewhere spoken of the larger illustrations, whose accuracy may be relied on. 498 THE END. SINCE this book has been in the hands of the printer, I have received most sad intelligence from the East. In writing these pages, I had no opportunity of consulting my friend Moreright as to my use of his true name, which I therefore took the liberty of concealing under this title. I can never consult him now. There are many who will have recognized him in the scenes I have described. There is no one word I have written that I would change now. He was a good friend, an earnest, noble man. He is gone! We parted in Stamboul last May. On the 16th day of December, 1856, having visited Mosul and Nineveh, where we had hoped to be together, he died at Diarbekir, and was buried on the bank of the Tigris. I would there were space for more. This brief page contains not room to record his virtues. However distant and diverse may be my wanderings, I shall never forget the companion of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the sunshine of our pleasant journeyings together, and our months of Tent Life in the Holy Land, By William C. Prime. Boat Life in Egypt & Nubia. Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia. By WILLIAM C. PRIME, Author of "The Old House by the River," "Later Years," &c. Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $I 25. Tent Life in the Holy Land. By WILLIAM C. PRIME, Author of "The Old House by the River," "Later Years," &c. Illustrations. 12mo, Muslin, $I 25. The Old House by the River. By WILLIAM C. PRIME, Author of the "Owl Creek Letters." I zmo, Muslin, 75 cents. Later Years. By WILLIAM C. PRIME, Author of "The Old House by the River." i zmo, Muslin, $ oo.