"I give theft Books or the founding of a College in .his Colony" -YALM.VREITIMRSITIY- LilL31-132,Y Gift of os„,„,„,aue. 19/I cr—zA/1 ALL ROUND THE WORLD: (j1IIR5fratetr gortr OF VOYAGES, TRAVELS, AND ADVENTURES IN ALL PARTS OF THE GLOBE. EDITED BY W. F. AINSWORTH, F.R.G.S,, &c. • WITH POUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS, AFTER DRAWINGS BY GUSTAVE DORE, BAYARD, LANCELOT, JULES NOEL, AND OTHER EMINENT ARTISTS; AND TWELVE FINELY ENGRAVED MAPS, FULL - COLOURED. VOLUMES I. & LONDON AND GLASGOW: WILLIAM COLLINS, SONS, & COMPANY. 1866. Ec a. + 835Ad. v. I- a Ail P1110 tile &tub. VOLUME FIRST. PREFACE. IT has not come to our cognizance, at the moment of our completing a First Volume of " ALL ROUND Tun WORLD," how far the noble young prince, shut up in a tower, benefited by the airy landscapes placed before his eyes by the benevolent fairy noticed in our Prospectus. Our labours have been in another and more human sphere. We have had to cheer as well as to instruct the poor as well as the well-to-do and the well-informed, and to light up the sparks of inquiry in many a secluded corner, as well as to fan the flame of conscious strength in less bashful quarters. It HAS come to our cognizance that we have been in many instances successful, even beyond our hopes, iu conveying pleasure, in imparting a new train of ideas, and in opening new veins of thought among many whom it is a far greater satisfaction to us to have allured from an unhealthy to a wholesome literature, than it would have been even to win the smiles of a youthful prince. it was a perfectly novel experiment in this country to attempt to so far popularise knowledge as to bring ponderous Geography—an idea associated with unending great big tomes, as bulky and as repulsive as Siberian mountains—lightly, pleasantly, picturesquely, and yet truthfully and intelligently, before the whole community. We felt certain—and experience has proved the correctness of our surmises—that the land in which the semi-fabulous Sindbad of the Arabian story, the Robinson Crusoe of our own native romance of travel, and the glorious, albeit dreamy progress of the wondrous Pilgrim, could be so ardently appreciated ; *here Cook and Mango Park are household heroes ; where the spirit of travel and adventure is as the life's blood, at which every pulse, save that of the sluggard and of the dolt, beats high ; and where the national characteristic of enterprise and perseverance has constituted us what we are ; was not the one that from its humblest homes to the more gifted fire-sides would not welcome a first attempt to supplant that fiction with which most educations commence, by those truths, which might be made quite as palatable if only pleasantly treated and picturesquely set forth. There is surely no positive necessity that truth should be harsh and angular in outline and formidable in aspect. Some, from long adherence to old-established conceits, do not believe in truths that come in an agreeable, pleasing, or seductive form ; they repel such just as they would the allurements of the Sirens of old. Like Ulysses and his companions, they stop their ears with wax, and. tie themselves to the masts of their domestic decks to avoid imaginary dangers. Prejudices like these will, like many other ideas of " good old times," gradually melt away before the warmth of a genial age prone to be pleased as well as taught. This old-standing prejudice has indeed had its origin mainly in the received notion that truth cannot be rendered acceptable by Art, without some sacrifice of its essential purity and perfection. But this is an error which the very progress of Art itself ought to have corrected, for albeit Art cannot surpass Nature, it can so select, and grasp, anel bring into combination its more pleasing aspects, as to make even Nature itself more charming. .So it is with literature as applied to knowledge ; it can, without one single sacrifice of correctness to effect, or any false and surreptitious colouring or display, make knowledge itself pleasant to contemplate, most agreeable to associate with, and more loveable than the 1 vi PREFACE. fiction that palls, because it leaves the intellect dissatisfied : it has been temporarily excited, but self-upbraiding conscience never fails to whisper—at the expense of time. Nothing has been gained by the excitement. The thoughts of an universal humanity turn to the HOLY LAND. It is the cradle of mankind, the emanation of light, the laud of the Gospel. To this favoured soil we therefore first turned our steps. We took our readers to the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, and down into the dark depths of the Brook Kidron ; we wandered with them in the footsteps of our Saviour from Bethlehem to Nazareth ; together we attended at the absurdities enacted in modern times at the Holy Sepulchre ; and together we cleansed ourselves from the pollution at the glorious Jordan. But we have left much undone. The Assyrian sun shines over many sites hallowed by associations of old, and endeared by past reminiscences, to which we shall hope, in all gladness and pleasant companionship, to return ere long. Our ways also lay with the ways of the world. In times of blessed peace they will be with the honest merchantman and the lonely traveller, but they have lain at our onset in the track of gory but justifiable war. The persecutions of a gloomy tyrant aroused a people of glorious traditions to throw off the hated.yoke, and we followed in the train of a nascent liberty, to depict the scenes presented when the dawn of a new era should light up, with its heart-stirring gleam, the homes of the present and the relics of the past in SICILY—one of the most beautiful islands on the surface of the waters. But here, too, much has been left undone ; that favoured island is a museum of antiquities, a palace of art, and a world in itself of untold natural curiosities and beauties. Again, our ways lay with the ways of the world, and we had to follow friends and relatives in arms, and their gallant allies, to far-off CATHAY. We had on our way to visit that great emporium of British commerce in the remote East—HoNG-KONG—MACAO, emblem of a once powerful and enterprising Colonial power; turbulent CANTON, now held down by the nations of the West. The CHINESE and TARTARS, arrayed against one another in civil war, were also sketched on our way, along the course of the great rivers of the once-flowery, but now much-harra,ssed empire ; and yet we reached PEKIN, in company with the armed bands of Celts and Saxons. The spoil of palaces and the cementing of a treacherous peace will not repay the price of the good blood ignominiously spilt at that " willow pattern city." With the progress of time, the march of events, and the more pleasant invasion of industry and commerce, we, too, will walk back again into the heart of the un-celestial empire. Our gallant allies have selected to locate themselves right between India and China, in that great peninsula, which, watered by two little known yet great and navigable rivers, stretches out into the Sea of China. It is not a wholesome land, and the people are a betel-chewing, bigoted, and hostil, race, among whom the French will find it, with sickness superadded, a difficult matter to prosper; Algeria will be as a paradise compared to the swamps of SAIGON and the vexations at TURAN ; but there is much that is curious to unfold ; and the richly-wooded and fertile lands of CAIVIBOGIA, and the Cave Temples of ANNAAI, successively invited the best efforts of our pens and pencils. And then there was JAPAN,—that land of a populous, industrious, commercial, intelligent com- munity, secluded at the antipodes from the rest of the world, but now by the grace of an Omniscient Providence brought, with its sister empire, China, within the pale of a common humanity. There, was time before us, but we hastened to anticipate the impatience of our readers by giving some account of these realms, so recently opened to commerce and to intercommunication; and. we shall hope to .return PREFACE. vii to give more detailed accounts of a land so peculiarly rich in contrasts, both social and material, to what the nations of the West are accustomed to. CEYLON, • where we landed for a moment, and joined in an elephant hunt, led the way cheerily to the INDIAN and. EASTERN SEAS. Wooded NIKOBAR, lying like a giant rock-bird's nest, bathed in warm and pellucid waters, and the cruel ANDAMANS next followed on the road to another monument of British enterprise--SINGAPORE; and thence, by coffee-producing and coffee-monopolising JAVA, we reached a mysterious scene—yet a most truthful one—the ENCHANTED LAKE OF THE PHILLIPLNES—a little nook of wood and water, strangely infested by alligators and flying foxes. Feet grew firm, sledge-dogs yelped, and steeds neighed, as we started on a still more venturesome pilgrimage, partly in company with our countryman, Atkinson, partly in that of enterprising Muscovites, over the great uplands and by the vast lakes of CENTRAL ASIA, and then along the long VALLEY OF THE AMOOR—the future highway of nations from west to east, and then again from east to west, from the Old to the New World, and from the New to the Old World, and so round the terrestrial orbit. And so we, too, have viewed it, for by a natural and reasonable sequence, we crossed the ocean, not, however, strange to say, to lose sight of ubiquitous British interests, but to land at the new British port, city, and metropolis and the future emporium of VICTORIA, in Vancouver ; thence to follow the gold-strewed paths and the fertile valleys of FRAZER'S and THOMPSON'S RIVERS,—the future centres of a great Columbian colony,—across the ROCKY MOUNTAINS, lately severed by British enterprise, and down the SASKATCHEWANS, to where—in RUPERT'S LAND—around lake and river, a future central colony of British America will perforce one day arise, and that on, what is strange to say, the only belt of fertile land that crosses the continent of North America from west to east. In thus presenting a picture of what has been done, in order to render that which remains to be accomplished the more manifest, it must be understood that such records of tra%el, and such descriptions as may follow upon them, are by no means intended fir one particular class of readers only ; " ALL ROUND THE WORLD " would very imperfectly answer the intention of its founders, if it was not as varied and as universal as its own objects are; and they are the truthful and animated spectacle of nature and of human life over the whole surface of the Globe. Among travellers some represent science, others art, others commerce and industry ; some expose themselves to a thousand perils and dangers to propagate the Gospel ; others are simply observers, who only seek, in travel, for the excitement of an adventurous and wandering exist ence. All these diverse classes, however frivolous some of them may be in appearance, have their interest, and what is more, their practical utility " ALL ROUND THE WORLD " will, therefore, exclude none : it views, with indifference, only those narratives and those details which have no foundation in nature and in truth, and which are, therefore, valueless and insecure. One of our first and most ardent wishes is to conciliate the esteem of good and true men. Never, if we can help it, shall a false representation, tin incorrect statement, or the mere playfulness of a vain imagination pass muster. Already, with such stern purposes in view, we are happy to be able to say that we have received the expressed willingness, on the part of many distinguished travellers, to place such documents at our disposal as may be useful to us and acceptable to the public. This, with the truly kind reception which we have met with, have encouraged us greatly in our labours. Our success has indeed been greater than our most ardent ambition ventured to anticipate. This will viii PREFACE. give new zest to our endeavours. The field is vast—we may say boundless. Not only is the earth as yet not wholly known, but many portions, which have been supposed to have been explored, are daily found to have been so most imperfectly. Our position is that of the " Wandering Jew," and the soil will never fail beneath our feet, no more than our zeal shall be found flagging or wanting. Less shackled in our destiny, however, than that legendary type of a medieval traveller, we constitute part of the age in which we live—we bring the railroad and the steam-ship to our help ; and we return laden With the spoils of ASIA, AFRICA, and AMERICA, to pour them into the laps of indulgent friends, while we help them to while away a pleasant hour in the narrative of our trials and perplexities, sometimes of our anxieties and sufferings, almost always, however, relieved by the descriptions of a diversified art and humanity ; and, above all, of the wonders which it has pleased the great Creator to distribute so bounteously over the face of the Globe. There is no interest, even in Geography, unless it be to appreciate the wisdom and goodness of His works. W. F. A. • INDEX. ••••••••••••••••••••••o. A ••• ••• ••• ••• PAGE FIVE DAYS AT JERUSALEM. • • • ••• • •• ••• 1 I. —.JAFFA TO JERUSALEM • • • • • • •• • ••• • •• 7 II.-OVER JERUSALEM • • • • • • ••• ••• ••• 15 III.— IN THE FOOTSTEP2 OF OUR SAVIOUR 26 IV.—MOUNT ZION AND r HE JEWS ••• V.—THE VIA DOLOROSA • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 28 VI. —THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY • SEPULCHRE ••• ••• • •• 29 VII. —THE TEMPLE AND THE MOSQUE OF OMAR • • • ••• ••• 35 VIII.—RouND AND ABOUT JERUSALEM... ••• • • • • ••• 39 IX.—To BETHLEHEM AND TO HEBRON ••• ••• ••• ••• 45 X.—To JORDAN AND TO NAZARETH • . • 4 •• • .• • •• 0 • • 51 SICILY AS IT IS. AND ABOUT PALERMO • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 58 II.—ALONG SHORE TO MESSINA • • •• ••• ••• 68 III.•-..-STROMBOLI AND THE LIPARI ISLES ••• ••• ••• ••• 70 • • • • .. ••• i•• • •• ••• 71 • V..--ROUND AND UP MOUNT ETNA • • • • De • •• ••• 74 CHINA, COCHIN CHINA, AND JAPAN. I.—Hong KONG • • . • • • • • • . • • 77 1.1-.—MAcAo ... ••. • •• .•• ••• ••• ••• 79 III.—Up THE CANTON RIVER • • • • • • • • • • • • 83 W.—CANTON." ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 86 V.—THE FIRST OF THE MINGS • • • 92 VI.—THE LAST OF THE MINGS •• • • • • 103 VI I. -•-•THE REBELS OF CHINA ... • . • • . • • • • 110 VIII.—THE GREAT RIVERS OF CHINA ... 460 115 IX.—THE MARITIME CITIES OF CHINA • • • ••• 118 X.—SHANGHAI ... • •• • •• •• • 123 XI.--TurasT-Tsix, " THE CITY OF FELICITY" • • • • •• • •• 130 XII..--THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA • •• • •• 0 •• • • • 134 XIII:ACROSS CHINA TO PEKIN • • • • • • • • • • • •• ••• 135 COCHIN CHINA ... .-•• . • . ••• ••• • •• • • • 139 JAPAN ... • • • . • • • •• ••.• ••• ••• ••• 151 AND HARBOUR OF NAGASAKI ••• ••• • . ••• 155 III..--ENVIRONS OF NAGASAKI • • ••• ••• ••• 159 IV.—JAPANESE DOMESTIC LIFE • • ••• ••• .. • ••• 160 V.—A JAPANESE LADY ••• ••• ••• ••• 163 VI.—THE INTERIOR OF JAPAN • • • ••• • •• ••• 165 VII.—ARTS AND INDUSTRY OF THE JAPANESE ••• ••• 167 V I I I.—JAPANESE LITERATURE Ali D ART ••• ••• ••• ••• 172 1X.—SimoDA • •• ••• ••• • . ••• 173 X.—AN EXCURSION ROUND SIMODA ••• ••• 176 XI.—APPROACH TO YEDDO • s'• ••• 11•• ••• ••• 178 XI I.—LANDING AT YEDDO • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 180 XI 1 —INTERiou OF YEDDO • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 181 X IV.TEA GARDENS • • • • • • ••• ••• .•••• ••• 182 XV.—ROUND KANAGAWA • • • •••• ••• ••• ••• 186 XVI. ....-HARIKARITHE HAPPY DESPATCH 0" ••• ••• ••• 188 XVI I :HAKODAKI • • • • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 190 11•• ••• ••• No, 193 XVIIL GOVERNMENT AND MANNERS • • • INDEX. PAGE 195 THE ISLANDS OF THE INDIAN AND EASTERN SEAS. I.—AN AUSTRIAN VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD ••• ••• IL—CEYLON • • • • • ••• ••• 196 I I I.—N IKOBAR ISLANDS • • • • • • ••• •• 205 I V.—TH E ANDAMAN ISLANDS ••• ir•-• ••• 211 V.—SINGAPORE • • • • . • •• • ••• ••• 215 V I.—A N EXCURSION IN JAVA • • • ••• ••• 216' VII.—THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS ••• • •111, ••• 220 VIII.—THE ENCHANTED LAKE ••• ••• ••• 222 SIL-LI-BA-B00 ISLANDERS .• • ••• ••• ••• • • • 226 1.TP AND DOWN THE AMOOR, WITH SCENES IN CENTRAL ASIA, TARTARY, AND SIBERIA. L—THE COUNTRY OF THE KALKAS ••• ••• ••• 230 II.—MONGOLIA . • • • 235 III.—THE SULTANS OF THE STEPPES ... • ••• • 240 IV.—THE LAKE BAIKA L • • • •1111 246 V.—DOWN THE AMOOR 1111. 253 VI.—UP THE AMOOR 1111. • • • 263 V II.—SIBERIA • • • • • • .. • ••• 271 VIII. —LIFE AMONG THE YARUTS • • • ••• 1111. Il• Oda 276 FROM ASIA TO AMERICA. LAND OF THE TCHUKTCHI ••• 8110 ••• ••• ... 290 VANCOUVER ISLAND ••• ••• 1111. ••• ••• 292 FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC. I.—THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS • • • • • . • • • ••• ••• 298 IL—THE WAY TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS • • • • • • ••• ••• 301 III.—THROUGH THE COUNTRY OF THE BLACKFEET TO: THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 318 IV.—THE COUNTRY BETWEEN CANADA AND BRITISH cOLUMBLA. • •• ••• 330 V.—THE WINIPEG AND RED RIVER DISTRICT • • • 354 VI.—ADVENTURES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS OF THE BARON DE WOGAN 356 VII.—THE MINER AND THE HUNTER 1111. ••• ••• 358 VIII.—DEPARTURE FOR THE INTERIOR 359 IX.—MY ADVENTURES 1111. • • • • • • . 1111. ••• 362 CREMATION GHAT AT CALC UTTA1 BURNING AND EXPOSURE OF BODIES IN INDIA ••• ••• `367 M. BRITN-ROLLET, TRAVELLER ON THE NILE 371 ERRATA. Page 29, col. 1, for "Luke 16," read "Luke xvi. 1." Page 38, col. 1, for " See p.17," read "See p. 24." Page 43, col: 2, for " Solomon's pool," read " Hezekiah's." Page 43, col. 2, for " Manasseh," read "Jeboiakim." Page 46, col, 2, for "Conversion of Philip the Eunuch," &c., read " Conversion of the treasurer of Candace hy'Philip." Page 55, col. 1, for " upon Mount Ebal was the blessing pro- nounced, upon Gerizim the curse," read upon Mount Gerizim was the blessing pronounced, upon Mmit Ebal the curse." Page 55, col. 2, for "the pool beside which Naboth and his son," &c., read " the pool ia.sthieh the ehariot of Ahab was washed, which had brought up the dying king from the Valley of the Jordan, after the, fatal fight of Asmottuailead" (Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 242). At the same, time it must be remembered that the Prophet Elijah pronounced. Ahab's doom, " In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, ;hull dogs lick thy bloods even thine' :.(1. 'Kings, xxi. 191. _ ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE VIEW OF JERUSALEM, FROM OVER THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH ... • . • • • • • . • ••• 1 SA RACENIC FOUNTAIN, NEAR THE COUNCIL HOUSE, JERUSALEM . • •• • 5 THE WAILING PLACE—JEWS PRAYING AT THE WALL OF THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON • • • 8 THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE AT JERUSALEM • . • ... • • • • . • 9 • • . • 13 THE DAMASCUS GATE, JERUSALEM • . .• . • • . • .. • GATE OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN AT JERUSALEM •• • 16 THE FIELD OF BLOOD, IN THE VALLEY OF HINNOM • • • • . • • • • • • • . • 17 THE MOSQUE OF OMARSITE OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM .• • . • •• • • .• 24 NAZARETH • . • •• • • . Of • ••• ••• ••• ••• 25 JEWS AT JERUSALEM • . • • . • • . • • .• • • • ••• ••• • 32 BETHLEHEM... ... ••• •• • • • • ••• ••• •• • 33 INHABITANTS OF BETHLEHEM . • • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 40 THE RIVER JORDAN • . • ... • • • •• • ••• 060 ••• 41 A PILLAR IN THE VAULTS OF THE TEMPLE OF SOL03ION AT JERUSALEM • . . • • • 44 ANOTHER PILLAR IN THE VAULTS CF THE TEMPLE • . • see ••• ••• ••• 45 THE CHAPEL OF ST. ROSALIE, NEAR PALERMO, IN SICILY ... • . • • • • •• • ••• 48 THE MARINA, OR SEA VIEW, AT MESSINA, IN SICILY ... • • • .. • • . • . • • 49 COSTUMES AND INHABITANTS OF SICILY • .. • . • • • • • • . 52 RUINS OF AGRIGENTUM (GIRGENTI) IN SICILY • • • • . • ••• ••• ••• 53 VIEW OF SYRACUSE, IN SICILY •• • •• • • • . • . • .. • •• • 66 MOUNT ETNA, VIEWED FROM TAUROMINIUM, IN SICILY . • • • . • • • • ••• ••• 57 STROMBOLI, ONE OF THE LIPARI ISLES, NEAR SICILY • • • • . • • . • 61 THE ROCK AND TOWN OF SCYLLA, COAST OF SICILY .. • •• • • • • ••• • • • 64 ME. PAGODA OF THE ROCKS AT MACAO ••• ••• ••• •• • ••• 65 HONG KONG .• • . - ... • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 72 THE LANDING PLACE AT MACAO ••• •• • ••• ••• ••• • • • ••• 73 CHINESE BOAT... • . • • . • •• • • . • • . • • • • • • • • •• 77 PAGODA AT WHAMPOA • .. • • • ..• • • • • •• • • • • • • • • •• 80 TARTAR CAVALRY—CHINESE TARTAR ARMY ..• • . • ••• •• • •• • ••• 81 CHINESE BOATWOMAN • • • • • • • . • • • • • . • • • . SOO 85 ACHINESE MERCHANT ... • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 88 CUSTOM HOUSE AT SHANGHAI • . • .• • • .• • 0. ••• ••• ••• 89 ACHINESE LADY • •• • . . • . • • • • • . • • . • • • • ••• 93 FLOWER (PLEASURE) BOAT AT SHANGHAI . • • • . • ••• ••• •••••• •• 96 RESIDENCE OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH AMBASSADORS AT TIEN-TSIN • . • • . • •• • 97 CHINESE SOLDIERS—WAR TIGERS . • • • • • • . . • • • . • •• • 104 NIGHT SCENE IN AMOY ... • . • •• • •• • 11011 ••• :•• •.• 105 ACHINESE WOMAN ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••,, ••• 109 CHINESE OPIUM SMOKERS ... .. • . • •• • • • • ..• 112 THE EMPEROR OF COCHIN CHINA AND HIS MINISTERS .. • .•• •• • 113 MOUTH OF THE RIVER SAIGON, IN COCHIN CHINA • . • • . • • • • • • . 120 SUBTERRANEAN BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN THE MARBLE ROCKS NEAR TOURAIN, IN COCHIN CHINA • •• 121 BANKS OF THE RIVER SAIGON • • • 606 •• • ••• 600 ••• ••• 128 A CHINESE TRAVELLING WHEELBARROW • • 6 ••• • • • •• • ••• 129 GREAT WALL OF CHINA • . • ••• ••• •• • ••• ••• ibid APOLICEMAN OF YEDDO ... ••• ••• • • • 00. ••• ••• 136 GARDENS OF THE EMPEROR OF JA PAN AT YEDDO ••• •• • ••• ••• 144 JAPANESE TEA GARDENS ... • . • ••• • Of ••• ••• 145 JAPANESE LADY • •• •• • ••• ••• ••• ••• 152 JAPANESE LADY AT HER TOILET . • • . • • • • ••• ••• ••• ••• 153 ENTRANCE TO THE BAY OF YEDDO • . . • . • ••• ••• ••• •• • ••• 161 ATTACK ON A BRITISH WAR STEAMER BY THE NATIVES OF ANDAMAN ••• • • • • • • 168 PALM TREE IN THE GREAT ANDAMAN • • • .. • . • • . • • . • •• • 169 A NATIVE OF THE ANDAMAN' ISLANDS • • • ... • • • • • • • • • . • 177 TIM AUSTRIAN FRIGATE " NOVARA " OFF THE ISLAND OF ST. PAUL . • • • • •• • ••• 184 AFOREST IN CEYLON ••• • •• ••• ••• ••• ••• 185 INTERIOR OF A HUT IN THE ISLAND OF KAR-NIKOBAR .. • • • • • . • • . • • • • 192 WORKING ELEPHANT IN CEYLON ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 200 VIRGIN FOREST IN KAR-NIROBAR, INDIAN OCEAN ••• Pt, ?IS 201 ril ILLUSTRATIONS. N ••• Doti stos. VILLAGE IN JAVA ••• ••• •• • ••• ••• ••• •• • THE ENCHANTED LAKE IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS •• • ••• •• • e• • ••• 209 VOLCANO IN JAVA • • •• • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 1100 216 RIVER AMOOR AND KING•GAN MOUNTAINS • • • • • • ••• e•• •• • •• • 217 A KALKAS FAMILY ON THE UPPER AMOOR ••• ••• • •• • •• •• • ••• 224 FRONTIER POST BETWEEN CHINA AND RUSSIA •• • • . • ••• ••• ••• ••• 225 BURIAL TEMPLE ON LAKE IKIUGUN, MONGOLIA ••• ••• •• • •• • •• • 232 OFFICIAL TRAVELLING—RUSSIA IN ASIA • . • • • • ••• •• • ••• ••• 233 VIEW OF ALEXANDROVSK ON THE BAY OF CASTRIES •• • • . • ••• •• • • • • 237 MANTCHURIANS AND TUNGUSIA NS OF THE TRANS•BAIKAL DISTRICT •• • • • • •• • ••• 240 LAKE BAIKAL ... • • • •• • •• • • • • . • • ••• • • • •• • 241 SLEDGE AND DOGS ON THE AMOOR • . • • • • • • • •• • •• • ••• ••• 248 PORT OF OKHOTSK • • • ••• •• • ••• • • • •• • • • • • ••• 249 BAZAAR AND FAIR AT NERTSCHINSK, RUSSIA IN ASIA •• • • • • • •• •• • ••• 256 YAKUTS ON A JOURNEY • • • • • • ••• •I• ••• ••• ..• ••• 257 TUNGUSE SORCERESS AND NATIVES ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 264 YAKUT COLONY OR VILLAGE • • • • • . •• • • • • • . • ••• ••• 265 THE AROALI (OVIS AMMON) OR WILD slim OF S/1311aLi. •• • • . • •• • •• • ••• 272 YAKUT SHAMANS, OR DEMON DWELLERS ••• ••• • • • ••• ••• 273 TUNWISE ENCAMPMENT ... •• • ••• •• • ••• •• • ••• ••• 280 YAKUT Waxer; ••• ••• .•• ••• ••• ••• ••• 281 THE CITY OF VICTORIA, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND ••• ••• •• • • • • • . • ••• 288 ROCKY MOUNTAINS • •• • . • ••• ••• ••• ••• • • • ••• 289 THE FIRST SHOT AT A GRIZZLY BEAR • . • • • • • . • • . • ••• •• • 296 INDIAN SEPULCHRE IN THE LONG GRASS PRAIRE ON THE SASKATCHEWAN RIVER ••• ••• ••• 297 FIGHT BETWEEN A BULL AND A BISON •• • • . • • • • ••• • . • ••• 304. SALTEAUX INDIANS FIRE-FISHING ... •• • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 305 FORT EDMONTON ON THE UPPER SASKATCHEWAN RIVER •• • •• • •• • ••• ••• 312 A PORTAGE ON THE WHITE MUD RIVER • • • ••• •• • •• • ••• 4141. 313 CHIMNEY ROCKS ON THE BANKS OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 320 INDIAN SEPULCHRES ON THE BANKS OF THE COWLITZ RIVER •• • ••• •• • ••• 321 A CANON, OR MOUNTAIN PASS, IN THE SIERRA WAR ••• ••• ••• • • • ••• 328 THE GIANT PINE TREES OF SONORA •• • •• • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 329 A"CLAIM" IN CALIFORNIA. •• • • . • ••• •• • ••• ••• •• • 336 GRASS VALLEY DIGGINGS...... ••• ••• •• • ••• ••• •.. 337 THE BARON DE WOGAN AT THE Comm!. OF JUDGMENT ..• ••• ••• ••• ••• 344 THE BARON DE WOGAN AT THE WAR POST •• • ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 345 INDIANS AT THE RIO COLORADO ••• • •• •••• ••• ••• •••• •.. 352 Gimp OF 'INDIANS ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• MO ••• ••• 'Pe. ••• 361. THE BARON DR WOGAN ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• • . • Tax CHHICATION GHAT AT CALCUTTA.., ••• oto ••• ••• Mise "MI 369 ALL ROUND THE WORLD EDITED BY W. F. AINSWORTII, F.R.G.S., F.S.A. FIVE DAYS AT JERUSALEM, VIEW OF JERUSALEM FROM OVER THE POOL OF HEZEKIAH. I.—JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. HE who would visit Jerusalem aright must do so with the Bible in his hand and faith in his heart. He must throw down the measuring rod, and lay aside the historical disquisition, while he visits the scene of Jehovah's just wrath and a Saviour's never-ending mercy, with the hushed silence of a penitent and the reverential enthusiasm of a pilgrim. It was with such feelings that we first touched the soil of the Holy Land, when landing from the steamer at Jaffa, and set forth on a six hours' ride towards Ramleh, the first stage on our journey towards Jerusalem. Jaffa or Joppa, before whose time-stained and battle-worn walls we are now landing, through a difficult surf, is one of the most ancient cities in the world. It is here that Noah is said to have built the ark ; here the cedars from Mount Lebanon for the building of the Temple were lauded by Hiram, at the order of Solomon, for conveyance to Jerusalem ; here the prophet Jonas embarked for Tarsus ; hither came St. No. 1. Peter from Lydda, to restore to life the charitable Tabitha (whose dwelling may yet be seen) ; and during his residing here, in the house of Simon the tanner, (there is a row of tanners' shops on the other side of the town), it is here that the Apostle saw, while sleeping on the roof (just as many of the inhabitants are doing at this very moment, for the tops of these houses are all flat and battlemented) the vision of the clean and unclean meats ; here the messengers of the Centurion found the Apostle ; hence he went further on his great mission to the Gentiles ; and tradition points to the Convent of the Holy Land as built on this very spot, where Simon lived. Burnt by Judas Maceaboeus, taken by Vespasian, Joppa was erected by the Crusaders into a titular county. Godfrey of Bouillon died here, as some say, though we shall shortly see his tomb at Jerusalem ; and the walls of a donjon keep, built by St. Louis, still remain : as does also, sad and doubtful monument ! the vast magazine or hospital where died of the plague, and, as scandal says, of too much opium administered (in mercy, as he alleges) by 2 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. their chief, so many of the victorious soldiers in the French expedition to Egypt. Nor are classical heroes wanting to the place; for at ten minutes' distance to the south (in eastern travelling we allow three miles to the hour—a horse's walking pace,) you can see on the summit of an eminence a, small Mussulman sanctuary, the very place, we are assured, where Perseus, mounted on the winged horse Pegasus and armed with the Gorgon-headed shield of Minerva, conquered the sea-monster and rescued the fair Andromeda. The fact, we know, never occurred any more than the fellow fight between St. George (who was born in this district) and the Dragon; hut, nevertheless, St. Jerome himself, in his Commentaries, does not disdain to mention an oral tradition as existing in his times. A clever writer suggests that the city itself was the Andromeda, and the sea-monster the Plicenician pirates; the winged horse being the Desert Arabs, who were invited to her rescue. The town is charminglysituated on a hill coming down to the shore, with the sea on the west, and beautiful gardens on the east. The gardens of Jaffa are estimated at one hundred and fifty, in one hundred of which are large pools, constantly supplied from shallow wells, wherewith all the trees, as well as vegetables, are daily watered. The citron, orange (both fruit and blossom on the tree, for it is April), the lemon, the banana, and the palm, will strongly impress you with the notion of tropical scenery ; bu.t the apples, pears, and quinces, even the mulberry trees, will remind you of Devonshire. Feast your eyes upon this verdure, and these orchards, and these pomegranates, good Pilgrim ! for you will see no where again such luxuriant vegetation until you reach the Valley of the Jordan.1 Pass through the one only gate looking towards Jerusalem, and notice the void space near it, and how the people gather there. You perceive the governor and the judge are hearing cases there, just as you read of those seated at the gate in the..Scrip-tures. Now are we in the open country — in the very Desert of Egypt—for • all along this part of the coast the sand blows in from the sea, and destroys the natural fertility of the soil, watered as it is by many streams now hidden in minute percolations. They say this sand is brought up by the northern current 1 Rabbinical writers derive the name of Joppa from Japhet, while the classical geographers refer it to lope, daughter of Eolus, and they argue that such a form of the word best suits the Phoenician original, which signifies "an eminence." Joppa existed when the Israelites invaded the land of Canaan, and is mentioned as lying on the border of the tribe of Dan (Joshua, xix. 46). It was the only port possessed by the Israelites till Herod formed the harbour of Caesarea. Although the port is bad and even dangerous, Joppa has been from the first Crusade down to our own day the landing-place of pilgrims going to Jerusalem.. There is still an hospital for pilgrims there, dependent on the Convent of San Salvador in Jerusalem, and occupied by Spanish monks. The eminence or promontory on which Jopps, is built, is picturesquely crowned by a castle, the town itself chiefly faces the north; and the buildings appear, from the steepness of the site, as if standing upon one another. The most prominent features of the architecture from without are the flattened domes by which most of the buildings are surmounted, and the appearance of arched vaults. From the steepness of the site, many of the streets are connected by flights of steps, and the one that runs along the sea-wall is the most clean and regular of the whole. There are three mosques, and Greek and Armenian convents, as well as the Latin one. No ancient ruins remain in a place so frequently destroyed in war. The chief manufacture is soap, and the inhabitants are said not to exceed 4,000, of whom one-fourth are reckoned to be Christians. of the Nile. It may be seen in the Bay of Mire, begins again at Caesarea, south of Jaffa, passes Askalon and Gaza, and rolls on in desolating waves to the Great Desert that lies between Arabia and Africa. Water your horse, before starting, at this noble Sara-cenic fountain, with its elegantly ornamented roof supported on six pillars. It is the most beautiful object in the place ; the courts and minarets that surround it, the Arab merchants, and the busy people, always about, cannot fail to impress upon your mind a recollection of what Arab life must have been when the Moors were a great and civilized people. I see you take out your pistols and examine the priming. If ever you wish to be robbed while travelling in the East, you should carry arms. They are the articles most coveted by wild people ; consequently, the greatest temptation you can offer them : they will rob you for your arms, and even murder you. From Jaffa to Jerusalem, you are, otherwise, as safe as between London and Birmingham. You hire a dragoman and horses, and place yourself in his custody at about a pound a day, if for a long journey ; just as in former times men hired post horses, and took a guide through the Lake Districts. They will ask you to have a guard, but you might as well walk along the Strand, or any other high street, at noonday, with a policeman to take care of you. The best friends for a voyage through the Holy Land, are a priest or a clergyman : those who are known only to do good are everywhere respected. Passing through the green forest of gardens, and, thence, through thickets of cactus, we come out at last upon a wide spreading plain, not a flat dead level, but swelling with gentle undulations, rising into long sandy ridges, from which occasionally slope up rocky mounds and hills. The day is hot, though the sun has not • long been up; the heat is hardly bearable, the. vapour rises steaming from the sands, and out upon the horizon is the mirage—the phantom of a lake I You are now in the land of Dan. The peasant of Sharon—the valley of which is hard by—bears, as you may see, the Egypto-African characteristics of that race. Our road is lonely, but how picturesque the few we meet ! The camel, with a burtben seemingly larger than himself ; the slow, heavy, down-looking Jew ; the haughty Turk; the slender, swarthy, muscular, lithe-limbed peasant—the women, bearing jars of water on their heads ! Having early in our journey passed a fountain in the Moorish style, surrounded by cypresses and ancient sycamores, the pious erection of the good Abu Nabbut, a former governor of Jaffa, we reached a village called Yazun, situated to the left of the way, on a mount all green with gardens; for wherever there is water here, there is verdure, and, wherever care is taken, everywhere there is water. This village marks the first hour of the distance, On the right stands a sepulchral chapel, surrounded by nine cupolas, on the right, again, of .which is a cistern or fountain with a narrow mouth, whereupon rests a jar from which the thirsty wayfarer may quench his thirst. This is called the " Fountain of the Plane-tree." The chapel marks, so says tradition, the tomb of the Prophet Gad—Gad, the Seer,—at whose instance, as we read (2 Samuel xxiv. 18), David bought from Araunah the Jebusite the area (now known as Moriah) on which the temple was afterwards built,—not the Patriarch Gad, as it is. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 3 argued, for the sons of Joseph all died in the land of Egypt : unless, as a pious writer suggests, the bodies of all the patriarchs were embalmed, as was expressly directed to be done with those of Jacob and Joseph, and transported to the Land of Promise ; a supposition strengthened by the fact that the pious Mussulman points out, about an hour's distance from the tomb of Gad, the tomb of Nebi-Riiben, the Holy Saint or Patriarch Reuben. Thus surmising, we slowly jog on for another half-hour, until we reach a grove of olives, planted in quincunxes, and a plantation of mulberry trees—the remains of an enterprise of certain French speculators in the 17th century, undertaken at the instigation of Colbert. You must not fail to picture to yourself how, when the 18th century was in its prime, these olives and these mulberry trees afforded a grateful shade to Bonaparte and his staff, who came thus far on their way towards Jerusalem. The mulberries here are grown for their fruit, and not for the silkworm. We are too early for their fruit, which does not ripen until May, and is very sharp, and in flavour like an overgrown blackberry. To the right of the road—if so a camel path or horse-track be rightly called —half hidden in the grey foliage of these olive trees, at about a mile distance, lies the village of Beit-Deegan. Pronounce this, as do the Egyptians, Reit-Dagan, and you will have (for Beit, or Beth, means house or place belonging to) the House of Dagon, that great idol of the Philistines, who could not enure the proximity of the Ark of the Lord. We are near to Ashdod—where the captured ark was deposited before Dagon and triumphed over the idol—and not farther than an hour from Gath. Passing Sarapend, a poor village, and its ruinous aqueduct, about a musket-shot to the right, where the prophet Jonas is said to be buried—a fact which the pious Mussulmans dispute, when they show his tomb at Nineveh—we come in sight of the wished-for tower and minarets of Ramleh, the Arimathea of the Scriptures, rising up from a wood of olive-trees, whose trunks are about as thick as those of pollard oaks. The name now given implies the City of the Sand. It is, indeed, a city of dust and ashes, for the mounds of grey rubbish that lie about in the narrow, crooked streets, are the dried lees of soap factories, and the slightest wind blows them about, so much so as to blind a large proportion of the population. We hasten to the Latin Convent, a large building walled round for safety, as are all convents in the east. There we find shelter and refreshment, thanking, thereupon, the goodness of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who founded it, as well as the kindness of the venerable brothers who offered us the welcome solace of so excellent a repast. How delicious the shelter from the sun with which this pillared corridor provides us ! How cool this stone floor; how clean that whitewashed, arched roof; with its frescoes of St. Joseph ! How grateful the look-out from the cloisters into the gardens, that palm-tree's shade, and that far-spreading, thick-leaved vine! Ramleh is a town of some size, and has 3,000 inhabitants)._ When the pirates of the Mediterranean hunted out the merchants' ships along the sea coast of 1 Professor Robinson disputes the identity of Ramleh with Arimathea, " a city of the Jews " according to Luke, on the grounds that Abulfeda alleges Ramleh to have been built after the time of Muhammad, or about A. D. 716, by Sulaiman Abd-el- Syria, the trade from Persia and India came inland by Bagdad and Damascus in caravans, and, then, Ramleh was a stopping-place. Hence its large khans or open inns, its yards and storehouses for travellers and merchandize. Large houses are numerous, and there is a Greek and Armenian convent, as well as the one of whose hospitality we are now partaking. But the streets are narrow and crooked, as well for safety and defence as for shade. The square tower to the right of the road is known as " The Tower of the Forty Martyrs." It forms a portion of an old church built by the Crusading Templars, in honour of the sacred relics of forty soldiers murdered in Armenia. What is now the mosque within the walls—you see its minaret between the palm trees to the left as you come up the town—was once an establishment of the Knights of St. John. Let us ascend the tower and gaze from this advantageous spot over the first extensive view of the Holy Land, and its pleasant places, that we have been able to obtain. The plain of Sharon spreads bright, fertile, and beautiful before us—from the dark mountains of Judea and Samaria to the sea, and from Holy Carmel to the sandy deserts of Philistia. See the white villages, glittering in the sun, along the many declivities of the mountains. See the waving corn, the barley already in the ear and ripe for harvest; the heavy crops of wheat, rich as Lincolnshire. Yonder the shepherd walking before his flocks, as they return frisking to their folds; the reaper returning from his toil. In summer you would see hills of grain, and the thrashing floors and the oxen driving the machines (" the new sharp thrashing instrument having teeth" (Isaiah xli., 15) over the bruised grain. But our horses await us at the convent gate of the good Franciscans. They have rebuilt the old house entirely, all but one room, where Bonaparte slept when he constituted Ramleh his head-quarters. Nothing therefore remains of the house of Joseph of Arimathea, except only the site on which we are now standing. The journey across the fertile plain of Ramle his oppressive. There is a sirocco of the quiet dry-heat kind ; our very clothes are dry and hot. It is the south wind of Job (xxxvii. 17) that " quieteth the earth." The birds have sought the shade. The very air is weak and languid with heat. An hour and an half brings us to Berea (the desert) a modern village, awakening no memories. .An hour further and we reach a spot where a village nestles. On the left the cactus hedges show the declivity of the first ripple in which the plain begins to ascend towards the mountains. This is Kubab, or the City of Roast Meat (the roast or frizzled khibobs, as the British traveller well knows, being small pieces of meat roasted on a skewer, the only roast in the Turkish cookery books), and in this village we begin, for the first time, to meet with reminiscences of Samson, whose birth place, Ashdod, is not far distant. The Arabs have a curious legend about this place. Malik ; that Ramah and Ramleh have not the same signification, for that Ramleh is in a plain, while Ramah implies a town on a hill, but it has been justly remarked that Abulfeda's statement may mean no more than that Sulaiman rebuilt the town, and with regard to the name it cannot be assumed that Hebrew proper names were always so significant. Indeed it is generally admitted that Dr. Robertson's objections have not destroyed either the tradition, or the grounds for following the usual course of describing Ramleh as representing the ancient Arimathea. 4 A 14T, ROUND TILE WOP,T.D. " In the time of the prophet king, the wise Solomon," so runs the story, " his majesty had cause to complain of the people of this district, who, in spite of the immense number of their flocks and herds, refused, for many years, to pay the ordinary tax for their oxen, sheep or goats. The prophet had fixed a certain zekiat or head money to be paid by every proprietor of thirty beasts, but these sons of wrath' conspired to elude the tax by dividing their flocks, and causing their wives, daughters and children, to pass for proprietors, so that there was not a holder of more than twenty-nine beasts in the whole district. The Great Master of the Genii, finding himself foiled by these vulgar spirits, naturally became irritated, and determined to punish them. At his dread word, the genii came down upon the plain in the shape of enor nous tawny wolves, vomiting flames of fire from their jaws, and swept round the doomed district in a circle. The harvest was just ripe, and the fire spread rapidly, driving within it, to a centre, all the herds scattered over the country. The poor beasts, terror-stricken, huddled together just at this village, and were roasted to death. The little hillock you can see just by was formed, it is said, by their bones, and the name of Kibob is a standing memento of King Solomon's vengeance." That is the legend, nor is it difficult to detect in it an Arab reminiscence of Sampson's 300 foxes, with torches to their tails, by means of which he revenged himself upon the Philistines (Judges xv. 4, 5). Along by the south-western side the slope is pierced with subterranean magazines for grain, and the numerous openings, like well-holes, leaching to them are dangerous traps for horses. We next reach Amwas or Emmaus, " Hot baths," also called Nicopolis, but not the Emmaus of Luke (xxiv. 13), where Our Saviour met his disciples in their disconsolate walk after his crucifixion. This is 28 miles from Jerusalem, and the disciples could scarcely have walked there and back to Jerusalem the same day, especially as " the day was far spent" before they "sat down to meat." The country now is broken up, and the mountains gradually rise in front of us. We are fast ascending. The road begins to be rugged, and gradually narrows into a mere valley, then to a defile. Two miles south of Amwas or Emmaus we come upon Latrun, or the Town of the Thief, situate on a conical mound, commanding a wide prospect, and crowned with the ruins of a large and strong fortress—from which Jaffa and the Mediterranean can be seen. It was a strong military post in the old time, commanding the road from Jerusalem to the sea. It is called the Castle of Emmaus by St. Jerome, and afterwards the Castle of the Good Thief. Here is the legend. It is here the good thief was born and dwelt, and made his living, like the barons of the Rhine, by robbing the passengers up the valley (Wady Aly) leading to Jerusalem. One day, the Holy Family, while passing this way in their flight into Egypt, were stopped here by this thief and his companions, and required to pay a ransom. Dimas, for such was the good thief's name, was so touched by the grace of the Divine Infant, that he protected the Holy Child from the brutality cf his accomplice ; to which good inspiration is attributed, by tradition, the special favour of that thief's conversion at the moment of his expiring upon the Cross, while the other died in impenitence to the last. This also, is the site of the Modin of the Maccabees; it is here that Judas Maccabens conquered Corgias, the lieutenant of Nicanor (i. Maccabeus, iv., 3). Here, too, the Crusaders had a camp, and here was the last advance post of our own Richard Cceur de Lion. He came no nearer to Jerusalem, but returned to be captured on his road home. A little to the right lies a village, where the Tomb of Samson was said to have been, but is not. It lay between Zorah and Eshtaol. The site remains, as do the ripening fields of corn, and the noble fountain from which the women—as oft did the mother of Samson—may, even now, be seen comingwith their full pitchers balanced on their heads. Returning to the road, a short half hour brings us up to the "Well of Job," (Ayuab) a deep fountain, or shallow well, about five feet in diameter and six fret in depth, containing about three or four feet of water, by no means tempting to the sight or taste. This is considered the half way between Jaffa and Jerusalem. We are now following the itinerary of the Ark, which, when restored by the Philistines from Ekron, was taken by the unbroken and unguided kine, harnessed to the cart containing it, across the plain to Bethshemesh (1 Sam. vi., 10,12), whence the terrified inhabitants conveyed it to Kir-jath-jearim. The stones by the well beside which we are now standing, are regarded by the Jewish pilgrims as marking the threshing floor of Joshua of Bethshemesh, where the Ark first halted. The streamlet flowing from this well now waters a field of gourds. This is said to be the boundary of the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin,—the well and waters of Nephtoah marked down by Joshua (xviii., 15). Hence we follow a narrow valley, barren and rocky, into which numerous other minor valleys trend. The road is everywhere rocky, and strewed with stones that endanger our horses' limbs, and plough up with deep ravines a mass of colossal stones, heaped up on each other as if by some mighty Titanic masonry. The scene is one of dreariness and desolation. We have been three-quarters-of-an-hour in this ravine, and now the road opens, the valley becomes less abrupt, and we find oitrselves in a kind of basin amongst the rocks, under a green clump of oaks—a delicious retreat and halting place for refreshment. A ruined kiosk stands near this fountain : this is the tomb of the Imam Aly, from whom the valley takes its name. The legend of this Mussulman Saint hovers about the spot, which the piety of his devotees have made pleasant. " In the earlier days of Islamism there was no cavalier so rich and gay in the land of Yemen as Seid Aly. All the neighbouring chieftains succumbed to his prowess, and heaven favoured his every enterprise, even while he was yet in ignorance of the true faith and blinded by the darkness of idolatry. So great was the repute of his valor, that the Pasha who governed the country in the name of the Sultan of Roumelia, became desirous to attach to himself so powerful an auxiliary against the Sons of the Desert, and gave to him in marriage his only daughter, the beautiful Miriam "How happy was that night, when, after three days devoted to magnificent fetes, Seid Aly saw enter, within his tent, his beautiful betrothed. RaiSing, with the point of his sabre, according to the usages " of his warrior race, the veil of golden tissue which hid her yet from his impatient eyes, he remained as one struck senseless by gazing on a face, gracious and lovely as that of the Perfs, and shining brighter than the moon in the fullness of her pride. Nevertheless, while thus ALL ROUND THE WORLD. SARACENIC FCUNTAIN, NEAR THE COUNCIL HOUSE, J!. RITALEM. \ A .1 • • • • • 7.• I IT• 7 111111, I .141 7 I. 1 • < . pi jr '.>"--•,.,.. ' , nr..is • 4.' , ,17 ,-, ••-•,, ...---ILI.... iiiiiAl 1 , [1(04 Ill, I I; ill ••• - "A 11111111 c_ — •;. CZ-,• • •••7 i• • 6 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. motionless, ravished with delight, and quite beyond himself, he felt the fire of love burning in his bosom, some invincible Power enchained his body and paralysed his will. The Eternal Truth was revealed to him in that moment—lie beetune a Mussulman on the instant, and pronounced the profession of faith : There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet at the same time requesting Miriam to become a sharer in the same happiness. But the eyes of the fair maiden remained closed to the celestial light, and she refused to make confession of the unity of the Deity. " Seid Aly, despite the ardour of his love, refrained from his rights as a bridegroom, and permitted his rirgin wife to return to her father, only receiving her promise that, on the day when her soul should be opened to the doctrine of salvation, she would at once rejoin him and consummate a happiness impossible without her ! " From that clay, peace fled the breast of Seid Aly. He abandoned his faithful companions, his rich herds, the desert where he had passed his early life, and came to dwell in this valley, concealing himself under the rags of a dervish, and devoting his existence to supply water to thirsty wayfarers. " Many years rolled away, and he still persevered in his prayers and good works, supplicating the All Merciful to take him from this world or restore to him his Miriam. One day, while he was taking his noonday slumber, in his little grotto,"—down there, on the other side of the road,—" he thought, in his dream, that he saw his betrothed advancing to the hermitage towards him, robed in all -the richness of her bridal attire, gently borne forward in a golden car, drawn by two mules of surpassing whiteness. His rapture at the sight awoke him, and he found before him, with forehead bowed to the dust, a female pilgrim in ragged vestments, whose feet, scarred and torn by the sharp stones of the road, left prints of blood up to the very threshold of his grotto. He drew near, and recognised the Miriam he had desired so long, who, on the point of expiring with fatigue, saluted him with the sacred words of the profession of the true faith. He rushed towards her, and pressed one ardent kiss upon her lips. In that first kiss, their two souls winged their way together, never to part again, to the dwellings of eternal bliss. " Where the bodies of the two faithful servants of the one only God were found, angels nursed and cherished. the growth of this clump of shady oaks. The devout of a subsequent period built a mosque and endowed it with lands (wakarj) that a fountain might there be kept perpetually flowing, and the stranger, while drinking the cool refreshing waters, might still bless and pray for the holy man. The indifference of the Faithful, and the lapse of time have allowed the kiosk to fall to ruins, but the water, which is the gift of the good angels, still flows to comfort and refresh the weary traveller, whom the sacred oaks still shelter." The story over, we will push our horses up to the culminating point of. the vallqy by a steep and rugged path, cut through clumps of cactus, among huge boulders Icattered over the rocky sides. Still rising upon the idge we come to the thicket of olives, wherein lies an ancient desolate village, Saris, by which the Ark of Jehovah passed over to Kirjathjearim, and where David is said to have taken refuge from the wrath of Saul. Another hour, over an undulating road, always rising—for we must reach to full two thousand feet above the level of the sea before treading on the plateau of the Holy City—and we turned the hill, and found Kirjathjearim, or Kuriet el Enab (the Village of Raisins) at the opening of a cultivated valley, prettily situated in a basin on the north side 01 a spur jutting out from the western hill. This is where the Ark rested twenty years in the house of Aminadab, on a slight elevation (Gibeah). They show the site, and within a house erected upon it dwells the sheikh or head man of the village tribe. There is an open space in front of Kirjathjearim like one of our village greens. It is shaded by five or six fine fig-trees, under the leafy shelter of which council is held and judgment given on matters of importance to the little community. There is a fine fountain of excellent water, and flocks and herds are to be seen lying about—a scene of pastoral repose I Be not deceived; this village was until lately the residence or den of the greatest bandit of the Holy Land, the terror of priests of all religions. Each successive chief of this family succeeded to the same title—Abu-Ghush, " Father of Deceit," which ultimately became a word of terror throughout all Palestine. So long as 500 years ago, one Abu-Ghush murdered all the monks in the village, where there is a large convent of the " Good Fathers of the Holy Land ; " so thenceforward in their annals the place bears the name of Jeremy, as well from the once noble church now in ruins—yet finely preserved, so far as its pointed gothic porch and aisles, and its round-arched windows—a strange mixture of the Crusaders' time, dedicated to the Prophets, and now a stable,—as from its moral resemblance to Anathoth, the mournful scene of " Jeremiah's lamentations." Twenty-one years ago the Abu-Ghush of that period commanded 40,000 Arabs, and rebelled against his sovereign from Ramleh to Jerusalem, and from Hebron to the mountains of Jericho. There are still sixty or seventy members of this family remaining, but the Turkish government took them in hand in 1846, seized the grand delinquents, and sent them to Constantinople. Some of these died in further banishment; one only has returned, after years of expatriation, to private life and painful respect for other people's purses, a saddened and an honest man. Some day ere long, perhaps, there may be an Abu-Ghush figuring at the head of a prospectus for the mercantile development of the Holy Land by a railway from Jaffa to Ramleh, with branches to Jerusalem and Damascus. Even now the wealthiest of the family is largely interested in soap-boiling, which (tell it not in Gath !) is, now-a-days, one of the principal and most flourishing manufactures of the cities of Palestine. This Kirjathjearim is most probably Emmaus, where our Saviour broke bread with the disciples (Luke xxiv. 30).1 It is just tfiree hours' ride from this place to Jerusalem, down by a long descent to Kustul, a ruined fort upon a hill—whence may be seen, high on a hilltop, and bending over the valley of the Gibeonites, Nebi Samuel, the tomb of the prophet Samuel, said to be the Ramah,—in Hebrew, "assembly place”--ofthat Prophet. After this we have a steep descent and a slippery path down to Colonia. It was here, in all probability, that Uzza, put his hand upon the Ark, for the steep is 1 Kirjath-jearim signified "City of Forests." The first part of the name Kuryet-el-Enab, signifies, like Kirjath, "city" only, " jearim," forests, has been changed to "enab," grapes. So close a correspondence of name and position seems to justify Dr. Robin-son's conclusions in fuvonr of the identity of the two. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 7 rocky and dreadful for a cart; and close at Land here, no doubt, were the sites of the threshing-floor of Nachon and the house of Obededom. At Colonta we stop a few minutes, to ease our horses and examine the stone bridge, with round arch, the large ruins, evidently extending, the fine pools and copious fountains. These are the works of Iladrian the Emperor. Henceforward the path winds up a valley and steep hills, over a waste of dreary rocks. This long and weary passage past, we look for Jerusalem, but in vain. There is yet a mile of stony table-land to stumble across.. Nebi Samuel is again in sight, however, on a bill above. Then comes another white tower; that is the Convent of the Ascension, on the Mount of Olives. Another swelling ridge surmounted, and the wall of Jerusalem, battlemented with towers, rises blank before us. The slope of the ground eastward prevents the houses, temple, domes, or minarets, being seen above. There is only the gray old square tower of Hippicus, and the wall; and the first impression to the mind, highly wrought up as it cannot fail to be, is singularly disappointing. A moment's pause, a look around, and the desolation of the scene strikes the beholder in all its awfulness—" mountains without shade, valleys without water, earth without verdure, rocks without terror or grandeur," and gray walls rising on the brow of Zion. Not a breath of wind murmuring, not a sound. "Jerusalem, where we would visit one Sepulchre only, is, itself; the tomb of a whole people." But this is not the vantage-spot to gaze upon the city. Seen from the Mount of Olives, on the other side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from east to west. The embattled wall, fortified with towers and a gothic castle, encompasses the whole of the city all round, excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which, in more ancient times, was enclosed within its precinct. The city, here, presents to the imagination the appearance of an army advancing down a lull, the pinnacles and the domes on Mosque Moriah, looking like the banners raised in advance. Here, there is a vacant space to be seen, as also towards the Fort Antonia, in the western part of the city; while towards the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary the houses appear to stand close together ; but towards the east, and down along to the Brook Kedron, the eye falls on ruins and desolation. The houses are heavy masses, very low, without chimnies at top or windows externally, and with flat roofs or terraces, with cupolas on the top. They look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole city would appear like one level roof; but for the rare steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the tops of a few cypress trees, and the dark clumps of nopals, which only break the uniformity of the plan. The general aspect has been well compared to the confused monuments of a cemetery in the midet of a desert. Such is the present condition of " the most beautiful city of the whole earth ;" Josephus, speaking without knowledge of the new and greater claims to the admiration of the world which the City had attained as the scene of the great martyrdom and testification of God's goodness and man's great wickedness, says (Wars, vi. x., 6) " Yet hath not its great antiquity, nor its vast riches, nor the diffusion of its nation over all the habitable earth, nor the greatness of the veneration paid to it on a religious account, been sufficient to preserve it from being destroyed." IL—OVER JERUSALEM. JERUSALEM, standing upon four hills—Zion and A cra on the west, Moviah (with Ophel) on the south, ;aid Bethesda on the north; defined on three sides by deep valleys or ravines—Jehoshaphat, Hinnom, and ( and cut asunder by a deep defile, the Tyropecon, or Street of the Cheesemongers, forming what was once its main street, dividing the Temple from Zion----is easily comprehended at a single glance, in its most striking features, from almost any point of vantage. On entering under the deep archway of the Jaftit, Gate we have on the right the ditch and tower of the citadel or "Castle of David," as it is sometimes called, being, however, in fact, the fortress built by 7 ferod Agrippa. Of the three great towers, dedicated to his queen Mariamne, whom he murdered through jealousy, and his brother Phasadis and friend Hippie-us, who both fell fighting for him in battle, one only remains, the gloomy, squat-looking, but massive tower of Hippicus. The lower portion of that, too, alone is standing, formed of massive stones, similar to those that remain of the temple in the Hamm walls, monuments of masonry in the Roman ages, such as we re pointed out to the Saviour, " Seest thou these great stones (Mark, xiii, 2). ere was the palace of that sumptuous king, the vast bed-chambers for one hundred guests, with roofs of great beams of cedar, and furniture of silver .and gold, as recorded by Josephus. Those gilded porticoes and richly carved pillars, and gardens ever cool and green, and groves of trees, and canals with their dove houses, are all gone—all burnt with fire by the zealots during the siege by Titus, when discord Within aided the enemy without, and a Jewish hand first fired the Temple itself. The ancient portion of this tower is now only forty feet in height, but its dimensions remain, fifty-six feet by seventy. An additional height of about: eighteen feet was built up on this by the Crusaders. Mount Zion is to our right • to our left are Akra and the lower city, with the Holy Sepulchre, Calvary, the Via Dolorosa, the whole scene of our Lord's suffering; before us the Temple and—over the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies concealed between them—the Mount of Olives. To the right of the gate, as we enter, is an open square, once ruinous and desolate, now a kind of West-end to Jerusalem. Here stands, upon the site of King Herod's palace, an English church, newly erected, in the modern Gothic style, like some Baker-street chapel, the whiteness of its fresh-cut stones strangely contrasting with the mellow brown colour and antique Saracenic architecture of the buildings all about. There are also the Bishop's house, and the new Armenian Convent, a fine building with gardens. There are bankers and boutiques and shops of all kinds, and three tailors' " establishments," in strange discordance with the solemn Orientalism of the general costume and character of all about them. We pass on; for this is not what we have come to see. The small community of British, American, and German residents are doing inuch good, but nothing in comparison with the mighty change that has to he effected before Jerusalem or her people are restored. The Protestant congregation numbers, it is sail, occasionally two hundred. These are under the protection of England and Prussia in an anomalously united bishopric. Austria defends the Roman Catholic institutions; France is " Protector of Christianity (generally) ALL ROUND THE WORLD. THE WAILING PLACE.—JEWS PRAYING AT THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. \ • . A '• 1 1,11 f\I- iv) j'`.• e • --* - - _ — — — - - : ' ; • —' 1, ij t 1ji.p., 4 i)-• -- r ' I 11. • • 0 • - % fr:7h 2 / 11:1; 11,1\ 1'11110: ci • 1) ) hi] r . 44!-')..‘.1 • ALL ROUND THE WORL.P. 9 1A13140111q1011 • •••%. _--THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY in the East;" and the Emperor of Russia is head of the Greek Church. These communities reside for the most part in the Frank Quarter, from the Jaffa Gate to the Damascus Gate, while around the Holy Place, whence the glory has departed, the Jewish people still linger. The Jew in Jerusalem is himself a perpetual miracle and lasting monument of Scripture truth. Enter the abodes of these people, you will find them doing what they did five thousand years ago—teaching their children to read the Holy Book. Seventeen times have they seen Jerusalem destroyed, yet still they turn their faces towards Zion, expecting still a king who is to deliver them. " Greeks, Persians, Romans, are swept from the earth," says a noble writer, " and a petty tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists unmixed among the ruins of its native land." 8,000 (some say 11,000) Jews. 5,000 Mussulmans, 3,000 Greeks, 1,500 Latin Catholics, 1,000 Armenians, and from 100 to 200 Syrians and Copts, form, with the Protestant community, for the most part English, the present population of Jerusalem, which Jewish historians narrate to have at one time equalled the enormous and indeed incredible amount of two millions. This was during the Holy Week, when pilgrims from all parts came to Jerusalem. How far this must have exceeded the enthusiasm of our degenerate days may be judged from the fact that the pilgrims who visit Jerusalem yearly do not exceed 12,000, of whom 10,000 are Mussulmans. This being Easter, is the most crowded season, so we are enabled to judge for ourselves. The foundation of the city dates from Melchisedek. Of this one of the Arab traditions, many of which 1111 fp' "MITI .311M1111101 SEPULCHRE AT JERUSALEM. breathe the pastoral air of the early portions of the sacred Scripture, has preserved the following charming legend :— "Jerusalem was a ploughed field, and the ground, on which the Temple now stands, the joint inheritance of two brothers, one of whom was married and had several children, the other lived a bachelor. They cultivated in common the field which had devolved on them in right of their mother. At harvest time the two brothers bound up their sheaves, and made Of them two equal stacks, which they left upon the field during the night. A good thought presented itself to the younger. My brother,' said he to himself, has a wife and children to maintain; it is not just that our shares should be equal;; let me then take a few sheaves from my stack and secretly add them to his; he will not perceive it, and therefore cannot refuse them.' This project the young man immediately executed. That night the elder awoke and said to his wife, My brother is young, and lives alone, without a companion to assist him in his labours and console him under his fatigues; it is not just that we should take from the field as many sheaves as he does; let us get up and secretly go and carry a certain number of sheaves to his stack ; he will not find it out to-morrow, and therefore cannot refuse them ;' and they did so accordingly. The next day both brothers went to the field, and each was much surprised to find the two stacks alike, neither being able in his own mind to account for the prodigy. They pursued the same course for several successive nights, but as each carried to his brother's stack the same number of sheaves, the stacks still remained equal, till one night, both determining • 411, 1111111'11111 ill. '1. • s4, C. es e-i):670 - 10 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. to stand sentinel to elucidate the mystery, they met, each bearing the sheaves destined for his brother's stack. " Now the spot where so beautiful a thought at once occurred to and was so perseveringly acted upon by these men, must be a place agreeable to God ; and men blessed it, and chose it whereon to build a house to His name."' Improved by David, who drove the Jebusites away, and enriched by Solomon, who added to Mount Zion the Temple and circumjacent buildings, the City was reduced, by the division of the tribes at his death, to the capital of Judea simply, but in the next four centuries it was still further embellished and aggrandized, until, the worship of false gods, the true sin of the Hebrew nationality, replacing the law of Moses, the wrath of God fell upon the children of disobedience, and its fall was not far distant. In vain, under Hezekiah, did . Jerusalem resist the armies of Sennacherib ; for it was destroyed soon after by Nebuchadnezzar. Its inhabitants were carried into captivity. Sixty years later Cyrus permitted its re-establishment, and a theocratic government took the place of its monarchy. While on his march to Persia, Alexander received its submission, though he spared it, owinc, to a divine interference communicated through :dream. From the sovereignty of the Lagides, after his death, it passed to the Seleucides, whose persecutions gave occasion . to one of the brightest periods of its history ; the devotion of the Maccabees, who succeeded in delivering their country, and governed it with glory. A quarrel between 1 The identity of the Salem of Melchizedek with the Jerusalem of sacred history, has been demonstrated by a close critical analysis of all the passages in which the circumstances are alluded to ; and it has been further shown to be highly probable that this patriarch was identical, not with Sheni, as has been sometime supposed, but with Heber, the son of Peleg, from whom the Land of Canaan obtained the name of th.e Land of the Hebrews, or Heberites. The elucidation which the early bistory of Jerusalem receives from the monuments of Egypt is extremely important and valuable, as relating to a period which is passed over in silence by the sacred historians. There is a city which stands forth with a very marked and peculiar prominence in the wars of the kings of Egypt with the Jebusites, Amorites, and neighbouring nations. We meet with it first as a fortress of the Amorites. Sethos II. is engaged in besieging it. It is situated on a hill, and strengthened with two tiers of ramparts. The name in hieroglyphs, translated into Coptic, and thence into Hebrew, is Chadash. The next notice of Chadash belongs to the reign of Sesostris, and connects it with the Jebusite nation. The inscription further describes Challash as being in the land of Heth or of the Hittites. It was thus apparently the metropolis of three or four of the most powerful Canaanitish nations before the time of the Hebrews. Its metropolitan character appears in Scripture, at the time of Joshua's invasion. We cannot hesitate in identifying the Cha-dash of the hieroglyphs with the Kadutis, or Cadytis of Herodotus, the Khadatha of the Syrians, and El Duds of the Arabs—" the Holy City." It was not till David's time that the Jebusites were finally expelled, and under his son, Solomon, it became the ecclesiastical head of the nation and the ark of the covenant, and the tabernacle of the congregation. The name, Jerusalem, is generally admitted to be a compound of two earlier names. Some have supposed of Jebusalem, "the trampling down of peace" euphonised into "possessio hereditaria pacis," or as others have it, " the vision of peace." Old Sir John Maundeville seems to have anticipated the researches of the most learned scholars of Europe when he says, " You must know that Jerusalem of old, until the time of Melchisedek, was called Jebus ; and afterwards, it was called Salem, until the time of King David, who put these two names together, and called it Jebusalem, which King Solomon altered to Jerusalem." But he did not anticipate the Egyptologists. Hyrcanus II. and Aristobulus II., who disputed its throne,. brought to its walls the Roman armies under Pompey, and then the Parthians, and then again the Romans under Crassus, from whom Herod, by successful intrigue, obtained authority to assume the honour of entitling himself its king. Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, and the last of the Maccabees, being captured by Herod, an officer of his uncle's court, was delivered to Anthony, by whom the last descendant of the Maccabees was scourged to death. It was in the reign of Herod the Great that Christ was born, and in the reign of Herod Agrippa, his grandson, that those events passed which have given to Jerusalem its immortal interest among Christians,—the life and death of the Saviour, and the appearance of a new religion destined to transform the world. Jerusalem next became apportioned for a time as one of the tetrarchies that replaced the unity of government under Herod, but the successive revolts of the Jews brought upon it capture and destruction by Titus, after a siege of seven months, the miseries of which were aggravated by internal discord ; then afterwards by Hadrian, who drove the Jews entirely away from it, gave it the name of Alia, Capitolina, and desecrated the Christian shrines, and even the revered sepulchre of Christ, by introducing the filthy rites of the worst part of Eastern idolatry, adopted into Pagan pantheism under the title of the worship of Adonis. The once Holy City preserved its Roman name until the time • of Constantine, whose mother, the Empress Helena, was the first to avail herself of her son's conversion to Christianity, and search for and restore the Christian monuments with a pious care. The subsequent capture by the Persian king Chosroes, the release of the holy shrine by the Crusaders, and the final triumph of the Saracens, with the subsequent history of Palestine, need no recapitulation in our brief summary. At the present moment, the Holy City is the seat of government of the district of Liva, and the residence of the Pasha of Palestine. How long it will thus remain is one of the questions imminent for settlement in the present disturbed state of Syria. Every dynasty has left its stamp upon the city. The site is Melchisedek's, and all around speaks of the Pastoral ages ; Zion tells us of David ; the Temple platform, of Solomon; the towers, of Herod; the walls and bridge, of the Romans; the Great Mosque, of Omar and the Turks ; the Holy Sepulchre, of Constantine ; the churches and monuments, of the Crusaders ; the Mount of Olives, of the Saviour ; the Valley of Hinnom, of the worship of Moloch ; the Valley of Jehoshaphat and its tombs, of the Prophets and the Kings, and of the wretched People who live in exile and fear, and, trembling, beg to purchase permission to lay their bones there. The whole Land in its desolation is a record of the wrath of an offended God. Such are the recollections, and these the solemn thoughts, to which our first entrance intoJerlalem gives rise. But the day is far spent, and weikwill turn to the left by the north-west angle of the castle, and take up our quarters, not at any new inn, the Mediterranean, or the Malta, but at the Casa Nuova, a new building erected as an addition to their old convent by the establishment of the Latin monks, who, from time almost immemorial, have habitually entertained pilgrims to Jerusalem, of every rank. Walking out from this convent, and mounting the wall which is ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 11 close by, we obtain a general view of the City, and may obtaia a cursory knowledge of its localities. The present walls of the City are about two miles and a half in circumference, and average about forty feet in height; but in some few places they are about twicethat height. In position, they are nearly identical with those erected by Hadrian, which were so decayed in 1178, (just Before the final expulsion of the Christians by Saladin, in 1187), that large sums were sent by Gthristendom for their reparation. Saladin himself repaired them in 1192 ; but Sultan Melek el Mia,dh-Stein threw them all down, except the Haram walls (about the Temple), and El Khalat (the citadel). In 1243, the Christians, to whom the city was again handed over by Barbacan, (it having been previously surrendered to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, in 1240, and captured again), rebuilt the fortifications, principally at the expense of the Knights Templars ; finally Sultan Stillman I, the second of the Mirzan Sultans that reigned over Jerusalem, built the present walls in 1542 ; St. Stephen's Gate, and some portion of the Damascus Gate remaining as they were left by the Crusaders, as well as some portion of the existing walls. The fosse, then deep, is now filled up by accumulating rubbish. At a few points the native rock is merely faced with masonry, or often, as in Mount Bezetha, built into the wall. The gates—only the principal gates are now only open—face the cardinal points of the compass. These are the Jaffa or Bab el Khahil (Gate of a Friend, that is Abraham, the friend of God), on the west ; the Damascus or Bab es Sham, or Bab el Annul, (Gate of the Column), on the north; the St. Stephen or Bab Sitti Miriam, (St. Mary's Gate) on the east; and Zion or Bab en Nebi Daud (Gate of the Prophet David) on the south. These are kept open from sunrise to sunset every day, except an hour on Friday the Moslem sabbath-noon, when they are closed while service is performed in the Mosque of Omar. The Mugharibehl or Dung Gate,2 1 The Mugharibeh, who have a quarter named after themselves, which they no longer entirely occupy, are the people of the West, or of Barbary. There are some of them the descendants of the Moors driven from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. These exiles were charitably received in the Holy City; a mosque was built for them, and they receive even now a liberal portion of bread, fruit, soup, and money (the latter rarely), allowed from the Hospice of St. Helena, or rather Roxalana, fbr the poorer Mus-sulmans of Jerusalem. The heirs of the proud Abencerages, the elegant architects of the Alhambra, are become porters at Jerusalem, who are sought for on account of their strength, and as messengers esteemed for their swiftness and intelligence. What would Saladin and Richard say, if, suddenly returning to this world, they were to find the Moorish champions transformed into doorkeepers of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Christian knights represented by brethren of the Mendicant Order ? 2 Bishop Arculf, who travelled in the year 700, relates a Curious legend in reference to this exit of the Tyropceon—once a fosse within a fosse, shutting in Zion and Moriah into one compact mass, which explains the origin of the Frankish name of its gate, Dung-gate—which might otherwise appear repulsive. "On the 15th of September, annually, an immense multitude of people, of different nations, are used to meet in Jerusalem for the purpose of commerce ; and the streets are so clogged with the dung of camels, horses, mules, and oxen, that they become almost impassable, and the smell would be a nuisance to the whole town. But, by a mifaculous providence which exhibits God's peculiar attachment to this place, no sooner has the multitude left Jerusalem, than a heavy fall of rain begins on the night following, and ceases only when the city has been perfectly cleansed." In other words, heavy rains carry off a large portion of the filth of the streets by this gateway. The so-called Dung Gate is supposed to be the same as Josephus's Gate of the Essenes. ii. 13; xii. 31.) it has also been identified with "the gate between two walls." (2 Kings xxv. 4. Jer. xxxix. 4). situated in the Tyropeeon, is never opened except during seasons of scarcity of water. The other gates are walled up—the Golden Gate especially, the Turks having a tradition that at some future time a mighty conqueror is to enter through it into the eity.3 There are several battle-merited towers of minor elevations, besides that of Hippicus. At the north-east corner of the Temple enclosure, are remains of the tower of Hananeel. In the north-west corner of the city wall are also the remains of a large fortification called " Goliah's Castle," (Khalat-Julib), better known as " Tancred's Tower." The existing wall occupies only about one-third of the site of the qriginal city, much of Mount Zion being excluded on the south, and nearly all of Coraopolis, or the Lower City, on the north. The streets of Jerusalem are narrow, seldom more than ten feet wide, and mostly not so much ; they are filthy and, ill-paved, covered with stones of all sizes embedded in the earth. In many there is a ditch or trench in the centre, hollowed out for horses and camels, between side paths for passengers. The ditch is often two feet in depth, and one beast can only pass at a time. The natives know only two or three streets by name. The Christians have endeavoured to remedy this inconvenience. Tints there is " Zion Street " from Zion Gate to Damascus Gate, dividing the Jews quarter from the Armenian; the continuation of it which separates the Latin and Greek quarters from the Turkish, is called " Saint Stephen's," there being a tradition that the courageous deacon was martyred near the gate. The " Street of David " designates the great thoroughfare from Jaffa Gate to the Temple, dividing the Latin and Greek quarters from the Armenian. The continuation of this between the Turkish quarter and the Jews is called the " Street of the Temple." " Mill Valley Street " runs front the Mugharibeh Gate at the end of the Tyropoeon into Damascus Street. The zigzagging street from Saint Stephen's Gate to the north-western corner of the city, as far as Damascus Street, is the famous "Via Dolorosa," up which the Saviour passed from ,judgment to crucifixion; from the lest point mentioned, it is the "Street of the Holy Sepulchre," the church of which forms the main feature of it. The " Street of the Patriarch" is a short and narrow street from Hezekiah's Pool to the Greek Convent of the Forerunner, and is between David Street and the Street of St. Sepulchre. The short street lying between Damascus and Valley Streets, immediately in front of Helena's Hospice, is sometimes called " Market Street," but generally Tariki el Sitti (" Lady Street)," iu honour of the lady who raised 3 The Pilgrim Soewulf, who travelled in 1102-1103, says :—"There is a gate of the city, on the eastern side of the temple, which is called the "Golden," where Joachim, the father of the blessed Mary, by the order of the Angel of the Lord, met his wife Anne. By the same gate, the Lord Jesus, coming from Bethany on the Day of Olives, sitting on an ass, entered the city of Jerusalem, while the children sang 'Hosanna to the6.'on of David.' By this gate time Emperor I leraelitts entered Jerusalem when he returned victorious from Persia with the Cross of Our Lord ; but the stones first fell down and closed up the passage, so that the gate became one mass, until, humbling himself at the admonition of an angel, lie descended frogs his horse, and so the entrance was opened to him." Sir John Maundeville describes in his time (A. D. 1322) the marks of time ass's feet as being still seen in three places at the Galen Gate, the steps of which are of very hard stone. 3:aundrell calls it the Gate of the Temple, and below this gate, he says, in time bottom (if time v:;11,,y, was a broad hard stone, discovering the prints made l;y our blessed aviour's feet. 12 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. this magnificent structure—either the Empress or Dame Tanshok—the wife we believe of a German crusader, who was exceedingly charitable in founding hospitals for poor pilgrims. What the Empress Helena endowed, the Sultana Roxalana seized, and perverted,addiug further endowments, to providing soup for poor Turks. The benefaction is still carried into effect. The domestic architecture of Jerusalem, as can be seen, is of the simplest character. The houses are all constructed of the common limestone of the country. There being no timber in Palestine, this material is of course exceedingly high-priced here; and the doors and casements of the window§ are the only portion of the houses made of wood, not a particle being used about the floors, roofs, or any other part whatever. The windows are few and small, and all grated with iron if sufficiently large to admit a thief. Window-glass is a rarity but just introduced. There is only one door to the largest establishments, and there are no windows below, which, as those above are generally latticed, ensures seclusion—almost that of a prison—to the inmates. The want of timber necessitates an extensive use of crypts, arches, vaults, and domes. This characteristic will be remarked in the View over Jerusalem at page 1. Before setting forth again, let us describe to you this convent of our hospitable hosts—the Latin Fathers. We cross the narrow street or alley from our lodgings in the Casa Nuova, or New House, which has been erected separately for the accommodation of strangers. We then reach the convent by a covered way, leading to a passage of considerable depth, and very dark. At the end of this passage you come to a court formed by the wood-house, cellar, and larder of the convent ; over these, reached by a flight of twelve to fifteen steps, is a cloister, the eastern end of which opens into a vestibule communicating with a small chapel twenty feet by twelve, fitted up with stalls, a nave lighted up by a dome, an altar, and a small organ. At the west end of the cloister another door leads into the interior of the convent, which is very irregular in style, but extremely ancient in appearance. The apartments are small and high, and there are two gardens of about fifteen perches each adjoining the ramparts of the city. From the terrace the whole city is seen spread below, running down hill towards the Mount of Olives. The Pilgrim's Great Room looks upon a solitary court inclosed on all sides with walls. We will now set forth to get another view over Jerusalem, and, reaching the Patriarch Street, ascend to the top of the Coptic convent adjoining the noble caravanserai of the same church, thence looking down upon one of the notabilities of the city, the Pool of Hezekiah. This deep cistern is nearly 250 feet long, and 150 feet wide : an immense reservoir, capable of holding water sufficient for half the city. It is quite surrounded by houses. Its depth below the surface is eight or ten feet, but it is considerably deeper at the southern than at the northern extremity. It is usually, thought to be supplied by rain-fall from the neighbouring houses, but it is in reality in connection with the upper Pool of Gihon—outside the Jaffa gate, and at the head of the Valley of Hinnom. Jerusalem was once abundant in water ; it is a part of the curse upon it that water should be now deficient ; hence it sometimes fails at the end of autumn. The view we have from here (see page 1,) is a fine one. But still, the desolation of the city is most conspicuous. The whole of Bezetha beyond on the left, and a large part of Acra to the left just below, is uninhabited ; the Temple enclosure is a vast void space ; the parts about Mugharibeh or Ophel, and the south-east of Zion, are either ploughed fields, or overrun with cactus ; the entire west face of Zion is occupied by the gardens of the Armenian Convent ; the•space south of Calvary is vacant, and what is occupied is merely filled by mosques, convents, and churches; though even where there are houses, they are for the most part in ruins. We have now a fine prospect of the walls, which form almost an oblong square, the longest sides running from west to east. The ancient Jerusalem could not have been much more extensive than the modern city, and must have occupied, in its palmy days, the same site, except that it comprehended within the walls the whole of Mount Zion, but excluded Calvary, which was afterwards enclosed by Adrian. Solyman, the son of Selim (1534), is reported to have slain his architect for not comprehending the whole of Zion within the walls, but this, it is hinted, he did, as the readiest means of paying him. In modern warfare the City would be untenable, as it is commanded by hills on all sides. We are now on the edge of Akra, between which hill and Zion—the sloping buildings of which are on the right—the valley of the Tyropceon is seen descending. Over to the right, where once stood the Temple of Solomon, may be seen two blue cupolas marking the octangular Mosque of Omar, with the long low roof of the minor Mosque El Aksa. The minaret rising to the left of the Mosque of Omar (Temple Enclosure) was erected, we are told, by Tunguz, Prefect of Syria, when he built the celebrated school at the side of the Gate of the Chain. It is served by the most eminent Muezzins, and gives the directions to the others in announcing prayer. It stands near the Gate of the Chain, which opens from the Temple Enclosure into the Street of David, but into which it is not advisable to peep unless you desire a sound beating from the Turks.. Around and about it are majestic planes and cypresses, an union of nature and art peculiar to Turkish religious enclosures. It was from their living in this Mosque el Aksa that the Knights Templars took their name; and in front of its porch lie buried the murderers of St. Thomas a Becket, who died at Jerusalem, upon a pilgrimage undertaken in expiation of their crime. At the corner of the wall is the " House of Pilate," now a barracks, late a stable, whence stolen views of the sacred platform were of old vouchsafed to favoured Christian pilgrims, such as Chateaubriand and Lamartine. To the right, just below, are the swelling domes and heavy massive towers of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—one dark elliptical dome overlooked by another, and a white one rising out of a cloud of little domes over an ocean of houses. This is Calvary and the Sepulchre. The line of walls, the pointed minarets stand out iu bold relief against the deep blue of the orient sky ; but no voice is heard in the widowed City ; no roads seem to lead to her, and were it not Easter Week, few would be passing in and out of her gates. The centre of attraction for the Pilgrims is evidently the square before the Holy Sepulchre : here beads from Mecca, and mother-of-pearl images from Bethlehem, and crosses of bitumen from the Dead Sea, are attracting purchasers of various nations. The tall and elegant minaret adjacent to the ALL POUND THE WORLD 13 THE DAMASCUS GATE, JERUSALEM. Church of the Holy Sepulchre belongs to a mosque, called El K hanky, formerly the residence of the Latin Patriarch. Of this building we read a curious story, related by an Arab authority, who tells how the Christians were greatly distressed at seeing this minaret arising in such close proximity to the Holy Sepulchre, which it entirely commanded. They- offered a large sum to Sheikh Ibn Ghanem, to bribe him to desist from his pious intention, but he persisted and completed the structure. The Frophet then appeared to a Holy Man and commanded him to seek out and salute Ibn Ghanem, and assure him of his intercession at the day of judgment for his meritorious work of having out-topped the infidels. But see ! how the eager pilgrims crowd to the portal of the Holy Sepulchre—where the whole scene of the Saviour's crucifixion and entombment are vividly brought before their eyes. The church is a magnificent monument of the Byzantine age. (See page 9). We shall soon be down there, and following the eager enthusiasts in visiting the religious stations of that sacred spot. The spacious deserted enclosure close on the right, and on which grow two or three olive trees, a palm tree and a few cypresses, was once the magnificent house of the Knights Hospitallers, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The Greek Convent forms one side of this square, and that community had hoped to obtain these gardens and the ruins pertaining thereunto, but within the last few years the whole square containing them, as well as the Church of St. Anne in another part, have been made over by the Sultan to the Emperor Louis Napoleon. The very curious and picturesque gateway which forms the subject of our illustration (page 10) stands at one end of this vacant spot, facing into the street leading from the Church to the Sepulchre. The external facade displays a flattened pointed arch, while the archway beyond is round headed. The carving is extremely rich. Among the ornaments and emblems is seen the Lamb, the emblem of the noble order of St. John of Jerusalem, of whose palace this was the entrance. Behind the gateway are seen some remains of the buildings. The interior is the receptacle of every kind of filth; from the open area a staircase mounts up to a cloister, from which opens sundry rooms, not capable of being entered from multifarious pollutions. There is a large hall with painted windows absolutely filled with dung. How are the mighty fallen ! Immediately upon the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders (in 1099) followed the foundation of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the origin of which was an hospice founded in Jerusalem in 1048 by a few merchants of Amalfi for the accommodation of pilgrims from Europe. An hospital for the sick was afterwards added—hence the term, Knights Hospitallers, the members of which were also known as Knights of Rhodes. When the Crusaders entered Jerusalem, many of the chevaliers determined on joining the order. Godfrey granted a donation, an example which was followed by other princes. To the usual vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, was added a vow to be always ready to fight against Muhammadans and all who forsook the true religion. In 1118 the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, then called also the Knights 11 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. of Malta, became a military order. The building now so desecrated was described in 1322, as having 178 pillars of fine stone, and having near it the church called " Our Lady the Grand" and " Our Lady the Latin," " and there stood Mary Cleophas and Mary Magdalen, and tore their hair when Our Lord was executed on the cross." Napoleon Bonaparte expelled the last relics of the Order of St. John Hospitallers, when he took Malta from them. Will Louis Napoleon resuscitate their ancient glories? Stranger things have happmled. With the City thus lying before us, and its landmarks denoted, it will not be difficult, looking down upon the valley of the Tyropceon, which separated Zion from the Temple, and over which was a bridge connecting the two parts of the City (each of which were separately walled), to imagine Jerusalem restored to its pristine magnificence under Herod the king, and that during the anarchy that ensued after his death it was crowded, as Josephus tells us, by two millions of people—when the ridges of Zion—now covered with their crops of corn, and here and there an olive tree—were adorned with magnificent structures. We have in our mind's eye the beautiful city in its grandeur. Between that and its destruction and its present desolation our Christian associations intervene. There to the right is the Mount of Olives, from whose sacred brow the Saviour saw the glory of Jerusalem, and wept over it and predicted its fall. Down that hill he approached the City, and passinginto the deep Valley of Hinnom, ascended to the Temple, the crowd accompanying him like a conqueror with their hozannas, and strewing palms. There is the Golden Gate by which he entered, now walled up. There is the outer court whence he drove out the money changers ; there the dark groves of olives, through which he passed to Olivet, or traversed on his way to the house of Lazarus at Bethany ; and there the garden of Gethsemane. There the scene of his Passion and his Ascension. To the "governor's house" to the right was the Saviour conveyed before Pilate ; and along the " Dolorous Way," from St. Stephen's Gate to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was the scene of his long agony prior to his final suffering on the Cross of Calvary, which that building covers. The destruction of Jerusalem, in fulfilment of his prophecy, followed within a few years. Judea, after the death of Agrippa, was made a Roman province, and a Roman Pro-consul appointed over Jerusalem, thus destroying the independence of the city and abolishing its hierarchical or theocratical form of government. The Zealots resisted, however, and were driven into the Temple by the High Priest and the people. Here John of Giscala, driven in from Galilee, united his forces with the fanatics within the city ; they together admitted the Idurmeans by stratagem during a storm ; the barbarous allies plundered and slaughtered the Jews and the high priest, and the contending factions triumphed over the citizens, who, however, sought aid in a third party, and Simeon, son of Giorias, was admitted to occupy the upper city, whence he attacked the Zealots in the Temple. While the wretched city was thus divided within, the banners of the Roman army under Titus appeared at the north-western wall—you can trace it by drawing a line from the extreme left across Acra and round inside of the Holy Sepulchre, up to the Temple—but one legion was encamped to the right, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, facing the Temple. Step by step the Jews defended the city. Driven from the first wall, they fought upon the second, and the Roman engines having broken in a breach, the troops poured through, but became entangled in the narrow streets, and were driven out, being unable to withstand the missiles poured upon them from every roof. The misery of the Jews was indescribable, death and starvation were everywhere. Titus withdrew from the attack and awaited the result, having vainly offered mercy and terms to the besieged. Josephus tells us of their indomitable obstinacy ; until, at last, Titus dug a deep trench round the city, and closely blockaded it. This is said to have been completed in three days, and to have been five miles in extent, and to have had thirteen garrison towers—a fact which, as narrated by the historian, an eye-witness, without any great expression of wonder, gives us a great idea of the engineering powers of a Roman army. The City became a charnel house ; the mothers " soddened their own children for meat." A forlorn hope of Romans scaled the walls, but were valorously repulsed. At last a breach was made in the fort by the Roman engines; and one night the soldiers rushed through it upon their prey. The fortress was taken, but the Jews retreated, only to defend themselves in the Temple Court below. Driven thence, they fell back to the inner court, and rallied round the Temple. This Titus had resolved to save. But the Jews having sallied forth in rage upon their enemies, were closely followed up by the Roman soldiers, one of whom fired the sacred precinct. The trews rushed infuriated upon the Roman swords, and a terrible carnage ensued around. One historian only has been equal in description to his task. We have the places before us to our right. In the centre is the upper city. " It was an appalling spectacle to the Romans. What was it to the Jew The whole summit of the hill which commands the city blazed like a volcano. One after another the buildings fell in with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedars were like sheets of flame; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light; the gate towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke. The neighbouring hills were lighted up, and groups of people were seen watching with horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction ; the walls and heights of the upper city were crowded with faces, some pale with the agony of despair, others scrowling unavailing vengeance. The shouts of the Roman soldiers, as they ran to and fro, and the howlings of the insurgents, who were perishing in the flames, mingled with the roaring of the conflagration, and the thundering sound of falling timbers. The echoes of the mountains replied or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights ; all along the walls resounded screams and wailivs ; men who had been expiring with famine rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and desolation." Simon and John cut their way, by desperate fighting, across the Tyropceon bridge, into the " Upper City," where, in spite of the remonstrances of Josephus, and the personal instance of Titus himself, they still held out. But, with the Temple, the hearts of the people had fallen. Flushed with their victory, greedy for fresh spoils, and chafing at resistance, the impetuous Roman conquerors burst into the upper city, exulting ; but found there only death and desolation—empty streets and houses full of dead bodies. Even now the ruins over Akra, within, on the ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 15 right, and over the city to the left, even as far as the Holy Sepulchre, tell the tale of that fierce onslaught and defeat. The monument of this Roman triumph over a people left to their own devices and the wrath of the Almighty may be seen on the Arch of Titus at Rome, where Jewish captives bear the sacred furniture of the Temple, the golden candlesticks and silver trumpets, to adorn the triumphant show of their conqueror. In that one siege one million one hundred thousand Jews perished, about one sixth of the population of the whole of Palestine, at that period. Ninety-nine thousand prisoneri of war were carried off; some of them to labour in the public works, others to march in the triumph of Titus ; after which they appeared in the amphitheatres of Europe and Asia, and killed one another for the amusement of the populace. Those under the age of seventeen were put up to auction with the women, and thirty of them were sold for a denarius —about tenpence. The blood of the Just Jesus, as it has been finely said, was sold for thirty pieces of silver at Jerusalem, and the people had cried : " His blood be upon us and our children." God heard this wish of the Jews, and, for the last time, he granted their prayers, after which he turned his face from the Land of Promise, and chose for himself another people. It was only thirty-eight years after the death of Christ, that the Temple was burned, so that many of those who had heard the prediction of our Saviour, might, also, have witnessed its fulfilment. The Jerusalem that now lies extended before us, is but the seventeenth shadow of the primitive one, for it has been seventeen times captured. Looking from this spot, you may imagine that scene in the Crusaders' siege (1099), when, their army having taken up its position, Godfrey's troops left their encampments before the Damascus Gate, and turning to the East descended into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, whence they proceeded, like peaceful pilgrims, to offer up prayers on the Mount of Olives. It was on a Tuesday, the 13th of June, as chroniclers tell us, that the Crusaders attacked Jerusalem by escalade, having first beaten down the outer wall with their machines. The attack failed, although night, alone, put an end to the bloodshed. The Crusaders, feeling certain of success, had neglected to bring victuals, and for ten days were without bread, until their ships reached Jaffa ; even then they suffered greatly from thirst, their horses and mules having drank out Siloe, were sent six miles to water, while the soldiers dug holes in the ground and pressed the damp clods to their lips ; they licked the stones wet with dew ; they drank the putrid water caught in hides, and even abstained from eating in the hope of mitigating by hunger the pangs thirst. On the 12th of July, the great attack was made. Godfrey and his two brothers, Baldwin and Eustace, fought on the towers " like two lions defending another," until "at the hour when the Saviour gave up the ghost," a 'Flemish warrior named Letolde leaped on the ramparts of the city. He was followed by Guicher, "Guicher, who had conquered a lion." Godfrey was the third. and all the other knights followed their chief—sword in hand. The enemy fled, and the soldiers of Christ pursued them with loud shouts. The Count de St. Gilles, who was outside the Zion Gate, heard the tumult, and summoned the Emir there to surrender, which he did. " But (says the chronicler) Godfrey with the French was determined to avenge the Christian blood spilt by the infidels in Jerusalem, and to punish them for the railleries and outrages to which they had subjected the pilgrims. Never had he in any appeared so terrible, not even when he encountered the giant on the bridge of Antioch. Guicher and several thousands of chosen warriors cut the Saracens in two from the head to the waist, or severed their bodies in the middle. None of our soldiers showed timidity, for they met with no opposition. The enemy sought only to escape ; but to them flight was impossible ; they rushed along in such crowds that they embarrassed one another. The small number of those who contrived to escape took refuge in Solomon's Temple, and there defended themselves a considerable time. At dusk our soldiers gained possession of the Temple, and in their rage put to death all whom they found there. Such was the carnage, that the mutilated carcases were hurried by the torrents of blood into the court; dissevered hands and arms floated in the current, that caused them to be united to bodies to which they had never belonged." " The Holy Sepulchre," says another historian, " was now free, and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in a humble posture, they ascended the Hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy, kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the World, and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monuments of their redemption." The scenes of these fierce and tender passions we are now about to visit. III.—IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF OUR SAVIOUR. Following the example of all pilgrims to Jerusalem in ancient times, and imitating their undoubting faith and reverence, we determined to resign ourselves to our feelings as Christians, and make it our first duty in the Holy City to follow the footsteps of our Lord in captivity, judgment, death, and entombment, up to his ascension. Catholic tradition, preserved through ages, by a succession of pious memories,—traditions as yet undisturbed, except by guesses an suggestions merely, always disputable and mostly fanciful—enables us to recall with sufficiently distinct identity, the scenes of sacred Scripture and the localities of our Lord's sufferings. We are contented so to receive them. We have found Jerusalem ; we shall see Bethlehem. Rising early (it is hardly possible to sleep late in such a place), we set out from St. Stephen's Gate, to which we shall shortly return on our solemn path with the captive Saviour. Before going farther from this gate, we may observe the Church of St. Anne, said to be the birth-place of the Virgin, raised upon the site of the house of Joachim and Anne, and the scene of the Immaculate Conception. In the grottoes beneath this church, the building of which is attributed to Jristinian, is shown the humble chamber where dwelt the Holy Family. It was converted into a Turkish school by Saladin, and subsequently a mosque, but has recently by the able intervention of M. Thouvenel, aided by M. Barrere, the consul of France at Jerusalem, been made over by the Sultan to the Emperor of the French, and restored to the worship of the Christian faith under the pious care of the Latin fathers. There are two Christian nations active in Jerusalem, France and Russia, and the aggrandisement of the Greek and Roman Church makes itself everywhere conspicuous.' I The church of St. Anne is of great antiquity. Scewulf, a pilgrim of the twelfth century, describes it as the place where J6 ,\ LL ROUND VIE WORLD. 7. 7 - 12-.)/, 167-7-7 i :_':7,--r.,-,-=•__--- At„, ..._ni...z-,-__ , i-F--__?z:L..,__,=.-•;- , ---7 n --lif, •,, • • :_s --- , s..L. -----,-.-•-- ., -Tr' :-.1-t• !.•,, .., 7 441o, ii ft, Lam„, ) z 0 I— €17 U. 0 (1) I— o ttl u- 0 —J F- AJ P-- Iii Ci ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 17 ,'74,-•:',:t4r-,--------- _- --.---- - ------:-.;,_ _,,---- „--,,_---_----____.---- •7_ ___• • 7.-:....._,..... ,,-,,--,-- ,-,-7,-• __,r_,--- _ --.•-•-,----Ir•-•, •--,-----.-":::-__.--,-_--- 44_ems..i a...-'--,: - - -...---'----!--.._... ,-- ca*L.-...--'' --,-----...-__.•,_ --,-__ -. ___.---- ==_-- •_ _,,,,,_ , ,,, • ,c*f:,,,, - r -.=.,-...,,, :__-_ ..,,,.. ,e.--_, __; ._-_' - --,,,----' ---...- -”' m• ---..- ..,4-- - - - ' ' '44.'641 -1 -44 - -':'il--------='---- - -- - . .---..-- 7. 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The Pool of Bethesda, now a broad deep ditch without water, lies just within the gate, and is a specimen of the primitive architecture of the Jews at Jerusalem. It bounded the Temple on the north. It is a reservoir one hundred and fifty feet long and forty wide. The sides are walled and composed of a bed of large stones joined together by iron cramps, a wall of mixed materials run up on these large stones, a layer of flints stuck upon the surface of this wall, and a coating laid over these flints. The four beds are perpendicular with the bottom, and not horizontal • the coating was on the side next to the water, and the large stones rested as they still do, against the ground. The pool is now dry and half filled up. It is used as a threshing-floor. Here grow some pomegranate-trees, and as species of wild tamarind of a bluish colour. On the west side may be seen two arches, probably leading to an aqueduct that carries the water into the interior of the Temple.' The western angle is full of nopals. the mother of the Blessed Mary lived with her husband, and she was there delivered of her daughter Mary. Sir John Maundeville, who travelled in 1322, says that before the church grew a great tree which began to grow the same night, that was the night of the conception, not of the birth. In Maundrell's time (1697) it was a convent or nunnery, the church of which was large and entire, as were also part of the lodgings; but both were desolate and neglected. i Scewulf describes.the pool called, in Hebrew, Bethsaida, as having five porticoes, of which the Gospel speaks. Maundrell describes it as 120 paces long and 40 broad, and at least 8 deep, No 2. Here the lambs destined for sacrifice were washed; and it was on the brink of this pool that Christ said to the paralytic man, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” This is the only monument left of the primitive Jerusalem of David and Solomon. Outside this gate we come upon the great Turkish buryingground, a place, it would seem, of parade as well as sorrow for the Turkish population, for they resort hither in the evenings dressed out in their gayest attire—the women especially—who, flitting among the tombs, in their long white veils, are perhaps seeking, as widows, the consolation of a new husband, though many of them, it must be said, are seen for hours bending in faithful sorrow over the turbaned tombs of their lost lords. A rapid descent brings us across the narrow bridge of one arch that crosses the dry brook Kedron, and spans the gloomy and mysterious Jehoshaphat, the " Valley of the Tombs." Every step here is full of sacred associations ; the vast sepulchral monuments all round ; the tombs of Absalom, Zechariah, and Jehoshaphat, with the thousands of Jewish tombs everywhere about, tell a solemn story of death past, present, and to come. Hither wend the Jews, from the far corners of the earth, to purchase a final resting place near the Temple of the Lord in the land of their forefathers ; the place allotted being and void of water. At its west end it discovers some old arches, now dammed up. " These," adds the quaint but trustworthy old traveller, " some will have to be the five porches in which sat that multitude of lame, halt, and blind (John v.); but the mischief is, instead of five there are but three of them." 18 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. calculated at a price, which goes to the Jewish chest for the support of their poorer living brethren. Here Melchizedek met Abraham to congratulate him on his victory over the five kings. In this valley, the wicked Jews worshipped Moloch and Belphegor ; Solomon Here planted his cedars; the Temple overshadowed it; here " flowed softly" the waters of Siloam ; here David sang his songs, and Jeremiah utterel his lamentations ; here Our Saviour underwent his agony; and here, according to the prophecy of Joel, all mankind will at last appear before one awful Judge. " I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there." (Joel iii., 2).1 The Valley of Jehoshaphat is but a deep trench at this spot, sinking rapidly southward until near Zion, where it is nearly five hundred feet below the top of the Mount. Jerusalem is on one side : the Mount of Olives on the other, and the dark shadow of the Mount of Offence,—so denominated from Solomon's idolatry, for there he had his gardens and his " women's" palaces, and was led by them to the worship of strange gods. The stone on which we are now standing, just near the bridge. is reverenced as the spot of St. Stephen's martyrdom:2 The two contiguous hills rise up close to us, nearly naked, and of a dull red colour. Their sides are bare, but of some scattered wild olive trees, and, here and there, a scanty few black and parched vines, with sparse chapels, oratories, and The traditions connected with this point are curious, Bernard the Wise, a monkish pilgrim, who travelled in A.D. 867. describes a church in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, called that of St. Leon, " in which it is said that Our Lord will conic at the Last Judgment." Sir John Maundeville says " Also in coming down from Mount Olivet is the place where our Lord wept over Jerusalem. And there beside is the place where our Lady appeared to St. Thomas the Apostle after her assumption, and gave him her girdle. And very near is the stone on which our Lord often sat when he preached ; and upon that same shall he sit at the day of doom, right as he said himself." The permanence of the tradition is not a little remarkable, the Muhammadaus have even availed themselves of it. U pon the edge of the hill, on the opposite side of the valley, there runs along, in a direct line, the wall of the city, near the corner of which there is a short end of a pillar jutting out of the wall. 'Upon this pillar, the Mussultays have a tradition that Muhammad will sit in judgment at the last day; and that all the world will be gathered together in the valley below, to receive their doom from his mouth. 2 The traditions of olden times are so much the more deserving of attention as they were nearer to the time of the events to which they related. It can hardly be supposed that the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, under the Romans, did not preserve some authentic traditions concerning the localities of the more important events of Gospel History. The earliest notice we meet with of the site of the martyrdom of St. Stephen is that of Bishop Arculf, who travelled A.D. 700, who describes it as being on Mount Zion. Bernard the Wise, who followed in A.D. 867, also places the scene of the proto-martyrdom on Mount Zion, and describes a church as existing at the spot in commemoration of the event. Scewulf, who travelled in A.D. 1102, describes the stoning of St. Stephen as having occurred about two or three arbelist shots without the wall on Mount Zion to the north, where a very handsome church was built " which has been entirely destroyed by the Pagans." So far from the eighth till the twelfth centuries. In the fotirteenth century we first find the site of the tradition removed. Sir John Maundeville, who travelled in 1322, says " over against that vale of Jehoshaphat, out of the city, is the church of St. Stephen, where he was stoned to death." After this the tradition grew in strength, and we find Maundrell, in A.D. 1697, speaking of a broad stone on the way up the hill to the city, going from the Virgin's Tomb to St. Stephen's Gate, on which the Saint suffered martyrdom. The gate which had previously been called that of Jehoshaphat, as in the time of Benjamin of Tudela, that is in A.D. 1164, became the Gate of St. Stephen, and has remained so. • mosques in ruins. The bottom of the Mount of Offence and its sides (no preferable place, and sold at small price to the poorer Jews) are covered with tombs in heaps, right up to the poor and badly charactered village of Siloam, whose houses seem like sepulchres themselves, and are so. The grave, melancholystillnea3 of Jerusalem, the silence of a great city, smokeless, noiseless, suggests to the imagination that the tombs are here, the dead have not yet been summoned to awake. Mounting the Hill by a rocky path, the same along which David went lamenting when driven forth from his beloved Zion by the rebellion of Absalom, we proceed down a few steps to the left, leading us to an open court surrounded with rocky walls, at the end of which we reach a beautiful building of Gothic architecture, of a severe and antique character, with a picturesque fitcade, opening by a marble door, into a subterranean chapel, where are the tombs of St. Joseph and the Virgin, excavated in the solid rock. Down from this solemn entrance, fifty marble steps, each twenty feet long, lead us to the floor. The tomb of the Virgin is on the right, in a large recess, with an altar over it, and a painting of her death, with the Saviour himself standing by her bedside to comfort her. The tomb of St. Joseph is higher up, as are also those of St. Anne and St. Joachim. Mary, who died at Ephesus, was, as they tell us, miraculously buried here by the Apostles, according to the tradition of the Fathers; for there is a full relation of this marvellous funeral by Euthymus, who tells how " St. Thomas," (who was always desirous to satisfy any doubt by ocular testimony,) " having caused the coffin to be opened, nothing was found in it but a virgin robe, the simple and mean garment of that Queen of Glory whom the angels had conveyed to Heaven." Arculf, a Gaulish Bishop, who travelled in A. D. 700, speaks of the " round church of St. Mary, divided into two stories by slabs of stone. In the upper part are four altars ; on the eastern side, below, there is another, and to the right of it, an empty tomb of stone, in which the Virgin Mary is said to have been buried; but who removed her body, or when this took place, no one can say. On entering this chamber you see, on the right hand side, a stone, inserted in the wall, on which Christ knelt on the night on which he was betrayed, and the marks of his knees are still seen in the stone, as if it had been as soft as wax." A rculf also tells another traditional story that he heard on the spot, of the disappearance of the body of the Virgin Mary, that " St. Mary expired in the middle of Jerusalem, in the place called St. Sion, and as the twelve apostles were carrying her body, the angels came and took her from their hands and carried her to Paradise." He adds that the church is called St. Mary, not because her body rests there, but in memory of it.3 3 The traditions which associate the tomb of the Virgin Mary with the locality in question appear, with the exception given above, never to have varied. Maundeville, who was partial to wonders, saw there " the stone which the angel brought to our Lady from Mount Sinai, which is of the same colour as the rock of St. Catherine." St. Thomas appears to have been of a very sceptical turn of mind; for Maundeville describes a great stone as lying at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, "upon which you are told the Blessed Virgin let fall her girdle after her assumption, in order to convince St. Thomas, who, they say, was troubled with a fit of his old incredulity upon this occasion. There is still to be seen a small winding channel upon this stone which they will have to be the impression made by the girdle when it fell, and to be left for the conviction of all such as dial suspect the truth of their story of the assumption." ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 19 Thirty paces from the border of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, is an enclosure of about forty-seven paces long by forty-four wide—the Garden of Gethsemane. Tread reverently, for under the shade of that seared trunk of the oldest of those eight venerable olive trees,—so old that its roots are growing in strangely-shaped monstrosity out of the earth,—was the Saviour betrayed with a kiss by the traitor Judas. In a cavern outside is a sombre grotto,—the place where the Apostles hid themselves on their Master's being captured. The wall around is high, and plastered, and whitewashed. The garden has become the property of the Fathers of the Latin Convent, who have planted young trees among the old ones, the grim gnarled arms, pillar-like trunks, and thin foliage of which have a weird and solemn antiquity about them that strikes the beholder. The scene is one that has its fitness for the mournful scene of the Saviour's Passion. The deep valley, the dark and barren heights, the sorrowing moan of the streams below, and the shadow of the guilty city over all ! They point to us a stone marking the spot where Christ prayed that the cup might pass from him ; a little further the place where he swafe great drops of blood, and, a little farther on, the spot where he found his disciples sleeping. The traditions of this place are innumerable. The actual path which Judas stept upon is separated off, the very Turks having done this to mark their sense of the infamy of the act. There is a legend in the Greek Church, of Theodosius the Patriarch having carried away earth from the Garden of Gethsemane which dropped blood in his hand. Howbeit, the ground is now laid out with trim flower-beds and neat borders, not to the advantage of its future impressiveness. It is Easter week, and we have a host of pilgrims of all nations with us, mounting in long procession upwards towards the Chapel of the Ascension. About half way up, by a rugged winding path, worn with the footsteps of ages, are the ruins of a monastery—on the site of the stone from which Christ, looking over towards the sinful City, bewailed the approaching desolation of Jerusalem. It is just on this spot that the Sixth Roman Legion is said to have encamped during the siege by Titus. From the Rock of the Prediction we march up to some curious grotto excavations, called the Tombs of the Prophets. Their ground plan is very singular, something in the shape of a quadrant, and there are more than fifty tombs. Some have said they are the Apostles' tombs; others caves for the worship of Baal; others, again, consider them as belonging to the Priests of the Temple, but all this is guesswork. We will not enter, for there is nothing to be seen but some dark vaults, and they are labyrinthine and you may lose yourself. There is, just above, a spot where the Apostles are said to have composed the Creed, and a little higher still is another which a tradition—that has never wavered—records to be the "certain place" in which the Saviour when praying recited the Lord's Prayer to his disciples, as a lesson for their future in prayers.' Farther on, a few more paces, is an olive tree, marking the spot where the general judgment of mankind was foretold by the Son of the Eternal arbiter.2 l There is an old tradition noticed by Seewulf in A.D. 1102, and by Maundeville in A.D. 1322, that our Lord wrote the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew,.with his own fingers, on marble at this spot. 2 The following is the order and succession of curiosities Going upwards from these tombs, and imagining the scene of the raising of Lazarus as taking place in some such place, we climb up a few more feet of the ascent, and stand before the Chapel of the Ascension-the last grand consummation of our Saviour's history in the form of man. We are now gazing up to the same Heaven that opened to receive him ascending to His Father's right hand, upon the accomplishment of the atoning sacrifice which took place in that City, we have but to turn our heads to look upon. The chapel is a small octagonal building with a dome, and half in ruins, This is the Chapel of the Ascension. Within it is the rock or stone from which Christ is said to have ascended. TI ere is the print of a left foot. It has• been said the Turks removed the print of the right, and placed it in the Mosque of Omar ; but this may only be from the tradition of Mahomet's foot on El Sakhara. The authorities that assure us we are now gazing on the veritable foot-print of our Lord are St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Paulina, theVenerable Bede, and Sulpicius Severus. The foot is turned towards the north; Tradition says, the Saviour had his foot towards the north, at the moment of his Ascension, as if to renounce the south, involved in errors. The scene of the Ascension has not been without its describers. Traditions of the Fathers tell that the Lord "ascended to heaven, attended by the souls of the patriarchs and prophets, delivered by him from the chains of death. His mother and one hundred and twenty disciples witnessed his ascension." " He stretched out his arms like Moses," says St. Gregory Nazianzen, "and commended his disciples to his Father ; he then crossed his almighty hands, holding them down over the heads of his beloved friends, in the same manner that Jacob blessed his son Joseph ; then, rising from earth with inexpressible majesty, he slowly ascended toward the eternal mansion, till he was enveloped by a brilliant cloud." The Empress Mother Helena first identified the spot by the erection of a church, on which, however, says St Jerome, " it was found impossible to cover in that part of the roof through which Christ pursued his heavenward way." The Venerable Bede declares that in his time, on the eve of the Ascension, the Mount of Olives was all night seen covered with flames.3 We find the meaning presented in the ascent of the Mount of Olives by Maundrell :1. About two-thirds of the way up, the oft described grottoes, with intricate windings and caverns under ground. 2. A little higher up are twelve arched vaults, underground, standing side by side, said to be built in memory of the twelve Apostles. 3. Sixty paces higher up, the place where they say Christ uttered his prophecy concerning the final destruction of Jerusalem ; and a little to the right hand of this is the place where they say he dictated, a second time, the Pater Noster to his disciples. 4. Still higher is the Cave of St. Pelagia ; and, as much above that, a pillar, signifying the place where an angel gave the blessed Virgin three days' warning of her death. 5. At the top of the hill, you come to the place of our blessed Lord's Ascension. " On the whole," Canon Stanley justly remarks," what was shown to Maundeville in the fourteenth century was, with some few omissions, shown to Maundrell in the seventeenth, and which Maundrell has carefully described with the dry humour peculiar to his age, may still be verified at the present time."—Sinai anc? Palestine, p. 445. 3 The old tradition was that the imprint of our Lord's fees were in the dust. Arculf says, "On the ground, in the midst or it (the church), were to be seen the last prints in the dust of our Lord's feet, and although the earth is daily carried away by believers, yet it still remains as before, and retains the same impression of the feet." The first notice we have of the change in the tradition is in Sir John Maundeville's time (A.D. 1322), when the Turks had covered the Church of the Ascension with a cupola and 20 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. of this story in Arnulf's writings (he visited Jerusalem in A.D. 700), and tells us that, " On the highest point of Olivet, where our Lord ascended into Heaven, is a large round church, having around it three vaulted porticoes. The inner part is not vaulted and covered, because of the passage of our Lord's body, but it has an altar on the east side, covered with a narrow roof. On the ground in the midst of it are to be seen the last prints in the dust of our Lord's feet, and the roof appearing open above where He ascended; and although the earth is daily carried away by believers, yet still it remains as before, and retains the same impressions of the feet. In the western part of the same church are eight windows, and eight lamps, hanging by cords opposite to them, cast their light through the glass as far as Jerusalem, striking the hearts of the beholders with a mixture of joy and divine fear. Every year, on the day of the Ascension, when mass is ended, a strong blast of wind comes down and casts to the ground all who are in the church. All that night lanterns are kept burning there, so that the mountain appears, not only lighted up, but actually on fire, and all that side of the city is illuminated by it." The foot-print is in the rock, enclosed by an oblong block of marble, and we bring away with us an impression in wax, which pilgrim after pilgrim treasures as one of his dearest reminiscences of the Holy Land. We are now about twenty minutes,—hardly a mile, from the walls of Jerusalem, so we finish our " Sabbath day's journey" by going over the crest of the hill to Bethany. As we walk down the footpath so often trodden by the Saviour on his friendly visits to the house of Lazarus, whom he loved, many landscapes of wildly pleasing variety open before us. We seem to have left the desolation in Judea on the other side, and pass through open corn-fields, across which, among groves of olives, are seen the white roofs of the little village that stands almost on the border of a desert land. Here Jesus picked the corn by the way-side and here the sister of Lazarus met him, as she came forth with the mourners from her brother's tomb. The house of Lazarus, where the Saviour so often received hospitality, has given place to a church founded by . Queen Melisenda.1 A chapel marks the dwelling where replaced the impressions in the dust by one on stone. The impression of the other foot they said had been removed into the mosque on Mount Moriah. Queen Melisenda was the eldest daughter of Baldwin II., King of Jerusalem, who was nephew to Baldwin Dubourg, Count of Edessa, the brother of Godfrey of Boulogne, first King of Jerusalem and himself the second. On the death of Baldwin IT., his only child and heiress, Melisenda, married Foulkes d'Anjou, and conveyed her kingdom into her husband's family about A.D. 1130. Another failure of male heirs carried the kingdom to Queen Sybilla, who gave it to her second husband, Guy de Lusignan, whom Saladin took prisoner, so that the crown, that required much fighting for, passed to another, the Queen Isabel, who handed it over successively to four husbands, and at last to Queen Mary, a daughter by her first, Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat. This Queen's daughter, Isabel, conveyed the crown, to the Emperor Frederic II. From her, the empty title of King of Jerusalem was transferred to the House of Sicily, by Charles, Count of Provence and Anjou, brother to St. Louis, who united in his person the rights to the King of Cyprus, and of the Princess Mary, daughter of Frederic Prince of Antioch. There are many side claimants to the throne of Jerusalem, but the right one, by lineal inheritance, is ,Victor Emanuel, the present King of Sardinia, who is also the innisput-able representative of the Stuart Kings of England. If Garibaldi would turn his attention to a new crusade, he might restore to Victor Emanuel his kingdom of Jerusalem, with even greater ease than he has made him (what:seemed much more unlikely three Tears since) King of United Italy. Simon the Leper addressed the Lord, and perpetuates the memory of the devout Magdalen, who anointed the feet of Christ. Lastly, the rock, whose hallowed sides; formed the tomb of Lazarus, has been surmounted by a mosque, the entrance to which is down a stair of twenty-four steps.2 Christian and Moslem. alike reverence this spot, and the pilgrimages to it are numerous. The sick children we see here have been brought by the 1Vlahometans in the neighbourhood, from a persuasion that some trace of the divine virtue of the great Prophet Jesus, the Spirit of God, still rests upon these stones. Towards the left, about three-quarters-of-a-mile farther on, is Bethphage, the Village of the Figs, and a little farther some bold interpreter and guide ventures to show the very fig-tree. that withered at the Saviour's word. It was very old, and certainly very withered, but we may not vouch further for the tradition. Returning back over the crest of Olivet, after pausing to admire the view of Jerusalem,—the whole panorama of the Gospel narrative spread out before us,—we proceed obliquely, by a sloping path that brings us to the village of .Siloam, where the natives have made their dismal dwellings among the rock-hewn tombs.. Hence we look down upon the dry bed of Kedron and the platform of the Moriah (the Temple enclosure) overhanging it. It slopes down, gray and bare, 500 feet.. We gaze upon a perfect City of Tombs—everywhere along the valley. Opposite to us is the Fountain of the Virgin, where the water rises and falls with sudden-flowing swell. Here come the neighbouring-, flocks to water. There is a cavernous connection_ between this and the Pool of Siloam lower down, along which some topographers have crawled more than 1750 feet. It was once a sealed fountain—that is, closed with a stone. Tradition tells that here the mother of Jesus was accustomed to wash her garments. Mohammed declared that these waters flowed from. Paradise, and some say it is the very stream brought down subterraneously by Hezekiah into the city when he ordered the fountains without Jerusalem, and the brook to be stopped, saying, "Why ull the Kings of Assyria come and find much water The stream has been ascertained to run down. from the Temple area—indeed, it is said, from Zion. It is pleasant in the heat of the day to descend the flight of steps that lead under a dark archway down into this fountain, and, standing on the upper steps worn with the footsteps of ages, to look deep into a mysterious cavern, down into which again goes another flight of steps to the spring. The women coming up and down the steps with water jars gracefully balanced on their heads, the wayfarers trending hitherwards from all sides, and the horses and sheep that are being watered at the trough above, form a., picture that reminds us of the patriarchal ages. There is an old Arabian tradition connected with this well which was in days very, very old, called the " Fountain of Accused Women." Women accused of adul- 2 Canon Stanley has designated the religion of Palestine, from the moment it fell iuto the bands of Europeans, as far as sacred traditions are concerned, as "a religion of caves;" but if we cam-pare the reports of pilgrims and travellers between the ninth and seventeenth centuries, it will be readily seen that in the instance of the Grave of Lazarus that it was the Muhammadans who pro-fitted by the passion for cave history and mythology, and who, improved upon it by removing the site that was traditional in they eighth century, to a grotto of far larger dimensions before the: seventeenth. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 21 tery used to come here and drink the water, which, if they were innocent, did not hurt them, but poisoned them if guilty. When Sitti Miriam (the Virgin Mary) was found with child and accused, she submitted to this ordeal, and was thus proved guiltless : she then prayed that the water might never harm any faithful woman, and from that day the waters have been intermittent. Following the aridpath above Kedron we now come to the Tomb of Absalom, one of the most striking monuments about Jerusalem. It is a monolith, or square mass of stone, measuring eight feet each way, cut from the solid rock of the neighbouring hill, from which it stands detached fifteen feet. Twenty-four columns of the plain Doric order, six on each front, are hewn from the rocky mass, and suppert a triangular pyramidal top, evidently not of the same style as the monument. It is forty feet in height. May not the old stone pillar, " which is in the king's dale," (2 Samuel, xvii., 18,) have been thus ornamented by after hands; " it is called to this day Absalom's place." Every pious pilgrim —Jew, Turk, or Christian—still shews his abhorrence of the rebellious son of David, by flinging a stone at this monument as he passes : a circumstance of which Jeho-shaphat, the pious King of Judah, " who walked in the ways of the Lord," might justly complain; for his tomb, also cut out of the rock, with a Doric portico, is just behind, and receives an undue proportion of the ungracious missiles. Close to this stands the tomb of Zachariah, similarly hewn away from the rock, and surrounded by a plain pyramid. This is without an entrance, in fact merely an ornamented stone.1 Further down the valley, and just above a dry pool, lies a garden, close upon the point of the junction of the valley of Jehosha-phat with the valley of Hinnom, that runs round at the foot of Mount Zion, now rising above us in rough terraced ground, dotted with scattered wild olive trees. Near this garden is a rugged old tree, raised on a rough broken bank, said to mark the spot of Isaiah's martyrdom. The bank is protected by a wall of stones, half in ruins, and the old tree still puts forth green foliage from its scarred and aged trunk. The tradition connected with this tree is, that when the King Manasseh, desirous to rid himself at once of the reproaches and fatal prophecies of Isaiah, ordered the prophet to be put to death, Isaiah was lying under a cedar tree. When the impious hands of the tryant's satellites were stretched forth to seize the holy man, the tree opened of itself, received the prophet within its trunk, and closed upon him. The King, blinded with rage, was not moved by the miracle, but ordered the tree to be sawn in two, and Isaiah shared the tree's fate, but not without partaking of consolation from God, who, on his calling for water during his sufferings, sent down water from heaven, which still runs on to supply the neighbouring fountain of Siloam. Below this, in a little corn-covered hollow, we come upon the well of Job. It is the En Rogel where Adonijah summoned a meeting of his followers, to proclaim him king,—a deep old well, consisting of a fountain, a tank, and three drinking troughs, under an arched chamber of rough hewn stones, part of a byegone • I There can be no doubt that, architecturally speaking, the no-called Tomb of Absalom, with its Doric columns and the -monolithic Tomb of Zachariah, cannot be the original sepulchres; but notwithstanding the ridicule that has been thrown upon the identification, tradition may be true after all, and zealots of a later time—Jews or Christians—may have erected the now existing monument over the sites consecrated of old. mosque. A constant train of donkeys, bearing its water to the city, are seen ascending and descending on the hill-sides by a steep path to Zion Gate. In the winter, when the rains are abundant, the water of this well bubbles forth, from a hole, about fifty pabes below and flows with a strong stream into the brook Kedron, which then becomes a real torrent for some weeks. At such times, in this dry parched land, such an overflow causes a general holiday, and parties are made from the city to enjoy the fête. The water collects for this purpose in the subterranean basins of the Temple, which are mostly supplied from the collected rains drained off from the city in wet weather ; hence the overflow, but Muhammedan traditions give another reason. " The Hamm. Sherif (Mosque of Omar) is guarded at all hours, night and day, by a guard of honour consisting of 70,000 angels, always present in the holy precincts. By a decree of the Most High, while this celestial garrison watches and prays about the sacred rock (El Sahkarah), an equal number of infernal spirits are groaning in the deptl is of the mountain, condemned to support the sacred building, and the vast plane about it, upon their w3cursed heads. This weight is heavy enough, but, beyond this, every time a filithful Mussulman, in a pure state, places his foot on the platform, the mere weight of his body augments, by sixty times, the pressure of the burthen already piled on the demons. If the devout be numerous, the sufferings of these Shayatin (evil genii) are proportionately augmented, and they shed tears of agony and rage. The greater the fervour of the true believers at the sanctuary, the more plentiful these tears, until the reservoirs of the Temple vaults are filled by them and overflow into the neighbouring wells. The abundance of the water in the Bir Ayaub (Well of Job) is a measure of the Creatois goodness. Only prayers are wanting to ensure abundance of water, and a consequent good harvest." Such is the legend. These wells are called, by the Jews and Christians, the Wells of Nehemiah ; and it is here, we are told, that the prophet preserved the sacred fire of the Altar in concealment, after the departure of the Hebrews in captivity to Babylon, and, here, he found it safe and burning on his return. Returning back up the valley, just as we come to the foot of Zion, is the Pool of Siloam ;— ' Siloah's brook that flowed Fast by the oracles of God." Milton. It is a square basin, about fifty feet long and twenty deep, from which trickles a small stream, spreading verdure where it goes, _but soon exhausted in small gardens of radishes and cucumbers. The taste of the waters is no longer sweet—it is like that of rain-water too long standing in a cistern. It was different in Isaiah's time—out of this pool was drawn the water of separation, to be mingled with the ashes of the red heifer, at the Feast of Tabernacles, and hither was the blind man sent to wash and he clean • (John ix., 11, 17,) and now, at this moment, we see the pilgrims bending over the walls and washing, like ourselves, in its hallowed waters. The scene is beautiful from the contrast of this spot with th e general nudity and arid sterility of the soil around Jerusalem. This was the " king's dale, near the king's garden and wine-press"—a garden and pleasant green, a sparkling gem—hard by Tophet—a paradise close upon Gehenna ! On reaching the brink iJ ALL ROUND THE WORLD. above this pleasant place, the waters, that have thus far "run softly," tumble over, and dash, splash, and rush from a hundred little cascades, to be distributed in a thousand murmuring rills, for the irrigation of this delightful spot. Upon the rock in which this pool is dug down twenty steps, stood the pleasure palace of David. The stones comprising its walls are polished by ages, and carpeted with ivy and mosses—a solace and relief to the eyes, wearied with perpetual sunshine. The women of the valley—like the daughters of Judah of old—come clown these steps which shine like marble from the tread of centuries,—come up and down the cool steps with Nked feet, to fill their pitchers. We bathe our hands and foreheads, and listen to the evening wind as it sighs up the valley, sweeping over us and rustling in the trees—a music the more delicious to the ear from its strangeness, in this otherwise treeless, bare and silent land. We now return, further upon our footsteps, upwards, nearly back to the tombs of the Jews, whence I few lingering mourners are hastening homewards, belated, from a funeral, to reach the gates ere nightfall. Here we cross the brook Kedron, by the passage, now dry, where the Saviour is said to have passed over, dragged along by the brutal hands of the servants of the High Priest. They point out to us a stone in its dry bed, bearing the impress of the knees, the mark left by Our Lord in falling on the spot. The path up here is steep and long, by the City wall, and it will be as well to pause awhile and admire the " Golden Gate," which opened, in Herod's time, under the eastern porch of the Temple. We have told you of the traditions among the Turks that a conquering Christian king is to enter here, and how they have walled up both its arches, and keep a guard over it. Here you will observe enormous blocks of stone—be-velled round the edges—the characteristics of the ancient Hebrew architecture, and just such as are to be found in the walls of Baalbec. Could we remove the stones from the archway, and enter within the walls, we should find the interior passage of the " Golden Gate," inside the tower, to be seventy feet high, and ornamented with lofty pillars, bearing rich and elaborately carved capitals. There is a legend about the closing of this gate related by Scewulf (A.D. 1103), who tells us of a lesson of humility given to the Emperor He-raclius, who rode up to this gate proudly after his victory over Chosroes, king of Persia, returning in all the pride of a conqueror, and with, as he thought, a justificatory oblation in the True Cross, which lie had valorously recovered from the Infidel. He thus advanced victorious to enter the Golden Gate at the head of his chivalry ; but the stoney fell down and closed up the passage, so that the gate became one solid mass, until Heraclius, at the admonition of an angel, humbling himself, 'got off his horse, and so the entrance was opened unto him. The lesson is a good one for human pride and human sufficiency in the face of God's all absorbing vastness. We are now under what were once the Temple walls.. These very stones, if not so old as Solomon's time (which they are believed to be, nor is there any reason Lo suppose the contrary), are, at any rate, as old as King Herod. Josephus speaks of the enormous proportions of the materials used by that magnificent monarch, and these are the great stones spoken of (Mark xiii., 1, 2.) "And as he went out of the Temple, one of his disciples saith unto him : Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here ! And Jesus answering, said unto him : Seest thou these great buildings I There shall not be left one stone upon another, but shall not be thrown down !" Keeping along the wall towards the south, we remark the end of a column jutting out like a cannon from an embrasure. This is the mortice on which will be supported the abutment of the famous bridge, Sirath, that immense passage-way which is to be thrown over (as Mussulmans tell us) the abyss of infernal punishment, and over which, on the Day of the Great Judgment, all the good will have to risk a passage, before arriving at the mansions of peace. This bridge, not over wide, as we see, in its commencement, is to be no thicker than a hair, and as sharp as a Damascus blade. Many will fall at the first step, but the just will be held up by guardian angels—as many in number as they have done acts of charity and mercy in life. We have now reached the angle of the wall. Here is a projection like a seat, and on this the Prophet will stand on the Day of Judgment, near the foot of the throne, to intercede for the faithful. Jesus and Mary being by his side, Turn the angle of the southern portion of the eastern wall, and we are under the mosque El-A_ksa, formerly the Church of the Presentation, and erected by Justinian. We now follow the course of the conduit-pipes conveying water from Solomon's Pool, just by Bethlehem, into the city, under the wall, by the Tyropceon. To the right is the grotto whither St. Peter withdrew to lament his *fault after hearing the cock crow three times, and near to it just above—on the hill top, separated by a small interval from the Zion Gate, is the house of Caiaphas, the High Priest, now covered by a small Armenian convent. In this chapel are shown a dark corner, where Christ was imprisoned till the morning, when he was carried before Pilate, and a little to the west is the place where, as some say, the Virgin died, and whence she was carried to her tomb on Mount Olivet by the disciples. They also show " the very stone " which secured Our Lord's Sepulchre, a stone two yards long, one yard deep, and one broad.' It is no*, after long argument, recognised, we learn, as the true stone ; but all say (and the Armenians do not deny the fact) that it was stolen from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 1 The traditional history of the stone that lay at the entrance of Christ's Sepulchre is not a little curious. Bishop Arculf, who travelled in A. D. 700, describes it as being at that early time, already broken in two ; the lesser portion was used as a square altar before the entrance, while the greater formed another square altar in the east part of the same church, covered with linen cloths. The monk, Bernard the Wise, who travelled in A. D. 867, only makes mention of one stone placed before the Sepulchre. In Sir John Maundeville's time, A. D. 1322, "the great stone," he says, "with which the Sepulchre was covered, when Joseph of Arimathea had put Our Lord therein—which stone the three Marys saw turned upward when they came to this Sepulchre the day of His resurrection, and when they found an angel who told them of Our Lord's resurrection from death to life—was in a chapel at the entrance of Mount Sion. Lastly, in the time of Maundrell, who travelled A. D. 1697, the " very stone which was laid to secure the door of Our Saviour's Sepulchre," was said to be deposited under the altar in a small chapel of the Armenians. It was, according to Maundrell, who is a most trustworthy tram yeller, a long time kept in the church of the Sepulchre ; but the Armenians, not many years since, (1697) stole it from hence by a stratagem, and conveyed it to this place. The stone was two yards and a quarter long; high, one yard ; and broad, as much. It is plastered all over, except in five or six little places, where it was left bare to receive the immediate kisses and other devotions of pilgrims. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 23 Here, likewise is the small room where Peter was frightened into the denial of his master. The Ccenaculum or " large upper room," the scene of the Last Supper, is now a Turkish Mosque, which has succeeded to a church and monastery formerly occupied by the Fathers of the Holy Land. The room is on the second story, is constructed of stone, and is large and dreary, about fifty or sixty feet long by some thirty in width. An ancient tradition says, that here Our Blessed Lord celebrated the Passover, and, at the close, instituted the Sacrament. Here, too, he gave us the great lesson of humility, in washing his disciples' feet. Here he appeared to his disciples on the day of his Resurrection. Here, too, the Apostles are said to have assembled together on the day of Pentecost, when the miracle of cloven tongues was shown. This sanctuary is equally celebrated in the Old Testament. Here David built himself a palace and a tomb : here he kept, for three months, the Ark of the Covenant. The place hallowed by the Last Supper was transformed into the first Christian church the world ever beheld. Here James the Less was consecrated first Christian Bishop of Jerusalem, and St. Peter held his first council of the Church. From this spot set forth the Apostles, on their mission to seat their religion on all the thrones of the earth. Below this is the most sacred of all sacred places in the estimation of the Turks. This is the Neby or Tomb of the Prophet David—the word Neby meaning Prophet. It is situated beneath the Ceenaculum, or "Upper Room." Its traditional locality as connected with the Last Supper of our Lord, and the repute of its containing the ashes of the Sweet Singer of Israel and his son the wisest of men, as well as millions of buried treasure, has led to much bribery on the part both of the Jews and Christians to obtain admission; but in vain, for the old Sheikh who has the care of the tomb invariably receives the bribe and palms off upon the spectator a tumulus of richly canopied stone and mortar on the. floor of an upper room. To one person only, besides Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, (who were only allowed, at an immense cost, to "behold it through the lattice of a trellice door,") has it been permitted to see the sacred and royal deposit of the best and noblest of kings. This was the daughter of a physician, Dr. Barclay, who went disguised, and thus describes what she saw and did :— "The reputed Tomb of David is just outside of Zion Gate, hard by the Ccenaculum or 'Upper Room,' and the Armenian cemetery. It is surrounded by an irregular pile of buildings, and surmounted by a dome and minaret. In the interior are some of the most grotesque architectural embellishments imaginable, on the capitals of some remains of the Crusader's architecture —the frightful owl occupying the place of the classic acanthus and the mystic talus. We passed several halls and corridors before reaching the consecrated apartment, the entrance to which is guarded by double iron doors. In front of these, an aged dervish lay prostrate in earnest prayer on the stone floor, and, not being privileged to enter within the sacred precincts, he gazed eagerly at the tomb through the iron bars. The key was fetched, the dervish dismissed, and the doors closed and double locked behind us. The room is insignificant in its dimensions, but gorgeously furnished and decorated to produce a splendid effect. The tomb is apparently a sarcophagus of rough stone of very large size—(about four times the height of a man) covered by green satin tapestry, richly embroidered with gold. On this is fixed a tablature of black velvet, framed in gold embroidery, and having inscribed upon it in rich golden bordering certain verses of the Koran. A canopy formed of red, blue, green, and yellow satin, in stripes, is suspended over the tomb. At one end of the room hangs a piece of black velvet tapestry, embroidered in silver, with an arabesque pattern ; this, they told me, covers a door leading to a cave underneath. Besides this door, and fronting a grated niche in which is suspended a golden lamp, stand two tall silver candlesticks, each about the height of a man. The ceiling of the room is vaulted, and the walls covered with blue and pink porcelain in floral figures. The golden lamp of which I have spoken is kept constantly burning, and, to my surprise, my devout companion took from it the wick, thoroughly saturated as it was with oil, and swallowed it eagerly, doubtless with unction, muttering to herself a prayer, with many a genuflexion. She then, in addition to the usual form of prayer, prostrated herself before the tomb, raised the covering, pressed her forehead to the stone, and then kissed it many times. Having remained here an hour or more and completed my sketch, we left, and great was my rejoicing when I found myself once more at home, out of danger and, still better, out of my awkward costume." Josephus tells us how Hyrcanus the High Priest, when besieged by Antiochus the Pious, opened the tomb and took out three thousand talents, with which he bought off his attack; and subsequently how Herod the king opened another chamber and took away some furniture of gold and precious goods ; and how two of Herod's guards were slain by a wrathful flame that burst forth from the tomb, (supposed to be the mouth of the cave covered with the black velvet tapestry) and how Herod the king built up a propitiatory tomb of white stone. Another chronicler, in whom some trust is placed, Benjamin of Trdela, and who visited Jerusalem about 1160-1170, tells the following story of this tomb :— " On Mount Zion are the sepulchres of the House of David and those of the kings who reigned after him. In consequence of the following circumstance, however, this place is hardly to be recognised at present. Fifteen years ago, one of the walls of the place of worship on Mount Zion fell down, which the patriarch ordered the priest to repair. He commanded him to take stones from the original wall of Zion, and to employ them for that purpose, which command was obeyed. Two labourers who were engaged in digging stones from the very foundation of the walls of Zion, happened to meet with one which formed the mouth of a cavern. They agreed to enter the cave and search for treasure; and in pursuit of this object they penetrated to a large hall, supported by pillows of marble incrusted with gold and silver, before which stood a table with a golden sceptre and crown. This was the Sepulchre of David, King of Israel, to the left of which they saw that of Solomon and of all the kings of Judali who were buried there : they further saw locked chests, and desired to enter the hall to examine them, but a blast of wind like a storm issued from the cavern, and prostrated them almost lifeless upon the ground. They lay in this state till the evening, when they heard a voice commanding them to rise up and go ALL ROUND THE WORLD. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 25 forth from the place. They proceeded, terror-stricken, to the patriarch, and informed him of what had occurred. He summoned Rabbi Abraham, of Constan-tini, a pious ascetic, one of the mofirners of the downfall of Jerusalem,1 and caused the two labourers to repeat the occurrence in his presence. Rabbi Abraham hereupon informed the patriarch that they had discovered the Sepulchre of the House of David and of the Kings of Judah. The patriarch ordered the place to be walled up, so as to hide it effectually from everyone to the present day." We come forth from the Tomb of David, and by the light of the moon, gaze down upon Jerusalem. The hill slopes down to the south by terraces, and is of a yellowish colour and barren appearance, opening in form of a crescent towards the city. By the full light of the harvest-moon of Judaea—in April—we look out upon what was once the loveliest scene in the world. 1 After the slaughter of the Jews of Jerusalem by the Crusa-dors, the few that were saved from destruction were dispersed in all directions. Those persons who mourned over these unhappy circumstances were called "Mourners of Jerusalem," and are mentioned under that title more than once by Benjamin. We find these mourners, even among the .Karaites about 1147. We read in several ancient Jewish writers of the danger incurred by the Jews who visited Jerusalem while it remained in the power of the Christians. Rabbi Petachia found only one Jew at Jerusalem, whereas Benjamin speaks of 200. The eye rests upon the Valley of Jehoshaphat, once green with many waters, and pleasant with gardens and palaces. The opening in the eastern hills leads it from steep to steep across many heights, rising over each other like tumultuous waves, to where the Dead Sea lies shining in the distance. To the right is the beautiful esplanade of the Mosque of Omar, the glittering domes, and the embattled walls. Beneath and near are tombs and ruins. A universal silence reigns over all ; save where the voices of the muezzin from the top of the high minarets of the Mosque ring out in prayer, which murmurs again as if an echo, from various parts of the City. Five times every day the sound of prayer may be heard around Jerusalem alone breaking the silence. These prayers or namaz are five in number, and have each their allotted hour. First, that of daybreak (salatle Seribh) ; this, as we learn from the llfultaka (a collection of the canons of the Mahomedan Faith), was composed by Adam, at the moment when, after his expulsion from the terrestial Paradise, he saw, for the first time the light of day, and was released from the fear of perpetual darkness. Second, the prayer of midday (salath Dltaleur), recited by Abraham on the occasion of the sacrifice of his son Isaac. Third, that of the middle of the day (salath aser), the expression of Jonah's gratitude on coming forth from the belly of the whale. Fourth, the prayer at evening (mica 23 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. .3fughrub) was uttered, towards twilight, by Jesus Christ, to assure the Eternal of his own subthission and that of the Virgin Mary. Lastly, the fifth, that of the night (salath Ereba), has Moses for its author; that prophet, having lost himself while going forth from Midian, was, just at nightfall, in the plain of Wady Eyham, comforted by the voice of God, and composed this prayer, in thankful acknowledgment of His mercy. And thus ends our first day in Jerusalem. IV.—MOUNT . ZION AND THE JEWS. . To "go round about Zion and mark well her bulwarks," and see her beauty and her strength, is a task that requires no slight pedestrian strength, as well as determination, in a pilgrim traveller. We are up and out early, strongly tempted everywhere t)roughout our route by narrow, intricate, half-covered streets, or rather alleys, darkened with canvas where not by arches, to turn aside hither and thither by celebrated localities, long before we have reached the gate of Zion. Passing through this, we place ourselves once more at the House of Caiaphas, where we paused last night in the footsteps of the Saviour, leaving him imprisoned, and awaiting the morning to be taken before the San-hedrim or Council of the Jews, by there to be condemned, mocked, and blasphemously maltreated. We proceed on our way to the spot where was the Council-Chamber, first pausing to look down upon the Christian burying-grounds. That of the English is on the south slope of Zion, overlooking the Valley of Hin-nom. Here lie Bishop Alexander, Robert Bateson, M.P., Dr. Schultz, the Prussian Consul, and others. That of the American Missionaries, which is on the Hill of Zion itself, though but a few years established, has some remarkable names. The burial-ground of the Roman Catholics is nearer to the gate; and the story of an unfortunate there buried is so curious as to be worth noting. This is Costigan, an Irish traveller, who was the first in modern days to navigate the Dead Sea (a feat since successfully performed in a thoroughly professional style by Lieutenant Lynch of the American Navy), and whose death from so doing the superstition of the people hereabouts—Jew as well as Christian—have invested with peculiar terrors. He had a boat brought over from the Mediterranean to Lake Tiberias and came down the Jordan ; sliding through its rapids with some danger, and even entering with it into the Dead Sea, into which its waters constantly pour, and where it loses itself. He had only a Maltese sailor with him, and they rowed together round the sea, taking eight days to accomplish that journey. On their return Costigan was exhausted. It was in the month of July, and from nine to five dreadfully hot ; every night a north wind -blew, and the waves were worse than in the Gulf of Lyons. They had suffered exceedingly from the heat, so the sailor reported; Costigan taking his turn at the oars for the first five days ; on the sixth day the water was exhausted, and Costigan gave in. On the seventh day they were obliged to drink the water of the sea ; and on the eighth, they were near the head of it, the sailor also being exhausted, and unable any longer to pull an oar. There he made coffee from the water of the sea; and a favourable wind springing up, they hoisted their sail for the first time, and in a few hours reached the head of the lake. Feeble as he was, the sailor set off for Jericho; and, in the meantime, poor Costigan was found by some Arabs on the shore, a dying man, and by the intercession of an old woman was carried to Jericho. He was next conveyed up to Jerusalem, where he died in the Latin Convent ; but he never once afterwards referred to his unhappy voyage; remaining silent and—as the people about him imagined—terror-stricken at the horrors he had seen while floating over the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We now enter the city by the Zion Gate. Turn to the left towards the Jewish quarter where, even before reaching it, we find ourselves in the midst of all kind of filth, ruins, and desolate waste ground overrun with the cactus. The walls of the Armenian Convent rise high on one side, shutting out all view ; on the other side the ground slopes down towards the Tyropoeou through half-ruinous houses over to the site where the Temple enclosure rises. A little on one side are the houses of the lepers—a loathsome race—whom we must avoid. See where " the grass upon the house-tops" is " withered before it be grown up." See where the woman is sitting at that hovel-door, spinning woollen yarn with a spindle, while another near her is twirling the ancient distaff. This may be such a wife as King Lemuel would have " thought good;" but they lock up their wives too much in Jerusalem, to have many very good ones. That woman is making girdles—"She girdeth her loins with strength, and delivereth girdles to the merchants." (Prov. xxxi., 17, 24). These articles are always in demand, everybody wears a girdle round their loins to strengthen them. " Scarlet, purple, and tapestry and embroidery," are still favourite colours and patterns. Hark to the nasal discord of that synagogue ! —see the Jews with their broad brimmed hats. In spite of all their oddity of vain costume and dirtiness, what a noble race they are ! Bida, the French artist, whose sketch, taken on this spot, we will show you (see p. 32), tells us that everywhere in Jerusalem he is struck with the noble heads he meets with among these ancient people. That broken arch you are now almost touching is the ruins of what is left of the prison of St. Peter, whence, delivered by the angel, he passed, by the new gate, up the street to the house of the mother of John, surnamed Mark (Act's- xii. 10), where now stands that small Syrian convent with its massive portals, the only thing remarkable about it. As we are looking over the Tyropceon, the Valley of the Cheesemongers, in coming down the slope, towards the Temple wall—that within the city—let us imagine - one scene of the olden times. Take the Temple in its splendour ; the Priests in all their power. Let the murderess-queen, Athaliah, hear across the Tyropceon, as she sits stately in the Zion Palace, the rejoicings of the people, as the High Priest points to the young king,—preserved within those sacred precincts from the wholesale murder of his race (2 Kings, xi. 16)—"Treason !" she cries, and rushes over the connecting bridge from the Palace to the Temple, but the High Priest orders her to be taken out immediately, " and they laid hands on her," and carried her out down by "the Horse Gate," to Kedron, and there was she slain. The " great stones " of part of one arch of this bridge that Athaliah crossed, on which, too, Titus stood in order to hold a parley with the Jews in the Temple—are still here. Let us measure this one ; it is twenty-five feet long, another, twenty ; the width of the bridge we can tell from the spring of the arch remaining, and its length must have been over the Tyropcebn from Zion (as it were from Snow Hill to Holborn Hill, across the Valley of the Fleet) ALL RO UND THE WORLD. 27 not less than three hundred and fifty feet. Of course there must have been several piers and arches. What a magnificent passage along this causeway, from the south porch of the Temple to Zion ! But this is not the place to speak of the glory of Zion. We are now nearing her wall ; that narrow passage like a corridor open to the sky, with that huge massive wall rising about forty feet, and at the base of the wall which supports the west side of the Temple area, is the Wailing Place of the Jews. Doubtless these large stones with bevelled edges—some of them still preserving the polish so carefully tooled upon them, as you will notice on the old Egyptian monuments—formed part of the foundations of the Holy Temple itself, certainly they are not later than Herod's day. Here we see a sad and affecting sight, the most painful spectacle in Jerusalem ; there are at least fifty Jews, old and young, white-headed, turbanned, fur-capped, or broad-hatted, along the wall, praying and lamenting, with tears running down their cheeks. They lay their foreheads against the sacred stones, they kiss them. They lean against the wall, and seemingly try to pray through cracs and crevices. The tradition which leads them to pray through as well as against this wall is, that during the building of the Temple, a cloud rested over it, so as to prevent any entrance; and Solomon stood at the door, and prayed that the cloud might be removed, and promised that the Temple should always be opened to men of every nation desiring to offer up prayers; whereupon the Lord removed the cloud, and promised that the prayers of all people offered up in that place should find acceptance in his sight; and now, as the Mussulman lords it over the place where the Temple stood, and the Jews are not permitted to enter, they endeavour to insinuate their prayers through the crevices in the wall, that they may rise from the interior to the throne of Grace (see p. 8). How long and fervent their prayers! See how they stand, with the right foot extended, and the Bible in their hand, intoning the Lamentations of Jeremiah (v., 21, 22, 23), or the Psalms of David, or singing with Isaiah (lxiv., 9-11) : " Be not wrath very sore, dLord, neither remember iniquity for ever. Behold ! see ! we beseech Thee! we are all Thy people. Thy Holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised Thee is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste." Benjamin of Tudela mentions this touching custom in the twelfth century. After the capture of the city by Adrian, the Jews were excluded from entering within Jerusalem, and it was not until the age of Constantine that they were permitted to approach so as to behold Jerusalem from the neighbouring hills. At length they were allowed to enter the city once a year, on the day on which it was taken by Titus, in order to wail over the ruins of the Temple ; but this privilege they had to purchase of the Roman soldiers, The present condition of the Jew at Jerusalem is exactly what it was when Nehemiah attempted their restoration. " The remnant that are left in the captivity, these are in great affliction and reproach." All the Jews in Palestine are under the spiritual domination of a Chief Rabbi, called Chackham, Bashi, " the First in Zion." He is assisted by a special council of seven leading rabbis, and a large number of sub-rabbis. Hither, to the Holy City, asking but to lay their bones in Jehoshaphat, Jews crowd frdba all parts of the world ; but there is no trade, no employment, and they are, consequently, miserably poor. The subscription for the Jews, generally, throughout the world, does not avail to allow the • poorer Jews more than thirty shillings a year, on which wretched pittance they live miserably, starve and die, constant in their faith, though strongly tempted aside by schools, and hospitals, and allowances, and employment, offered in pious zeal by the different divisions of Protestant Christians, who lay out large sums of money annually in Jerusalem for the purpose. The converted Jew is despised by his brethren and regarded as a dead man ; but the unconverted Jew is looked down upon alike by Christian and Turk, nay, it would cost a Jew his life, even at this moment, should he venture into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or even within the outer court of his beloved Temple. They are divisible into Sephardim and Askenarim, or the Spanish and German communities, or southern and northern Jews, the latter numbering 4,000, the former about 7,000. Each class has its own synagogues, and are again divided. The old Pharisees still remain in the Perous-choni, which means " separated" or " isolated." The class assuming that title affect great piety, and a knowledge of the mysteries of the Kabala. Almost all agree, however, in. adopting the Talmud and its traditions as their canon. Yet there is a sect of Jews which rejects everything but the sacred Scriptures; but it is a very small community, and rarely represented in Jerusalem. That swarthy proud-looking fellow with the pitchfork in his hand (see p. 40), reminds us that the Rechabites, still exist, and boast their descent from Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, and High Priest of Midian. They are still dwellers in tents, and still, as in the time of Jeremiah, offer an example to the faithless sons of Israel (Jeremiah xxxv., 8). They drink no wikle, and would deem it a trans- gelation to dwell in houses or obtain a living otherwise than by agriculture. Near this wall or Wailing-Place is a hospital founded for the Jews by the humanity of M. de Rothschild, Each bed bears the name of one of the members of that family—a monument of their charity. Here, too, is a school for Jewish children recently erected—and bountifully supported by Sir Moses Montefiore, but here, as everywhere, the Jewish quarter is full of dirt, and dust, and nasty smells. The men have a. magnificent appearance, in spite of all the poverty and the squalor around. Having seen the Jews iu their present degradation, we now revert to the Jewish Sanhedrim, in its haughty pride, and look for the place whither the Saviour of the world was brought before the Council of the Jews to be questioned. We find it in the present Afehkenzeh or Council-house (or Guildhall), of the Turks, at the western wall of the Temple, just where Josephus tells us the " first wall " of Jerusalem abutted. We learn from the Psalmist that it was built on piers or arches, and that like the present building it had one entrance to the Temple area, and another to the city. It has now a splendid Saracenic portal, and here is the most beautiful Saracenic Fountain in Jerusalem, of which our artist has made a drawing (see p. 5), showing the women of Jerusalem as of old, fetching and carrying water from it. " You shall meet a man bearing a pitcher of water," was thus a special direction whereby to notice the individual, sure to engage the attention of the disciples of our Lord, when searching for a fit place and person to prepare the Last Supper. The San- 28 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. hedrim and its subalterns, having condemned, mocked, -and blasphemously maltreated Christ, "then led they Jesus from Caiaphas, unto the judgment seat of Pilate," and it was early, and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled ; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate then went out to them. The judgment hall of Pilate was undoubtedly a large apartment in the Tower of Antonia, situated on the north-west corner of the Temple area. Pilate, without condemning him, sent him up to Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, who had, no doubt, come up to the feast, and was occupying the magnificent Palace of Herod the Great, near the Tower of Hippicus, where the chief priests and scribes stood, and vehemently accused Jesus; and Herod, with his men of war, set him at nought and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him back to Pilate. The governor having examined him, informed the chief priests and the rulers and the people assembled in the yard of the Fort of Antonia, that as neither he nor Herod could find anything worthy of death in the Messiah, he would chastise and release him. But the malicious hierarchs having finally extorted his condemnation, he is taken into the Praatorium by the soldiers, arrayed in mock royalty, and smitten, treated with the utmost indignity and cruelty, and finally Pilate, occupying his judgment seat out on Gabbatha, or "the pavement," brought him out of the Prwtorium. With this act of the Roman Governor who, as well as the accusers of Christ, and Herod, the conscientious murderer of John the Baptist, knew Jesus to be innocent, commences what is known in Ecclesiastical history as the Via Dolorosa, or the Way of Affliction. V.—THE VIA DOLOROSA. THE Via Dolorosa is a steep, narrow, crooked street, vaulted with arches, and gloomily impressive in appearance, even were it not for the awful reminiscence -that up this steep ascent—along this gloomy way, reviled, spat upon, and beaten, the meek Saviour of mankind was compelled to toil, laden with his cross, from the judgment seat of Pilate, to the Hill of Calvary. Standing with our backs to the city wall, at St. Stephen's Gate, having on the right (behind us) the church of St. Anne, where the Virgin was born; and close to the spot where the woman was healed by touching his garment, and on the left the Pool of Bethesda, where " The angels used to come from heaven and bathe," we have, to the right, a small tower of modern construction upwards, but ancient below, which is regarded as one of the five towers of Fort Antonia, and stands by an archway of pointed .architecture. A few paces to the left of this is a small porch; here was said to have been the celebrated Scala Sancta, or Sacred Staircase, up and down which, on his way to Herod's Palace and back, and also, after his delivery to the soldiers, the Saviour must have severaltimes ascendedand descended . It was removed by the pious care of the Emperor Constantine to St. John the Lateran's convent. This gate opened into the Prm-torium by the guard-room of the Roman soldiers. An iron door under a gateway here, about twenty paces further up, leads into the Convent of the Flagellation, which marks the place where the soldiers mocked and scourged Our Lord. The early Christians raised a chapel on this -spot ; one Quaresmius will tell you how this church was in ruins in 1618, and how the son of the Governor of that day repaired it and made a stable of it, and how on the night of the 14th January, 1619, the fete of the Holy Name—all the horses placed in it died, and so the Turks abandoned the buildings. A pious Pilgrim, Duke Maximilian, of Bavaria, saw it in 1838, deplored its condition, and paid for rebuilding the convent and chapel. There is still to be seen a beautiful mosaic pavement, whether of the Pratorium or the original Chapel is doubtful. Coming out of this gate we have before us the Palace of Pilate, now only a ruined portion of a house. A Turkish post use it for barracks. It commands a charming view of the (Temple) Esplanade of the Mosque of Omar, and the gardens and corridors, and marble pulpit of that sacred locality (see p. 24), from that upper chamber, where you may see the Turkish colonel smoking at the window as he tranquilly enjoys the prospect. Christ having been scourged with rods, crowned with thorns (probably of the cactus, as thorny and common) and dressed in a purple robe, was presented to the Jews by Pilate. Ecce Homo ! "Behold the man !" exclaimed the Judge, and you still see the window from which these memorable words were pronounced. Over against the northern corner of Pilate's house the arch of the Ecce Homo crosses the street. A lofty gateway with a narrow gallery at the top, from which Pilate is said to have addressed the Jews on delivering the Saviour into their hands. Ecclesiastical tradition commences from these points, the numbering of what are called "The Stations" of our Lord's journey to the crucifixion. These are the two first —the " Condemnation to death " and " Jesus laden with the Cross comes forth from the Guard Room." Would you wish to know the words of the Sentence of Death, pronounced by Pilate on the "Giver of Life Eternal." Here are the very words, preserved by tradition :— "Jesunt Nazarenum, subversorem gentis, contempt-orem Ccesaris et falsum .Messiam, ut majorum sure gentis testimonio probatum est, ducete ad communis sup-plicii locum, ut cum ludibriis regice majestatis, in media duorum, latronum, crud affigite. I, lictor, expedi cruces." " Jesus of Nazareth, a disturber of the peace of this people, a despiser of Omar, and a false Messiah, as proved by the majority of witnesses of his own nation, take ye to the place of common punishment, and there, him with mock emblems of kingly state, in the middle, between two thieves, nail to a cross. Hasten, officer I Provide the crosses." Passing through the arch with the procession of people, soldiers, and the meek Saviour, sorely burthened with his cross, we look up the narrow street, and we see it rapidly ascending, sometimes open, at others, gloomily covered with arches. The walls on either side rise like those of a prison. There is just such a place within Newgate, whence the prisoners pass from the cell to the gallows. It is called the Debtor's Yard, and has a passage just such as this--no wider; with just such walls and stones, which, marked with numbers, the turnkey will point out to your shuddering attention as denoting the graves of murderers, the very mention of whose names, with the memory of the awful crimes associated with them, is appalling. Go there and imagine this Via Dolorosa. The stones are rugged and slippery. A few small doorways or grated windows, or a rare wooden lattice, open into it; and at these bend the spectators, gazing on the Procession of Death. We mount the steep ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 29' ascent until we turn the street by which stands the neatly built house of the Austrian Consulate. At this corner, on the left, is a column, which marks the " Third Station," being the place where Our Saviour first sank down under the weight of the Cross. Turning our backs to this column, we see on the side of this street a dilapidated church,—what is left of the ruins of " Our Lady of Sorrows,"—built on the spot where the Holy Mary—who had been at first driven away by the guards— met her Son, bending beneath. the weight of the Cross. St. Boniface and St. Anselm have preserved the tradition, which the love of every Christian mother has perpetuated. Mary, we know, was at the foot of the Cross, with Mary, the wife of Cleophas and Mary Magdalen (John xix., 25). St. Boniface tells us, that the Virgin " sank to the ground as if lifeless, and could not utter a single word." St. Anselm asserts that Christ said, " Hail, mother!" " Eighteen centuries of persecution without end," says Chateaubriand, " of incessant revolutions, of continually increasing ruins, have not been able to erase or hide the traces of a mother going to weep over her son." This is the " Fourth Station." ;•-• The road, which before ran east and west, makes here a sharp angle, and turns to the north and south, the Via Dolorosa continuing in the latter direction—the former trending up to the Damascus Gate. Proceeding southwards, about sixty yards to the left, we come to the House of the Rich Man (Luke ii., 16), now a Military Hospital. The stones of which it is built are laid in courses of red and white, so that you can easily recognise it. Close by here, the Jews, seeing that their victim was not able to carry his Cross any longer, caught hold of Simon the Cyrenean, who was just going into the city towards the Gate of Ephraim (a street from which leads up here), and made him assist in carrying it. This is the "Fifth Station." A niche in the wall at the angle of the street on our right hand, shows at a short distance on the left the broken shaft of a column marking the situation of the house, on the threshold of which Berenice, afterwards known as Saint Veronica (or the Holy Woman of the True Image), came forth to wipe the sweat of agony from the suffering Saviour's brow, and received on her handkerchief the full impress and character of His Holy visage. This is the " Sixth Station" or halting place of the Death Procession of our Lord. It is here that the legend of the Wandering Jew and the terrible curse pronounced on Isaac Laquedem finds its locality. It tells us how our Lord, in passing near a shoemaker's stall, stopped, and endeavoured to lean upon it, and how the fanatic Jew struck him and told him to pass on. Jesus rose and, in the act of departing, said, " Thou shalt go on thyself, and know no rest until the end of time." The story runs that the Wandering Jew is yet unresting, and has been so through the eighteen centuries that have since that time elapsed. Sufficient for us to know that the whole Jewish nation has even yet, since that day, found no rest for the sole of its foot. Proceeding a few paces near the intervening point of the Bazaar,—at the northernmost corner, considerably above the street, is a single column of limestone, said to denote the " Gate of Judgment," or " Judicial Gate," by which criminals were led out to be executed on Golgotha, for that hill, now enclosed within the new city, was outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. This is the " Seventh Station," and here the Saviour is said to have fallen for the second time, under the burthen of his cross. Just at this place, a number of women expressed their pity for the sufferings of the Son of God by tears. They were accompanied by a sympathising crowd, for, by this time, the arrest, the false accusation, the sudden hurried trial, and hasty urgent judgment on the new Prophet, so greatly spoken of; the reputed Messiah, the self-avowed Son of God, and worker of wondrous miracles, had spread through the city, and the people were hastening to the way to see him pass to death ! Crowds were already hurrying on to the wall, and through the gardens that hang upon the rugged. ground. " But Jesus turning to them, said : Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." Here ends the Via Dolorosa, and commences the descent of Calvary. Here begins what an American missionary has called ; " the most interesting half acre on the face of the earth ;" for within that space are. Mount Calvary, Golgotha, and the Holy Sepulchre, the scene of our Lord's Passion. We have reached the top end of the Via Dolorosa, and begin now to descend. We now pass through a portion of a vaulted Turkish bazaar, and on coming out again, see three columns denoting the spot of another, the third, fall of Our Saviour under his oppressive burthen. Each time was he driven forward as we are told, by the blows and revilings of the impatient soldiers, amid the tears of his followers, and the pitying daughters of Jerusalem, and the outcries of the fanatic party of the Jews, many of whom—strangers from the outer country—were present for the Feast. Up the little street to the right, and we reach the square of the church of Calvary, or of the Resurrection, which is included, together with that of the Discovery of the Holy Cross—three Churches, under the one roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus far we have traced the Sacred Scene. It is impossible even to peruse, in the Gospels, the mournful history of Our Lord's sufferings, without the most painful emotion. What must be the feelings of a Christian mind, when, with profound and melancholy admiration, it traces the scenes around, and follows the very footsteps of the Saviour at the foot of Mount Zion, in sight of the Temple, and within the very walls of Jerusalem ! The Via Dolorosa itself is only a mile in length, but it has taken just two hours to ascend it to the present point. It has been calculated that the distance traversed by the Saviour between the " Upper Room" and Golgotha, was from four to five miles ; from Zion to Gethsemane, 900 yards ; Gethsemane to House of Annas, 2,400 ; House of Annas to High Priest's Palace, 2,100 ; High Priest's Palace to Council House, 400 ; Council House to Prretorium (in Antonia), 400; Prretorium to Herod's Palace, 1,000; Herod's Palace, back to Preetorium, 1,000 ; Prretorium to Golgotha, 600. Total yards, 8,000. We may now step across the square and proceed on to-the awful consummation of the day's proceedings as set forth before us in the magnificent and world-renowned Church of the Holy Sepulchre. VI.—THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. THE representation we have given of this noble Church (page 9), taken as it is, from a photograph, and therefore unexaggerated, will give a correct notion of. 30 ALL ROUND .THE WORLD. the magnificent character of this august edifice, which, in its combination of style, calls to mind memories of the Crusaders, as well as the Byzantine age of its erection. The Convents that cluster round it, as if under its sacred shelter, add to its impressive majesty by increase of area, and to its picturesqueness by their harmonious irregularity. Constantine's mother, the Empress Helena, built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It has been fired and ravaged, but not destroyed ; and though restored and in some parts rebuilt by the Crusaders and other Christians, ancient or otherwise, retains its ancient form When Jerusalem last fell under the Muhammadan yoke, the Syrian Christians ransomed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with a considerable sum, and monks repaired thither to defend with their prayers a spot entrusted in vain to the arms of kings. It is said that, within three centuries of Our Lord's sacrifice, the Christians obtained permission to build, or rather rebuild, a church over the Tomb, and to enclose in the new City the spot venerated by the Christians. These places were afterwards profaned, but recovered and restored by the Princess Helena. The letter of Constantine the Emperor, to Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, is still extant, in which he commands him to erect a church on the place where the great mystery of Salvation was accomplished. Coming into the court, we observe the pavement—worn under the feet of innumerable pilgrims—the high tower, the Saracenic arches of the windows and the entrance, as well as the ruins of pillars of Byzantine architecture. This court is paved, you see, with the common flag-stone of Jerusalem, and is about ninety feet long by seventy wide. The two ample doorways are elaborately ornamented, but the whole is greatly dilapidated. The tower on the west has a grand effect : there are now but two stories, and the ruins of a third, but there were once five. The under story is the Chapel of St. John; south of it is that of Mary Magdalene, and adjoining this is the Chapel of St. James ; connected with it and facing the western side of the court, is a range of chapels; the apse, or semicircular opening behind the altar, by which the priest passes to prepare the Host), appearing externally as buttresses. The whole is a vast and beautiful monument of the Byzantine age, of an architecture severe, solemn, grand and rich. The monument appears, if not worthy of the Tomb of the Son of Man, certainly of those whose wish has been to do it honor. The small Mosque which faces this magnificent edifice was built by Omar, when, after conquering the city, he came to offer his prayer at the Holy Tomb. But a difficulty arose in the generous mind of the pious Chief of the Faithful. The act of Ms kneeling there would immediately, according to usage, have converted the whole building into a mosque, and so deprived the Christians of their most cherished monument. Desirous, withal, of not passing the Tomb of the Prophet Jesus without offering up his thanks for the victory he had obtained, Omar ordered the place on which this mosque stands to be cleared of the filth and ruins which encumbered it, and, prostrating himself there, addressed a now; or prayer, to the Eternal, of which the mosque itself was, subsequently, erected in commemoration. The property in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is vested in the Sultan, as a means of ensuring free and joint access to all communities of the Christians and Turks ; whose representatives, resident on the spot, would otherwise, as they too often do even now, profane it by their indecent quarrels. Even now, Turks and Christians alike unanimously refuse admission to the Jew, who, as a descendant of the Saviour's murderers, would enter at the sure peril of his life. The key is in the hands of the governor of the City. The door is opened only at fixed hours, and then only with the consent of the three convents, Armenian, Latin, and Greek. The rush of pilgrims this day is something tremendous : we have some difficulty in pushing our way through the motley throng. Every man of any sensibility must feel affected at the sight of so many people of all nations, thus pressing to the tomb of Christ the Saviour of all, and at hearing prayers offered up to Him in so many different languages, here on the very spot where the Holy Spirit gave to twelve humble men, the Apostles of God, the gift of speaking in all the tongues of the earth. With this serious and solemn impression we enter the nave, passing the Turkish guard, who, sitting on a divan, in the western entrance, have their coffee cups and pipes placed before them on the carpet. Pilgrims, travellers and visitors of every hue and dye of the Frank order, are expected, if not required, to make bare both head and foot on antering any of the sacred localities of the Holy City, whether Jesuit, Moslem, or Christian ' • and at the Holy Sepulchre, the visitor is expected to doff his shoes as well as his hat : nor must you cross your hands behind your back, or show the slightest gesture of "taking it easy," or longing disrespect—if such vulgarity of mind could by possibility display itself within such precincts, or in the presence of such memories. We see, at once, on issuing from the vestibule, that we are in the first of the three churches that constitute the great whole, and that the Church of Calvary, the first we enter, is built in the form of a cross, the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre constituting in fact the nave of the edifice. We stand at once under the large cupola of the dome. This grand rotunda is most striking and impressive. It rises to a height of about one hundred feet, and the circular opening at the top, for light, is about fifteen feet in diameter. We have to observe, that to the shame of Christendom the roof is out of repair, for the covering of lead has been torn off by the wind, and there is a contest for the right of repairing it. Sixteen marble columns adorn the circumference of this rotunda. They are connected by seventeen arches, and support an upper gallery, likewise composed of sixteen columns and seventeen arches, of smaller dimensions than those of the lower range. Niches corresponding with the arches appear above the frieze of the second gallery, and the dome springs from the arches of these niches. The pictures of the twelve apostles, St. Helena and the Emperor Constantine, with some other portraits, unknown, that once adorned these niches, were destroyed by the fire in 1808. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands at the foot of Calvary, its eastern front adjoins that eminence, beneath and upon which are the two other diurches connected with it by courts and staircases. We have omitted to mention that in this original dome were large beams of the cedars of Lebanon,' The Cedar of the Bible is now confined to one locality. The celebrated Cedars of Lebanon are situated high up in the mountains, ten hours (or about twenty-eight miles) south east from Tripoli. Besherrah is directly west in the romantic gorge of the Khadisha, two thousand feet below them, and Ehden is three hours' distant on the road to Tripoli. In no other part of Syria are the mountains ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 31 destroyed by the fire of 1808, and impossible to be replaced.' The Greek church opens from the Rotunda, and is in a line with it, though separated by a partition of painted wood hung with pictures, and singularly profuse with ornaments of every description. It is a gorgeous affair, blazing with gold quite up to the dome. It has a high dltar at the east end, and wide transepts at the west, and is about a hundred feet from west to east, and the same from north to south. The dark-looking chapel of the Latins, opening from the north-east, will not sustain a comparison with the gorgeous glitter of the Greeks ; nevertheless, these churches altogether do not fail to create a solemn and impressive feeling. Erected as they are on an unequal surface, illumined by a multitude of lamps, a sombre, dim, religious light pervades the whole, and is singularly mysterious. Priests of the different divisions of Christianity are seen moving about the building. From the arches above, from the chapels below, and subterranean vaults, their songs are heard, the organ of the Latin fathers, the cymbals of the Abyssinian priest, or the plaintive accents of the Coptic friar, alternately or at once assail the ear. You inhale the perfume of incense all around, and merely perceive the pontiff—•who is going to celebrate the most awful of mysteries on the very spot where they were accomplished—pass quickly by, glide so alpine, the proportions so gigantic, the ravines so profound and awful. The platform on which they stand is more than six thousand feet above the Mediterranean, and around it are gathered the very tallest and grayest heads of Lebanon. The forest is not large, not more than five hundred trees, great and small, grouped irregularly on the sides of shallow ravines which mark the birth of the Khadisha river. A night among the cedars is never for-gotten—beneath the giant arms of these old patriarchs there comes a solemn hush upon the soul. Some of the trees are struck down by lightning, broken by enormous loads of snow, or torn to fragments by tempests. There is complete gradation from old to young—young trees are constantly springing up from the roots of old ones and from seeds of ripe cones. The girth of the largest is more than forty-two feet : the height of the highest may be one hundred. These largest, however, part into two or three only a few feet from the ground. Their age is very uncertain, judging from what are called the growths or annual concentric circles. The birth of some of them may be carried back three thousand five hundred years. They are carved full of names and dates, and the growth since the earliest date has been almost nothing. At this rate of increase they must have been growing ever since the Flood ! 1 Of the fire which attacked the tomb in 1808, the following account is given by an eye-witness: — "The heat was so excessive, that the marble columns which surrounded the circular building, in the centre of which stood the sacred grotto, were completely pulverised. The lamps and chandeliers, with the other vessels of the Church—brass, and silver, and gold—were melted like wax; the molten lead from the immense dome, which crowned the Holy Sepulchre, poured down in torrents; the Chapel erected by the Crusaders on the top of the monolith was entirely consumed; half the ornamental hangings in the ante-chapel of the Angel were scorched; but the cave itself, though deluged with a shower of lead and buried, in a mountain of fire, received not the slightest injury internally ; the silk hangings and the painting of the Resurrection remaining, in the midst of the volcanic eruption, unscathed by flame, the smell of fire not having passed upon them." This was not the first escape of the Holy Sepulchre from destruction by fire. In 969 the Kaliph Iluez gave orders to destroy the buildings, as far, at least, as destruction could be compassed by fire; and during the Kbalifate of El-Hakim, the prophet of the Druses, in 1010 the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre was defaced and special efforts made to destroy it. Glaber, a contemporary chronicler, relates that they endeavoured to break in pieces even the hollow tomb of the sepulchre with iron hammers, but without success, and Andemar, another chronicler and pilgrim, states that when they found it impossible to break in pieces the stones of the monument, they tried to destroy it by the help of fire, but that it remained firm and solid as adamant. behind the columns, and vanish in the gloom of the sanctuary. There are some seventy "stations" within, and connected with this mass of buildings, and a visit to them. all is no light achievement. The whole pile of edifices is three hundred and fifty feet long from St. Joseph's sepulchre, within the "aisle on the west of the Rotunda, down to the extremity of the Chapel of the Invention' on the east, and it is not less than two hundred and eighty feet to the north side of the apartments belonging to the Latins. We will, therefore, for the sake of a more lucid order in visiting the shrines, resume our footsteps in the procession of Our Lord towards Calvary, and pass through the localities of the last impressive scenes described in the Evangelists. We enter the Latin Chapel, and cross it to where, at the right hand, is the Altar of the Scourging, where, through an iron railing, is a portion of the pillar to which the Saviour was attached while flogged by the soldiers in Pilate's court-yard. There are pilgrims-here, like the curious country folks who, when they visit London exhibitions, desire to touch everything. For these is provided a long stick, with a handle outside, which the pilgrim thrusts in to touch the pillar, and then draws out to kiss the point, made sacred, as he supposes, by the contact. Passing hence, to the extreme of the left nave, we enter a small vaulted chapel—seven feet long, and six wide—called the Chapel of the Bonds, where Our Lord was confined pending the preparations for his crucifixion. This chapel is on the opposite side to Mount Calvary. In the -circular cave adjoining is the shrine of St. Longinus, the Jewish soldier who pierced Our Lord's side after his death. Here he retired after the deed, and reflecting on what he bad seen, received the inspiration of his new faith. In this chapel the inscription on the Cross is said to have been long preserved. Very close to this is the " Chapel of the Division of the Garments," five paces long and three broad, standing on the very spot where Jesus was stripped by the Soldiers before he was nailed to the Cross, where they mocked him, cast lots for his apparel, and divided it among them (John xix., 23). This is called the "Tenth Station." Leaving this chapel, and turning to the left as we come out of it, we find a great staircase pierced through the wall—(on the 'other side of this opening is the small "Chapel of the Mocking")—and, diving down, dark and mysteriously, into a kind of cellar dug out of the rock, pass by a flight of thirty broad stairs down to a most striking spot, on the left. This is the Chapel of St. Helena, a large chamber, nearly a square of eighteen paces, with a small cupola in the centre, having four small windows, that admit a dim light. The cupola springs from arches supported by four short Byzantine pillars, with ponderous but picturesque capitals. Strings of ostrich eggs, suspended from pillar to pillar, and a few silver lamps, are the only ornaments. The pavement is broken and rugged. Here the Empress Helena offered up her prayers, and here is the marble chair on which she sat and watched the workmen digging for the True Cross. Lower and lower we descend, by thirteen steps, into the subterranean cave.- This is covered with red tapestry, and a marble slab, bearing on it a figure of the Cross, closes up the mouth of the pit from which the venerated relics of the True Cross were dug out, "together with the nails, the crown of thorns, and the head of the spear, after lying buried in this place upwards of three hundred years. 3 2 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. JEWS AT JERUSALEM. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 33 BETHLEHEM. There are but few lights here—the scene is solemn and impressive : what wonder that the o'er-wrought feelings of enthusiastic pilgrims have regarded even the moisture exuding from the heart of the rock as tears wept for sorrow at Our Lord's sufferings!' Returning up the double flight of steps, emerging from the sombre cavern to the still dim light of St. Helena's chapel, into the fuller twilight, as it then looked to us, of the great church, studded with lamps like stars, we feel the full effect of its solemn antiquity and sacred gloom, its dim tetiring arches and shadowy corridors, its lamps and lights and pictures, its pealing organs and chanted prayers; while fancy calls before our mind the long array of knights and pilgrims, who, century after century, through so many perils, had come to kneel around the Sacred Tomb, and like us, turned their feet, shuddering and awe-struck, It is affirmed that the True Cross on which the Saviour had suffered, was brought Co light and verified under the following circumstances. The Empress Helena, on making a pilgrimage to the Holy City, having, by divine direction and guidance, at last discovered the Sepulchre, was much perplexed by three crosses, a tablet, and some nails close by. The tablet, however, not being in connection with either of the crosses, it was still uncertain which was the true Cross. But Bishop Macarius happily suggested an expedient by which their harassing doubts were immediately relieved, and the perplexing question at once and for ever settled infallibly. The three crosses were successively presented before a noble lady of the Holy City that lay hopelessly sick. The first exhibited produced no effect whatever; neither did the second; but no sooner was the third one placed near her, than she sprang up perfectly restored, No. 3. towards Calvary. Immediately after coming up the forty-nine stairs we see, on our right, the " Chapel of the Mocking," a little place four yards long and two and a-half broad, under the altar of which is a pillar of gray marble spotted with black, two feet high, on which Jesus was forced to sit down while the soldiers in mockery crowned him with thorns, and cried "Hail ! King of the Jews!" and smote him. Forty yards farther on we come to a narrow staircase of eighteen marble steps, up which we ascend to the top of Mount Calvary, the place of the crucifixion. This place, once so ignominious, having been sanctified by the blood of Our Lord, was an object of particular attention of the first Christians. Having removed every impurity, and all the earth which was upon it, they surrounded it with walls, so that it is now like a lofty chapel enclosed within this spacious church. It is fifteen feet square, paved with marble in mosaic, and hung on till sides with silken tapestry, with lamps descending from the ceiling. Two short pillars support the spring of two arches ; that towards the north is the spot where Our Lord was nailed to the Cross, and is the " Twelfth Station" of the Pilgrimage. Here thirty-two lamps are kept continually burning, which are attended by the Franciscan Brothers, who daily perform mass in this sacred place. In the other part, which is to the south, is where the Holy Cross was erected. You still see the hole dug in the rock to the depth of about a foot-and-a. half, besides the earth that was about it at the time. This is at the foot of a large 34 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. altar at the end, adorned with paintings and figures. Under that altar is a round plate of silver, with a hole in the centre. On each side, rather close, is another, wherein the crosses of the two thieves were erected. That of the penitent thief was to the north, and the other to the south, so that the first was on the Saviour's right hand, who had his face turned towards the west and his back to Jerusalem, which lies to the east. Fifty lamps are kept constantly burning on this spot, which is the " Thirteenth Station." The thieves, it must be noticed, are said to have been buried, as was the custom with such culprits, close by their crosses—generally with them—and it is said that, under the pavement of St. Helena's chapel is a hollow place that was used for that purpose. Look down on this same platform of marble (for all is richly encased), and you will see some brass bars, having a silk cover over them. Lift that silken cover, and you will observe a fissure or crevice in a rock,—the rock that was rent asunder by the dying cry of Our Lord—in the agonies of Death—" My God I My God 1 why hast thou forsaken me !" There is an iron grating, With steps, down which you may descend and see the cleft, going further into, and splitting the rock.' Opposite this place is a large monument, said to be erected over the skull of Adam,---a singular Arab tradition strangely connecting with the Saviour's death on this spot the first man through whom all sinned, and the God in man through whom the sins of man are remitted. There is evidently some very ancient tradition respecting a skull connected with this locality, for the names of Golgotha and Calvary given to it in the old times are, otherwise, inexplicable; and the learned, who have not taken this tradition into account, or perhaps have never heard of it, seem to have puzzled themselves greatly about the interpretation of these words. We descend from Calvary down by a second staircase, that brings us out again to the porch of the Church ; so that we now see before us, level with its pavement, surrounded by a railing, with six colossal candlesticks burning beside it, a long flat slab of white marble, not quite eight feet in length and about ten feet in width, round which crowds of pilgrims, old men, young women, and children are prostrating themselves —the rich man and the beggar, the pale Frenchman and the swarthy Copt, kneeling, praying in all attitudes, and kissing the " Stone of Unction," for such it is; that upon which the body of our Lord was said to have been anointed with myrrhs and aloes before it was laid in the Sepulchre. This consequently is the " Fourteenth Station." This stone is by some said to be of the same rock as Mount Calvary ; others assert that it Henry Maundrell, in his journal (1697), says: "At about one yard and a-half distance from the hole in which the foot of .the cross was fixed, is seen that memorable cleft in the rock, said to have been made by the earthquake which happened at the suffering of the God of nature, when, as St. Matthew witnesseth (Math. xxvii., 51.), The rocks rent, and the very graves were opened.' This cleft, as to what now appears of it, is about a span wide at its upper part, and two deep, after which it closes, but it opens again below, as you may see at another chapel, contiguous to the side of Calvary, mid runs down to an unknown depth in the earth. That this rent was made by the earthquake that happened at Our Lord's passion, there is only tradition to prove, but that it is a natural and genuine breach, and not counterfeited by any art, the sense and reason of every one that sees it may convince him ; for the sides of it fit like two tallies to each other, and yet it runs in such intricate windings, as cannot well be counterfeited by art, nor arrived at by any instruments." was brought to this place by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who were secret disciples of Jesus Christ. There are pieces of it to be seen in different parts of Europe, which are of a greenish colour; indeed, so indiscreet were pilgrims in breaking away relics that the whole would have been lost, and it was at last found necessary to cover it with white marble and surround it with an iron railing. On the left is another spot encircled also with railing, and having a lamp burning within it. Here stood " the women," the Virgin Mother and Mary Magdalene, and the Sister of Lazarus, sadly gaging on the loved and honoured dead during the anointing. The Entombment follows the Anointing. It is the last stage (the Fifteenth Station of the pilgrimage) in the awful story. Thirty paces further on, to the right, we are under the cupola ; just in the centre of the great dome, approached by a slightly elevated platform, reached by two steps from the side, but gradually led up to from the front, we perceive sixteen golden candlesticks, exceeding the height of a man, with blazing wax candles of colossal dimensions, placed in front of a beautiful (Edicula or small marble church enclosing the tomb in which the Lord of Life lay in death. It stands quite alone, and is about ten feet in breadth and twenty feet in height, and twenty-six feet long. It is here that the pilgrim is expected to throw off his shoes, "for the- place is holy." We enter within the first of the two sanctuaries into which it is divided ; here is the stone where the A.n.gel was seated when he addressed the two Marys " He is not here, but he is risen ;" and, as well on account of this, and to prevent the Sepulchre freak being entered, the first Christians erected Info* a little chapel, which is called the Angara MIA C. second Sanctuary incloses the Sepulchre itself, which is, in fact, the rock that contained the Sepulchre hewn bodily away, as the rock itself can be seen under the lintel of the low entrance. Within is a sarcophagus covered with white marble, and the rock itself is all cased round with greenish marble, like verd-antique. Forty lamps of gold and silver, always burning night and day, light this chapel. The air is warm and balmy with perfume. You enter through a curtain, and if possible —except on such days as this, of Easter festival—alone, with but one guardian monk. The interior of the Sepulchre is nearly square; it is six feet in length, (except an inch), and six feet (all but two inches) in breadth ; and eight feet high from the floor to the roof. The entrance, which faces the east, is only four feet high, and two feet and a quarter broad, so that all must stoop that enter. Nor within is there much room, for the solid block of the same stone, left in excavating the other part, and hewn into the sarcophagus shape, is two feet four high, and being six feet (but one inch) long, and two feet wide, it occupies half the Sepulchre. On this table the body of Our Lord was laid, with his head towards the west, and the feet to the east; but on account of a notion of the Oriental Christians that, if they place their hair on this stone, God will never forsake them, and also because the pilgrims broke off pieces, it was covered with white marble. We enter with reverence, and we come forth with awe. Such impressions admit not of words. " Death," says Chateaubriand, "lies conquered and enchained in this monument." " All the pious emotions," says Lamartine, " which have affected our souls in every ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 35 period of life ; all the prayers that have been breathed from our hearts and our lips in the name of Him who taught us to pray to his Father and to ours ; all the joys -and griefs, of which these prayers were the interpreters, are awakened in the depths of the soul, and produce by their echoes, by their very confusion, a bewildering of the understanding and a melting of the heart which seeks not language, but transpires in moistened eyes, a heaving breast, a prostrate forehead, and lips glued in silence to the sepulchral stone." This stone has been aptly called the material visible foundation of the whole edifice of Christians. The respect which all men acknowledge to have felt on coming near to these relics is one of the most remarkable facts in the modern world. An incontestable truth seems to take its departure from this spot. Doubt, hesitate, suggest, as many do,—it has been found impossible by any to approach this one spot without awe and veneration. " To the Christian or the philosopher," as has been finely said, "to the moralist, or to the historian, this tomb is the boundary of two worlds—the ancient and the modern. From this point issued a truth that has reversed the universe ; a civilisation that has transformed all things ; a word which has echoed over the whole globe. This tomb is the sepulchre of the old world, cradle of the new; never was earthly stone the foundation of so vast an edifice ; never was tomb so prolific; never did doctrine, inhumed for three days or three centuries, so victoriously rend the rocks which men had sealed over it, give the lie to death by so transcendent a resurrection." Twelve yards from the Holy Sepulchre is a chapel containing a large block of grey marble, about four feet in diameter, placed there to mark the spot where Our Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene in the form of a gardener. (John xx., 15.) Farther on is the "Chapel of the Apparition," where, as tradition asserts, Our Lord first appeared to the Virgin Mary, after his resurrection. The Copts, a very small community, have an altar immediately behind the Holy Sepulchre itself. In a straight line from this, the Syrians have a chapel, behind which is a small door between two pillars to the left, as we stand with our backs to the Holy Sepulchre. In this cavern are two openings, constituting, as we are told, the Tombs of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. As you pass from the entrance of the Holy Sepulchre, into the Greek Church, you see in the centre, under the cupola, a spot marked out as the navel or centre of the world. But it is Easter Sunday, and the Turkish Guards are entering, for it is now mid-day, and the great Greek ceremony of the Sacred Fire is about to take place. We must pass, therefore, with rapid glance, the Tombs of Adam and Melchisedek, an Arab and Turkish introduction into the Church. Greeks, Arabs, and Copts, Germans, French and Italians crowd in upon the entrance, 1 According to Eusebius, the Emperor Constantine (being divinely moved thereto soon after his memorable vision of the Cross, "In hoc signo vinces"—("Under this banner shalt thou conquer") caused the dirt and other obstructions with which Hadrian had covered the rocky cavern, as well as the sanctuary of Venus, that had been erected by his order upon a vast hill of earth heaped over the ancient Christian chapel which marked his shrine, to be removed, and a magnificent Temple to be built about it. The monticule containing the sepulchre of our Lord was cut away until it became only a foot or two in thickness around the cavern, which seems at that time to have been converted into a doable-roomed sepulchre, and was covered with marble within and without and all rush tumultuously towards the orifice on the right side of the Holy Sepulchre. The Greek Archbishop, with a long retinue of priests, marches in procession round the tomb. At last the Archbishop enters the Chapel of the Angel, and, after a few moments of awe-stricken silence,—the multitude expecting the Divine presence, and a miraculous fire from within,—thrusts through an opening in the (Edicula, a bunch of thirty-three wax candles—one for each year of the Saviour's life. These are alight, and are received from him by a person specially privileged. It is impossible to describe the tumult that ensues. There were thousands of pilgrims of all nations present, all hi a state of frantic excitement, and they shouted and screamed. The tremulous motion of the arms of so many people at once raised above their heads was in itself surprising. Hands were crossed in every direction, torches blazed in every hand, and a mounted horseman waiting at the gate rides off full speed to Bethlehem to light up the Greek altars there from this sacred fire. The Archbishop was carried back in triumph to his sanctuary, brandishing his torches as he went, and looking like one possessed. The smoke of the torches, and the waving lights, and the shouts of the people, create an intensely exciting scene. The first hurry is to get a light for the candle each carries, and then each tries to snuff out his candle, after a short time, with his skull-cap of linen, called tekie, and worn under the turban, tarbush, or fez. This is to be reserved for his burial head-dress. The noise increases, until fervour rises to fury, and enthusiasm becomes converted to a riot ; so, at last, the Turkish soldiers quietly but unceremoniously clear the church of its excited and exulting congregation. As we go forth, we look in at the side of the vestibule, at the tombs of Earls Baldwin and Godfrey de Bouillon, the crusading Kings of Jerusalem, which are two stone coffins supported by four little pillars. The epitaphs, which were inscribed in Gothic letters, but are now effaced, may be Englished as follows :— " Here lies the renowned chieftain Godfrey of Bouillon, who gained over the whole of this land to the worship of Christ. May his soul reign with Christ. Amen." "Baldwin the king, another Judas Maccabeus, his country's hope, the strength of the Church, the valor of both, whom Candia, and Egypt, and Dan, and even the murderous Damascus, held iu terror, and paid tribute to, lies below, inclosed within this narrow tomb." The pious deliverers of Jerusalem were worthy of reposing near the tomb they rescued from the infidels. These are the only mortal remains interred near the shadow of the tomb of Christ. VII. —THE TEMPLE, AND THE MOSQUE OF OMAR. From whatever part we view Jerusalem, the Moriah or Temple Enclosure, with its cypresses, minarets with esplanade, and its domes and colonnades, and the Mosque of Omar the Great, forms a conspicuous object in the grand picture. To enter within these precincts is not easy. It was worth a man's head to do so a few years ago; but an Englishman first got in under the disguise of an engineer, then an American doctor, then an English artist, then some ordnance officers, then some naval officers of our own country, then a number of Omar Pacha'a Hungarian and Polish friends : 36 ALI. ROUND THE WORLD. finally, tolerable interest with either Consul, and the company of an artist, supposed by the fanatic Mussulmans to be sketching for the purpose of repairs by the Architect Effendi, will open the way to you, or any one else, as it did to us. We have seen the Temple of Solomon and of Herod fall under the arms of Titus, while not even the device of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, who desired to raise it in aggravation as he thought of the Christians, sufficed to execute the work. Fire springing from the earth, and terrible utterances, as we learn from Ammianus Marcelinus (xxiii., 1.), prevented the accomplishment of his impious defiant boast. But when the Caliph Omar took the city, he searched on this spot, the ancient mountain of Moriah, where Abraham had offered up his son, for the sacred stone on which the Prophet Jacob, The dreamer of God,' (Israel Allah) had laid his head during his vision. (Genesis xxviii., 0.) This he found, and cleared from the dirt that covered and surrounded it, and built upon it the Mosque, which he called Kubbah, or Kubbet esh Sakhra, (the Dome of the Stone or Rock).1 Abdul Malik the First, when he prohibited the pilgrimage to Mecca, and placed the Mosque of Jerusalem on a level with the Kaaba at Mecca, aggrandized the value of the spot in Muhammedan eyes. The Crusaders converted the Mosque into a Church. But Saladin restored the rights of Moslemism, and they tell us how he caused the Holy Place to be purified by washing the whole with rose water, brought for the purpose on the backs of five hundred camels. At this day, Jerusalem stands next in Moslem estimation to Mecca and Medina, as the present concourse of pilgrims shows us, as well as the perpetual muttering of the pious, while reading the Koran for themselves and others. The Guard of seventy thousand angels is represented, visibly, by two hundred negroes, whose post or barracks disguise the beauty of the esplanade (see p. 17). In our view the area is free, the photograph having been taken early in the morning ; but, when we were there, you might have seen in every directionnumerous groups, many of them composed of females, some kneeling in prayer, others gossiping, as is their custom on a warm afternoon. Dervishes in various costume, and people drawing water at the many fountains (there are 34) are also visible. The " Dome of the Chain," an exquisitely elegant building, a mosque on a small scale, stands in front of the Great Mosque on the Eastern side, between it and the Eastern Gate, where are some steps up which Burak, the steed that bore Mahomet 1 The only meritorious attempt that has been made to arrive at some knowledge of what this Temple of Solomon and of Zerubbabel was, has been made by Mr. S. Sharpe. That gentle. man propounds, upon sound data, that it was not a covered building, as the English word might lead us to suppose. The Hebrew and Greek words mean a holt), place, which included several courts, in one of which stood the covered building of the House of the Lord. Mr. Sharpe believes that Solomon copied the plan of some of the Egyptian temples, the simplest of which consisted of a covered building, with a court in front surrounded by a wall or colonnade. Such are the plans of the temples of Upper Egypt. In the Temple of Bubastis, in Lower Egypt, there was a wall surrounding the whole, so that the building stood not at one end of a court, as in the Theban temples, but in the middle of it. Solomon's Temple resembled in some respects both of these. There was a court in front of- the house, and a yet larger court which inclosed the house with the inner court. The porch of this temple with two square pillars—Jachin and Boaz—may be explained by the pillars in front of an Egyptian temple. to Heaven, carried the prophet to his sacred rock. It is supported by seventeen marble columns, and here it is that the Prophet, as tradition says, saw the Houris during his nocturnal journey heavenwards. Here is a praying place turned. towards Mecca, said to be the Mihrab, or Praying Place of David; for, here was " David's Judgment Seat," they tell us. Nor was his task difficult, as to this spot came down a chain from Heaven—(hence the " Dome of the Chain.")—to which each party in the suit stretched out his hand in swearing to his evidence, and from whiCh a link dropped off in case of perjury. avid's people were not over-strict in evidence : for they swore away the whole chain during his reign, and not a link of it, says Turkish tradition, existed in Solomon's time. The Eastern Gate here is called " The Gate of Death." The northern gate (in front of us) is the gate of Paradise. On coming up into this second esplanade which rises from the great enclosure, we had to take off our shoes and put on red slippers, which are sold for the purpose in the bazars. The whole of the Haram enclosure as it is called, is very large, containing about thirty-five acres, or 1500 feet on, the east side, 1600 on the west, 1000 on the north and 900' on the south—including Fort Antonia on the north and the Mosque of El Aksa on the south. At the eastern end was, according to an Arabic MS. by Kadi Mejr-ed- din, the Gate of Repentance. " When an Israelite transgressed, his sin was found in the morning written on the door of his house ; then he went to this place to repent and beseech God. The sign of his pardon was the disappearance of the writing; and so long as it was not obliterated, he dared not approach any one." The Great Masque is pannelled outside with beautiful arabesque and mosaic work, and verses of the Koran in letters of gold, and both courts are paved with white marble. The Mosque, it will be seen, is octagonal, with a dome of an egg shape covered with lead, and a lantern with eight sides, having a window in each, a pinnacle under a crescent overtopping all. The eight windows in the lantern are fitted with stained glass, and the whole has a Saracenic appearance. There are twelve porticoes like the cloisters of the Alhambra, of three or four arches, the largest of which is said to be the Beautiful Gate of St. Paul. Near the one on the south side, not visible in our illustration, stands a beautiful uhammadan pulpit and staircase, the staircase, pillars and arches of which are exquisite specimens of abian taste. Within the Mosque the light is .dimmed by the stained glass windows; the effect is one of a rich simplicity. The pavement as well as the walls is of marble, grey or white; 28 columns -of porphyry orm a concentric nave, a second range of sixteen columns sup, ports a dome covered with golden arabesque; but the general prevalence of pillars gives a Byzantine appearance to the building, and has led, in some quarters, to a suggestion that this may have been a superstructure raised by Constantine.' 1 Father Roger tells of a curious legend. "Besides the thirty-, two colums which support the vault and dome, there are two of smaller dimensions very near the west door, which are shewn to foreign pilgrims, who are made to believe that if they can pass with ease between those columns, they are are predestined to share the joys of Mahomet's paradise." It is likewise said, that "if a Christian were to pass between these columns, they would close upon him and crush him to death." "I know, however," ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 37 Immediately under this dome is El Sakrah, or the Rock, also called Hadjar, or the Stone par excellence, a mass of native rock, the sole remnant of the top of Moriah, some sixty feet long by fifty wide, and ten or twelve feet high on the lower side. It is surrounded here by a railing of wood elaborately carved and gilt.' Smwulf, speaking of this rock in the Crusaders' time, when he made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, says, " In this place Solomon placed the Ark of the Covenant, having the manna, and the rod of Aaron, which flourished and budded there, and produced almonds, and the two tables of the Old Testament. Here Our Lord Jesus Christ, wearied with the violence of the Jews, was accustomed to repose; here was the place of confession, where his disciples confessed themselves to him; here the Angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias, saying, ' Thou shalt receive a child in thy old age ;' here Zacharias, the son of Berachias, was slain between the Temple and the Altar; here was the offering of Our Lord; and here he was found sitting in the midst of the Doctors; the footmarks of the Lord were here made when he concealed himself, and went out of the Temple, lest the Jews should stone him; and, finally here the woman taken in adultery was brought before him for judgment." There are many more traditions, but we will go on with the Turkish legend. From this rock, Mahomet, after his celebrated night journey from Mecca, on the beast El Burak, accompanied by the Angel Gabriel (as described in the seventeenth chapter of the Koran) ascended to Heaven, leaving the print of his foot, which is an object of veneration to all true believers. Some say that the impression of the foot is that of the prophet Enoch, called in Arab Ur Idris.% or the studious. He was a great astrologer and the inventor of writing. His charity was equal to his knowledge, and to reward him God preserved him from death, and translated hi ga alive to Heaven. This also is the rock from which tile four great rivers of the East flow. It is said to be suspended in space, or supported on an invisible palm-tree, which is itself held up by the mothers of the two great prophets, Jesus and Muhammed. The Blessed Mothers sit at the universal spring, busied in weaving garments for the just who have traversed Sirath (the invisible bridge), without falling. Jewish tradition makes this rock that on which the Ark says the worthy friar, "persons to whom this accident did not happen, though they were very good Christians." ' There are other claimants for this Rock. " Upon this rock," says William of Tyre, an historian of the time of the Crusades, " sat the Angel, who, as a punishment for David's inconsiderate numbering of his people, slaughtered them till God commanded him to return his sword into the scabbard. This rock previous to the arrival of our armies was naked and uncovered, and in this state it remained for fifteen years; but those to whose care this place was afterwards intrusted covered it again, and erected upon it a chapel and an altar, for the performance of divine worship." Dr. Barclay, an American physician at Jerusalem, " pleases himself with the notion that it is the basis on which the sacrificial stone of the Temple (of Solomon) was arranged." There is another tradition that this Rock fell from Heaven when the spirit of prophecy commenced, and that the Patriarchs prophesied from it. At the time the prophets ascended from Jerusalem, the stone wished to accompany them, but was prevented by the Angel Gabriel, who forcibly held it (they show the five marks of his grip) until the arrival of Mahomet, who fixed it for ever. Some years back, say the Turks, a portion of the rock was stolen by Christians, but when they got it out of the mosque it becanie invisible, until it was discovered by the Mussahnang. rested, within the Holiest of Holies. It was hidden by the curtain behind which the High Priest alone had the right of entering to pronounce there the holy name of God,—the pronunciation of which word, the Rabbis tell us, is now lost,—the letters only, of Jehovah, remaining to us. Down eight steps, we come to a large chamber or cave hewn in the Rock, Around this are five hollow places, at which Abraham, David, Solomon, Jesus, and Muhammad are said" to have successively prayed.2 The cave is 8 feet high and 15 feet square. The ceiling of this cave is about four or five feet below the surface of the rock, from four to six feet thick, and pierced with an oval-shaped hole about three feet in diameter. The sides are plastered, " in order," as is said, " to produce the impression that this immense rock is now supported by a wall of masonry," people having been frightened at seeing so large a rock supported on nothing ! There is a round piece of stone about the centre of the floor, which marks the site of the Bir Arruah (Well of Souls), formerly kept open for the convenience of holding intercourse with departeit spirits—of the wicked, we ought to say, for this is supposed to be the entrance to the Muhammedan Hell.3 There is something like a tongue cut in the rock above the entrance, and this, they say, spoke to the Caliph Omar very much after the fashion of the Irish echo, which replied to Pat's " How d'ye do ?" with a " Very well, I thank you;" for when Omar, in his 2 In the Arabic ,MS. in the British Museum, before alluded to, entitled the " Sublime Companion of the History of Jerusalem and Hebron, by Kadi Mejre-ed-din," we find the following description of this cave :—" Beneath the rock is a cave on the south, to which is a descent by stone steps. The steps are interrupted in the middle by a small bench, excavated in the rock on the east side, where the pilgrims rest. Here is a marble column, the base of which stands on this bench, joined on tho south to the side of the cave ; the capital supports the side of the Sakrah, as if to prevent it from leaning towards the south side, or any other way. This cave is one of the most sacred places on earth. The author of Messir-el-Ghoram says, that he found in the Commentary on the work Muta (a collection of traditions of the Iman Malik), on that verse in the Koran we sent water from Heaven,'—that all the water on earth comes from under the Sakrah, which is a marvel, because, being itself without support on any side, it is supported only by Him who supports the Heavens, which can only fall upon the earth with his permission. On the south side is the foot-print of the prophet, which was there impressed when he mounted the celestial beast Burak, for the nocturnal journey ; which occasioned the rock to incline on this side out of respect. On the other side, you see the prints of the fingers of the angels, who supported the rock, while it bowed. Beneath the rock, is a cave in which prayers are heard at all events." (They say if a Christian was to pray there for Jerusalem to be his, that prayer even would be granted.) " When I would enter there," continues the author of Messir-el-ghoram, " I feared that it would sink down under the burden of my sins; but having seen that sinners, covered with all kinds of iniquity, entered and came out safe and sound, I took courage to enter. I still hesitated, however; at last I entered, and was astonished to see the rock detached on all sides, and not joined to the earth." So writes the author of Messir-el-glioram; but, adds Kadi Mejr-ed-din, "it is a well known fact among men, that this rock is suspended between heaven and earth. It is said that it remained so suspended until a pregnant woman, when she had entered under the rock, being terrified with this appearance, miscarried there. Then it was surrounded with the present building, to conceal the terrific marvels of the place." 3 On account of prudential reasons connected with the bodies of various persons, this well has been closed by the Turkish Priests, about fifty years ago, for a "certain widow who was more than ordinarily curious and communicative, carried such intelligence from the dead to the living, as to disturb the peace of so many families, that, to prevent further mischief, the well was closed up." 38 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. delight at finding Jacob's Pillow, said to the stone, Esf salam. aleik, ("Health to you") ; the stone, not to be behind in civility to the Prophet's nephew, replied at once "the same to you :" Aleiki esh salam I Down in the cave we saw the mark of Muhammad's turban, where he knocked his head against the wall in his fervour after the ride in one night from heaven to this place. Up stairs we go—unable to believe any more —but here we are shown on a desk the Caliph Omar's copy of the Koran, a MS. with pages four feet long, the sword and standard of Ali, the shield of Hamzeh, the Prophet's companion, and a stone strangely shaped, the saddle of Burak, the Prophet's mule ! There is a few paces from the rock, a green slab of marble, with the marks of eighteen nails, said to have been of gold, ten only remaining. There are now only three iron nails left in it, and the priests say that at certain great events a nail is drawn, and that the three, remaining mark the distance of time before the destruction of the world, there being three ages only between us and that consummation. Then Issrafil is to sound Burun (the trumpet of Death) and forty years afterwards, the trumpet of Resurrection, upon which the judgment will ensue.1 Coming out of the mosque by the Gate of Heaven, which faces us in the view (see page 17), and turning to the left, we come to two little domed mosques or shrines, with marble pillars. The nearest is that of Fatima, the Prophet's Daughter, whose descendants ruled in Egypt and Morocco as the Fatimite dynasty. The other is the Chapel of Muhammed's Ascension, and at the wall, close by, is the staple to which he fastened Burak, while he made a short prayer before he started on that wonderful voyage, which was so rapidly executed, that although he held various conversations with Moses and others whom he saw in Heaven, he returned in time to prevent the falling of a silver urn, which Gabriel's wing happened to strike as they mounted on high. Just within the east gate is the famous Well of the Leaf, concerning which there is a pretty legend, as follows :— " The Prophet said, One of my people shall enter into Paradise walking, while yet alive.' It happened in the time of Omar that some persons came to Jerusalem to pray. A man of the tribe of the Beni-Temin, named Sherif Ibn-Habasha, went to bring water for his companions, and his bucket fell into the well. He went down to recover it, and found a door in the well which led to gardens. He entered the door to the gardens, and walked in the gardens, and took a leaf from their trees, which he placed behind his ear. He returned by the well, came to the governor, and re- 1 Father Roger tells a different story. He says, speaking of the Rock, " At the distance of three paces from these two columns" (mentioned in a former note) " there is a stone in the pavement, which appears to be black marble, about two and a half feet square, and raised a little above the pavement. In this stone are twenty-three holes, in which it seems as if there had formerly been nails, and indeed two are yet remaining. The purpose of these is not known; the Muhammedans themselves believe that it was on this stone the prophets set their feet when tbey alighted from their horses to go into the Temple, and that Muhammed also alighted upon it when he arrived from Arabia Felix, on his journey to Paradise to hold consultation with God." So far Father Roger. But Ali Bey reports this stone to be "The Door of Paradise," and says that the devil pulled out the nails when he tried to enter there, but was prevented by not being able to pull out those that remain. To this mixture of Old and New Testament Saints with Muhammedan legends, later ages have added the name of George of Cappadocia. ported what he had found in the gardens, and about his entering them. He sent some men with him to the well, who descended with him, but they did not find any door, nor arrive at the gardens. And he wrote to Omar, who answered, that the tradition of the Prophet concerning the man that should enter Paradise alive, was true; but it should be ascertained whether the leaf was fresh or dry ; for if it had changed colour it could not be from Paradise, where nothing changes." The tradition adds, that the leaf had not changed. At the west gate, outside, are two birds, or something like them, in the veins of the marble, said to be two wicked magpies fixed in stone by Solomon as a perpetual punishment and sign to all birds, that even the air was subject to his power, and that the birds of the air were bound to reverence the sanctity of the Temple he was then building to the Lord. We now turn to 'the South and proceed to the Mosque El-Aksa, originally a Christian foundation by Justinian on a portion of the Temple of Herod; then again a Muhammedan building; then again, a Crusaders' Church and the seat of the Knights Templars; and now a mosque of the highest sanctity. It is 300 feet in length, and includes the Mosque Abu Behen, a large Hall, principally used for educational purposes, 400 in breadth. It is supposed to cover the spot of our Saviour's Presentation or Purification, the old church having borne that title. The front has a piazza of seven slightly pointed arches. This portico is said to have been at one time completely plated with gold. The ceiling is flat, and supported by six rows of pillars, of brown marble, and there are three naves on each side. There is an enormous octagonal pillar, dedicated to Sidi or Lady Omar, and two granite columns, dedicated to the Lady Fatima, which are said to have replaced the famous brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz. One hundred and seventy lamps are here burning brightly, being only ten less than blaze in the Great Mosque of Omar. Below this mosque are vast vaults, the true substructure of the Temple of Solomon. There is an entrance hall, fifty feet long and forty-two wide; and in the centre of this hall is a column formed of one stone (see page 20), six and a quarter feet in diameter, and barely one foot high, with foliated capital of no special order, but yet tasteful. This is certainly of the time of Solomon. From the top of this spring the arches that support the fine dome constituting the cieling. There is another pillar of an oval shape (see page 21), at the northern end, and four white Corinthian pillars attached to the doorway. There are nine steps right across the hall at the western end, which are blocked up. There is talk of the furniture and treasures of the Old Temple being concealed on the one side or the other of this passage; and a closed doon on the eastern side seems to indicate a vacant space but no attempt to open it has been made in modern times. At the south-east corner of the Temple esplanade, there are open vast substructures, known as Solomon's stables. These are piazza-like structures, on square pillars of gigantic bevelled stones, such as are seen in the most ancient portions of the hall. The whole of the under portion of the Temple area is pierced with caverns, and tanks, and archways, for sewerage and running water. Indeed, the under-ground of Jerusalem is really more ancient, and may ultimately prove more fruitful in sacred relics of the earliest ages, than what remains to be seen above ground. ALL ROUND THE WORLD, 39 About midway in the easternmost range of these subterranean arcades a rock is pointed out to us, and we are told that this is the place where Solomon tortured the demon. Some bold fellow in the olden time, who thought that treasures were hidden under it, struck at it with a pick-axe; but, at the first blow, the devil cried out, " Let me alone !" We need not say that the affrighted searcher after other people's property complied with this request. This rock is six feel high, four and a-half long, and four broad. Hundreds of small pyramidal piles of stones are seen about the floor, deposited by Moslem devotees from all parts of the world, and the roots of old pine-trees hang down in many places from the roof into which they have penetrated from the Haram above. VIIL—ROUND AND ABOUT JERUSALEM, A SOUND night's sleep—nowhere does a man sleep so soundly as at Jerusalem, where he is all day employed in walking about from one famous object to another— serves to clear our brains from the confusion and distortion of the grandeur of Old Testament History, and the simplicity of Christian truths, into the monstrous legends of Arab imposture; and we start forth, at early dawn, with a party of Arab attendants, to finish our pilgrimage round the walls of Jerusal6m. Our journey from St. Stephen's Gate up the Mount of Olives down through the Valley of Jehoshaphat and up to Mount Zion, has already carried us halfway in the circuit, and made us masters of the eastern and southern sides. We have already crossed and recrossed the City either way, and a journey, therefore, from St. Stephen's Gate round by the north and western sides, ending where the Valley of Hinnom unites with that of Jehoshaphat, will complete our circuit. Turning to the left from St. Stephen's Gate by a narrow path, under the walls, suspended on a ridge along the precipice of Gethsemane, we gradually ascend to the north-east angle of the City wall, which here goes off square and sharp. Turning by this angle, we perceive that the wall is here protected by a fosse, and rests upon a foundation of rocks, rising up into high cliffs, while there is another rocky ridge on the other side, the roadway round the City passing between them. In fact, we are now upon the ridge or crest of Bezetha, cut away by Herod. It shoots up here to a hundred feet, a solid tower of rock. Between this point and the north east angle was the part selected by Tancred for his attack; hence, too, Saladin forced his way into the City. A short distance farther is the mouth of a cavern in the rock on which the wall is built. It leads under the houses of the city, the first hall extending seven hundred and fifty feet, and being three thousand feet in circumference. It is evidently the quarry from which the stone of the Temple and other great Jewish buildings were cut, and it seems to have been known to the Crusaders, though not opened to modern inspection until within the last ten years. There are many intricately meandering passages leading to larger halls farther within, with walls white " as driyen snow," and supported on colossal pillars of irregular shape, as left by the stone-hewers. These are evidently the quarries of King Solomon, and, not improbably, King Herod cut through them in digging out the fosse in which we are now walking; for we are only two hundred feet from a similar cavernous excavation, the reputed Grotto or Cave of Jeremiah, on the opposite hill of Zahara, near to a Turkish burial-ground of such bad repute, for the living at least, that no one will venture near it after sunset. This cave is deeply sunk in a brown ridge of rock, by the way-side, and is a profound and gloomy cavern, about fifty yards deep, supported by two enormous natural pillars of rock. There is a court or open passage in front of it, and a wall with several houses, for the place has been used as a quarantine station, a dervish (a very civil personage) acting as its guard and showman. There is a miniature lake or vast cistern, generally on the floor, and underneath, the water of which is bright and pure. The cave is divided into partitions, nests or dwelling for the sick or suspected, and is otherwise, with plaster and whitewash, made to look clean, tidy, and actually comfortable. For its being Jeremiah's Pool or Cave there is, of course, no sufficient authority. The place where the prophet was confined, and the pit where he sank in the mire, were in the King's court (J er. x xxvii. 21.,) This cavern, though of great size, has a limited aspect in comparison with the unknown vastness of the quarries on the other side, in which the whole City, for aught we know, might be stowed away. Their range is as immense as that of the catacombs of Paris, but they have been unexplored for ages past. A little to the left—as we stand with our faces towards the City wall—a whole mile of towers and battlements at one view, in a bright sunlight—old and yellowish in tint, and crumbling minutely, yet large and massive in their whole aspect—is " Herod's Gate," now closed up. It is also called " the Gate of Flowers," and is the gate where the Empress Helena, the mother of our countryman—for Constantine the Great, and the first Christian Emperor, was an - Englishman, and born at York—entered in penance, as a humble suppliant, in all her power, for God's mercy and forgiveness of her sins. We are now at about the highest part of the wall, and this gate towers high on the hill which hence begins to descend to the Gate of Damascus. All along here the olive trees grow close up to the wall, and it is a pretty sight to see the doves and other birds flying backwards and forwards from the trees to the old wall and from the old wall to the trees. The Jews of old, it will be remembered, were great pigeon fanciers, and the dove houses and pigeon towers of old Jerusalem were quite an institution. This Damascus gate, " the tower that looketh over towards Damascus," is, as it now stands, externally, a charming monument of Arab taste, flanked by two towers and crowned with arabesque battlements of stone in the form of turbans (see page 13). It is undeniably the finest of all the gates of Jerusalem, and in its gateway we notice what is remarkable as a first example of the pointed arch, which the Crusaders are considered to have carried back with them into Europe. In the base of the towers of this gate may be seen great stones bevelled round the edges, similar to those in what remains of the wall of Solomon's Temple. This gate is said to be identical with the " Old Gate " of Nehemiah, which " Jehoiada the son of Paseah, and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah repaired ; they laid the beams thereof, and the bars thereof, and set up the doors thereof" (Nehemiah, iii., 6). The very ancient, massive, and characteristic Jewish remains which we see in the two turret chambers on each side indicate this as a portion of the " Second Wall." 40 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. INHABITANTS OF BETHLEHEM, ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 41 ErMigIkial &Mil WM 42 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. into a kind of ante-room, about 20 feet squarer a piace for the mourners, while the body was carried on to its last receptacle. This opens into another room, thirteen feet square, in which are a dozen catacombs for coffins and a passage to another apartment 10 feet square. The south side of the ante-room has a door leading into other rooms, in many of which are relics of rich sarcophagi, torn from their places and thrown upon the ground. One of these has been preserved entire and carried to the Mehkemeh, or Council House, in Jerusalem, just by the beautiful fountain we have illustrated (in page 9). Here it supplies the Divan of Jerusalem Effendis with water ! The contrivance of the doors of stone, which, fitted in with mortice and tenon hinges, is noticeable, and should be seen by some of our stonemasons, as a good hint for a fire proof closet ; so also is a round disk, shaped like a mill-stone, curiously contrived to close a tomb, and then be itself concealed by a pool of water. An inspection of these cunning contrivances, for an apparently unnecessary security, assists us in understanding the question in relation to the entrance of the Holy Sepulchre : " Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre t" Of what kings the rocky excavations in which we stand are the tombs, is an unsettled question. Not so of that tomb on the other side of the valley of Kedron, which sweeps all round here, and into which we descend and go over it to reach the tomb—just in time to see a flock of sheep, who have been folded there, come streaming forth into the open valley. This is the tomb of Simon the Just, a Jewish Saint, if we may use the term, who spent his great wealth in providing a feast for the poor yearly, and having been allowed a great age as a reward for his charity, was so afflicted at the sorrows he saw coming on his nation from their obstinacy in resisting Titus, as to find the burthen of life too heavy, and so pray to be released from it. His prayer was granted, and his tomb provided under this little hill. But his wealth having been buried with him, Simon the Just feels conscientious scruples respecting the feast he had annually promised to the poor,—a promise from which, as his death was by his own wish, his scrupulous justice does not consider him to be discharged. Every year, therefore, lie comes to life, at the feast of Purim, and places a piece of money outside to provide food for the poor. • A great pilgrimage is held to his tomb by the Jews. To make a profit out of this veneration, as well as to keep in the sheep, the Turks have put up an iron door to the tomb, and appointed a guardian, who, being a shepherd of the dead, fleeces to the best of his capability the living. We now re-cross the Kedron valley, and coming to a junction of two roads, take the one that leads us to the north-west angle of the wall, the towers of which, rising prominently before us, are evidently of modern construction. The ground rises from the hollow by the Damascus gate to a low ridge, just over which lies, in the deeper hollow, the Valley of Gihon, under the western wall, sloping down towards Hinnom, under the southern. At this corner, near us, is a Terebinth tree, conspicuous as rising at the highest portion of the city. Hereabout, the vine and the olive begin to be more abundant, and have been made—of late years only, as we learn—to take root in the scanty, but prolific soil. JeAsalem grows good wine, and the Greeks have planted it pretty extensively in the new purchases of land they have made. Every These chambers, and the pillars in the vault of Solomon's Temple (see pages 20, 21), are almost the only relics which the battering ram, the corroding tooth of Time, and the vengeance of God, have left us. The winding square - shaped staircase within the chambers lately discovered in both towers is the kind of ascent by which " they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber," (1 Kings, vi. 8). One of the stones lying there is seven and a-half feet long, by three and a-half feet high, and another six and a-half feet long, by the same height. These apartments are conjectured, by the learned in such matters, to have been guard rooms of the old gates ; built upon and round by Nehemiah, then by Herod, and afterwards by the Saracens. They are vaulted, and their massiveness is very impressive. Before passing on we step within these gates into the City, curious to see the condition of the vicinity. The streets about here are filthy, and almost in solitude, overshadowed with darkness from the numerous vaulted arches which cover them. Everywhere there are ruins and rags. As for inhabitants, you see them seldom, and when seen they appear to be eaten up with idleness and wretchedness. The passers by creep close to the houses, and look as if they have no purpose, only walking for the sake of walking; the shopkeepers appear to be always waiting for custom that never comes, and everywhere there is a lack of life, interest, and activity. The rocky mound opposite this gate, within, has evidently been the foundation of some great building, for it is excavated in many places, but not into tombs. There was a St. Stephen's Church along here once, and this may be the spot. We gladly quit the dreary scene, and hasten to the free air without the walls. About half a mile right out of the gate, a little to the right, after passing a heap or hill of ashes and soapmaker's waste, we pass along the level surface of a reddish rock, with a few olive trees, hardly enough to call a grove, growing upon it, and then come upon an excavation in the middle of a field, like a neglected quarry. In front is a square court hewn out of the rock and open to the air, just like a deep trench. It is entered by an archway. This court is ninety feet square. The arch is in the centre of the wall, and to the left, as we enter, we see something resembling a large portico, nine yards long, supported evidently, at one time, on two pillars, which mischievous people of various ages, bye-gone simpletons, and profane fools now grown grey or gone to their account, have knocked away, one after the other. The architrave has fruit and flowers sculptured upon it, but these also are sorely defaced—a shameful outrage, of which the Arabs must not be accused, as none but civilised Europeans, for the most part—we are sorry to have to say it, for both our sakes — Americans and English, violate the habitations of the dead. Our torches are lighted, let us enter. We seem to be going into a rock, the interior of which has been hewn out, and the face of which has been cut into architectural designs. Such is really the fact ; but the grapes, garlands, and festoons, the Corinthian capitals, and the pillars, have all been ruthlessly broken and chipped away. When whole they must have resembled a very large and very handsome marble chimney-piece, from which the grate has been removed. Through a low door in the south-west corner, we advance—candles in hand, and not without attendant Arabs, for this is not a pleasant place in which to find oneself alone in the dark—opening ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 48 where that water is collected and distributed, the grateful land, all bare as it looks, returns most abundant crops. The fields of barley in this vicinity (about a quarter of a mile from the walls), are full in the ear, and the grain of the finest. It is now just ready (it is April), for the sickle. They say this new spirit of cultivation is due to Russian gold ; but money is of no nation, and its profitable employment an universal good. We should have thought some English money might have been advantageously employed here. How is it that persons who are obliged to leave England in search of a milder climate, or others who prefer living abroad, do not choose the most interesting country in the world for their residence ! Why should not young clergymen at least, spend one year among Bible scenes, and in acquiring Bible languages before entering upon their active duties. Sixty pounds per annum would be quite enough for all expense of board and lodging (including the keeping a horse) for a single person, and sixty pounds more would cover the expense of a journey thereand back. The mighty tide • la during three centuries impelled half the nati Europe towards the rocky shores of Palestine— yet subsided. It is rising again. Travellers from -ry nation, and 10,000 pilgrims from the East, v the shrines of Bethlehem and Calvary ; Moslems from Arabia, Tartary and India, and from the utmost shores of Africa, come to worship at the (so-called) Tomb of Moses. The Jewish people go to pray over the ruins . of their city and Temple that the time of their deliverance may be hastened. The deep religious interest which has for two thousand years been gaining strength among the nations of the earth is becoming more intense, and high and mighty potentates, study with anxious care politics, whose interest centres in Jerusalem. Here however, where, above all places, Christianity should be most Catholic, it is most sectarian. Rut God disposes and all are working, and can only be working to his glorious and final purpose. We now approach the Jaffa or Bethlehem Gate, and fall into the road that takes us across the Valley of Rephaim—which runs down on the right, past the Greek convent of St. George, to the Valley of Hinnom —proceeding on our way to the Tombs of the Judges, by a road lying between that to Jaffa and that to Bethlehem, both of which begin, one to the right and the other to the left from this gate; hence called, at option, the Jaffa or the Bethlehem Gate, and, universally, the Gate of the Pilgrims. On our left lies the Upper Pool of Gihon, or Birket-Mamillah—the Pool of Serpents—at about one hundred and fifty rods from the City Gate, near the bend of the shallow valley. This is about three hundred feet long, two hundred wide, and twenty deep. There is sometimes no water in it, as it is now supplied only by rain-water drained from the surrounding basin, its former feeder by a watercourse from Etham having been broken. In the season of winter, and just now, boys and men bathe in it. We leave on our left some Moslem tombs, the remembered graves of Saladin's warriors, and turning to the right, at about a mile's distance from the city, reach the " Tombs of the Judges," Martyrs or Prophets. These are of the same character as the " Tombs of the Kings," although ornamented in a different pattern. They constitute a catacomb of sixty tombs, hewn in the solid rock of limestone. The pediment is sculptured in the Grecian style, and the main room is twenty feet square by eight in height. This is even more re- markable than the Tombs of the Kings, and is said to have been hollowed out for the use of the Sanhedrim, the Jewish Council, numbering seventy-two members. Hence we return back to the head of the Valley of Rephaim or Gihon, and, bending towards the right, as we face the Jaffa Gate, go down its sloping declivity along by the western wall. We come along by the Bethlehem road from the Gate down into the Valley of Gihon, and across open fields of corn that thinly cover the stony, dry soil. A few struggling olives, silver-topped, are scattered on the hill. Above all frowns the City Wall, and the huge Towers of the Citadel. This deep excavation of 200 feet by 600 is " The Lower Pool of Gihon,"—the " Great Pool" that once held four acres of water—the Pool Solomon was so proud of (Ecclesiasticus, xlviii., 17), and at which he was anointed King of Israel; hence it is even now called "Birket esh, Sultan," or the " King's Pool." It has been formed by building two walls across the valley (the lower very massive, the upper rather slight), connecting them by side walls, scarping the shelving edges of ocks on its sides, and plastering the whole over with water-cement. The Pool is now ruinous and dry; the bottom is used as a thrashing ground. From this, looking upwards, on the left, to the lowest part of Zion, we see, enclosed with a wall, the English burial ground; a little below runs an aqueduct on nine small arches, which conveys the water from Solomon's Pool into the City. From this point we enter the valley of Ben Hinnom — the " Valley of Shrieking Children"—crying out in agony at their murderous sacrifice in the red-hot, brazen arms and lap of the statue of the idol of Moloch, from which they fell into the blazing furnace below !—the Valley of Tophet, or the Drum, beaten with hurried hands, and accompanied with shouts to prevent those childish cries of suffering from being heard by mothers. Oh ! the horrors of these ancient and modern heathen practices! This crime of the Jews,—so carefully separated by God as his chosen people, from these and.other hideous rites of Paganism, —was punished afterwards in this very place ; for, in this same valley, says Josephus, " no fewer than 118,880 dead bodies were carried for burial under the charge of one officer during the siege of Titus." King Josiah, to prevent such sacrifices to idols as we have mentioned, polluted the place by throwing filth and dead men's bones into it (2 Kings, xxiii., 10). Fires were kept constantly burning in it to consume the filth thrown here. It became at last the emblem of everlasting punishment among the Rabbinical writers—Gehenna !—Tophet ! " — Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice and parents' tears, Though for the noise of drums and trumpets loud Their children's cries unheard, but passed through fire To this grim idol, In the pleasant vale of Hinnom, Tophet thence, And black Gehenna called, the type of hell!" MILTON. It was here, that standing on one of the rugged eminences which overhang Tophet, the Prophet Jeremiah, at the inspkation of God, did, in the presence of the worshippers and the Priests, address himself to Manasseh and his courtiers, and lifting up a pitcher, dashed it to the earth, after denouncing terrible judgments upon them. (Jer., xix., 1-12). You will remember how Napoleon, during the conferences for the peace of Campo Formo, dashed a porcelain jar to atoms at his feet, 41 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. A PILLAR IN THE VAULTS OF THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON AT JERUSALEM. as he said to the Austrian. Plenipoteutaries, " In one month your monarchy would have been shattered like that vase." The people here, about Jerusalem, have the same custom of breaking a jar when they wish to express their detestation of any one. They come behind a man and smash the jar to atoms, thus imprecating, upon him and his, a hopeless ruin. You will remark from this and from many other instances perpetually coming under your notice in the Holy Land as common objects, that the Bible minutely narrates, does not invent; and thus many circumstances, though to us novel and surprising, are to those on the spot now, and were then—for Eastern life never changes its habits —ordinary and every clay circumstances and allusions. The valley descends rapidly into a rugged glen. On the other side of this rises abrupt, broken, and frowning, with precipitous banks, the Hill of Evil Counsel. The ruins on its top are those of the house of Annas, the High Priest, or a convent that succeeded them), Here it was " the Scribes and Pharisees took council against Jesus to put him to death," (Luke, xxii., 2); and just here, on the brow, about a hundred yards away from the house (just time for repentance in the distance), is that accursed tree stretching its ominous arms, darkly frowning, with crooked branches, and as if with stretching fingers,—that tree on which the traitor Judas hung himself, There--close by it, is what he sold himself for—the Potter's-field—" the Field of Blood " (see p. 17). A precipice overhangs it, and it looks clown another into the glen below where there is a deep charnel-house. The pious pilgrims used to be buried there. St. Jerome marked the locality. Annas himself was buried here.' I We are told by Monroe, that "by order of the Empress Helena, two hundred and seventy shiploads of its earth were translated to Rome, and deposited in the Campo Santo, near the Vatican; where it was wont to reject the bodies of the Romans, and only consume those of strangers." "The interior of the Campo Santo at Pisa is also," says Dr. Barclay, "filled with this soil, which I saw two years ago (1S58) producing a rank crop of elopecurus and other grasses." ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 45 ANOTHER PILLAR IN THE VAULTS OF THE TEMPLE. 11111111111110111 111111111111111111111111/77 4 it 71v,'0111111q11111 ,110 llffllfNgii)plll~lllllfl;l r' There are tombs of all kinds in this vicinity—down the slopes all about, some of them ornamented like the Tombs of the Judges and the Kings, but none with chambers except one, in which it is said the Apostles hid themselves. It is called "The Apostles' Retreat "—and is scarcely large enough to hold eleven ; but St. Peter we know was away, and all were not together. The view of Jerusalem, from here, is a remarkable one. We can see the Valley of Hinnom in its full extent, with all "the dark idolatries of alienated Judah" full under our eyes. The hewn tombs, the dark rugged hill, the accursed tree, and the fatal field—the grey gloom of the trees, and the old time worn wall of Zion overhanging all, constitute together a wild and mournful picture of Jerusalem in her desolation. Sadness and gloom attend our parting : we entered in disappointment, and depart in mournful stillness. The curse of God seems to us still to bang like a darkening cloud over the doomed city. 1X.—TO BETHLEHEM AND TO HEBRON. HAVING started with the earliest dawn, we have even now, most of the day before us, and at this part of the Valley we take horse, for we have a long journey before us of five hours' riding ere we visit the birthplace of our Lord, and Hebron, and return to Jerusalem. We leave the hill of Evil Counsel on our left, and ascend up the steep sides of the Valley of Hinnom, to where the broad, green, long Valley of Rephaim spreads itself before us. As we know that relays of horses will be provided for us by the joint care of our own clever and excellent consul, Mr. Finn, and the French Consul—for we are travelling with French artists high in favor—we stretch towards the right to the extreme westernmost part of theValley, to where the Convent of the Holy Cross lies prettily retired within a sheltered hollow, one of the pleasantest spots about Jerusalem, which city lies behind us in a white 46 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. Emperor Tatian,) and going down by a rapid descent to where they say was the threshing-floor of Obed- •edom, half an hour brings us to the " Valley of the Terebinthus" or Turpentine, a dark and deep and narrow valley, with the bed of a dry torrent scoring a white line along its bottom, which tradition declares to have marked the separation of the camp of Saul from that of the Philistines. Here David slew Goliath,—(others say this happened at Shuweikeh, the Socoh of the plain of Judah (Josh. xv., 35), beyond Gaza, and near Beit Sybim). The situation is sublime, and we halt at a little spring, under some olive-trees, before descending the steep declivity into the valley by which we must mount up to the Convent of St. John by steps hewn in the rock. There is " a mountain on the one side and a mountain on the other, and a valley between them," just the place for the fight as described, and there, too, is thebrook, and there some smooth stones that would have just answered the young shepherd-boy's bold purpose. Up in these rocky mountains southward, is the cavern wherein St. John dwelt in the W' *mess; but we must first stop at the Convent, NMI]. is high-walled and strong outside. Here, having obtaiAed admission for ourselves and horses through the low iron door that admits but one at a time,—a sure precaution,—we visit their subterranean chapel, a cave in which St. John was born; then gaze upon the scene from the insulated hill on which this strong convent-fortress stands, down into deep and dark valleys, whose grey rocks, where they face the convent, have been hollowed by nature into caves, such as the hermits of the early. Church loved to dwell in. Occasionally, where sufficient soil can be found for roots, fig-trees, with vines clinging round their trunks, may be seen scattered about. The village under the convent-walls is called Ain-Karim, the fountain of the Virgin, for hither, they say, came the Virgin to draw water when en a visit to Zachariah and Elimbeth, whose house, about a quarter of a mile from the convent, is covered with a ruined oratory and small chapel, called the Chapel of the Visitation (Luke i., 39). It took us an hour to reach the Desert of St. John,• which we found to be no desert at all; for the green foliage of the vines, and the silver tops of the olives, and the large dark-leaved wide-spreading carobs, on whose husks fed the swine and the Prodigal Son, and which are said to be the locust tree, on which the Baptist also lived, were to be seen everywhere. ' A turn in the deep valley brought into sight, on the side of a rocky peak, the Grotto where St. John the Precursor passed fifteen years of his youth (Luke i., 80). It is a natural excavation about three yards wide by two in depth. The place is lonely and a wilderness, but not a desert. A spring rises cool and pleasant from within, and trickles down the rock. A brief pause here, and then back as quickly as our horses will carry us under such a burning sun. to the Convent of St. John for a relay of cattle and a new escort, sent on before, as well as refreshment, hospitably furnished by the good fathers. At first starting our road was bad and dreary enough, rock after rock, like great slices of a mountain cut off with a knife, and stored up as gigantic paving stones. By this road trending southward, in which direCtion we have been all along proceeding, we approach the traditional spot of the Conversion of Philip the Eunuch, by St. Paul. How he managed to ride in a chariot (Acts 26) on such a road is almost a miracle, and the meeting any one upon it, now-a-days, would be another. line level with the plain. You would hardly think there existed the deep opening of the two valleys between us ; the citadel towers, the Armenian convent, and the minaret over the Mosque alone breaking the line, above which towers Ramah (of Benjamin) high on the dark hill beyond. It is known as Nebi Samwel—the Tomb of Samuel. " A very fair and delicious place," says Sir John Maun-deville, "and it is called Mount Joy,' because it gives joy to pilgrims' hearts, for from that place men first see Jerusalem." One reminiscence is pleasing to us Englishmen. Here the noble Richard Coeur de Lion, advancing from his camp at Askelon, stood in sight of the city, and buried his face in his armour, with the grand exclamation, so full of chivalry and piety : "Oh! Lord God ! I pray that I may never see thy Holy City, if so be that I may not rescue it from the hands of thine enemies." We shall soon have this hill on our right. Half an hour brings us to the Convent of the Cross. It looks like a fortress; and it is well that it is so in this wild country, for one Superior has already been murdered by plundering Arabs. Now, it lies all peaceful, surrounded with rich olive-grounds, with a back-ground of hills, and every semblance of wealth and comfort. It owes this wealth and fame to its covering the spot where the tree from which the Cross was made grew; the good-natured Greek papas shows the hole under the high altar. The church is richly decorated with mosaics, and has a splendidly gilded choir and an admirable Byzantine pulpit. The old priest will show you a very strange picture here, like a long panorama—a singular heterogeneous mixture of devils, priests, and allegorical personages of all ages, and castles and groves. It relates to some story about Lot, the gist of which is, that having repented of the sin into which he had been deluded by intoxication, the Patriarch, on waking, sought at once some means of expiation, by consulting a Levite. The holy man ordered him to plant in his garden three branches of trees, and to nourish them with water from the Jordan, to be fetched by him every morning on foot. If the branches took root, he would then know that he was forgiven. Next morning Lot planted the three cuttings, and started off to the Jordan—no short dis-tance—for the water; while returning he was accosted by an old beggar man, exhausted with the heat, who asked for a drink of water; this Lot gave to him, knowing that he should still have enough left to water the cuttings. A little farther on, the same demand was made upon him by a traveller, which request he knew not how to refuse ; and so on, he met so many people on his way, and was so charitable, that when he got home he had not a drop of water left for himself. Tired as he was he must go back to the Jordan, or see the trees perish and with them his hopes of pardon. As he rose up to set off again an angel appeared to him in his extremity, and comforted him with the assurance that his charity had caused him to find grace before the Eternal, informing him that it was the Devil, who, unable to bear the thoughts that Lot's mischance should not place the Patriarch in his power, had assumed different forms on his homeward path, and thus drank all Lot's provision of water. So Lot was pardoned, and the trees took root and flourished ; in after years one of them supplied the wood for the Holy Cross. We quit the hospitable Georgians (for this is the last and only Convent of that church of Christians, their sole possession and evidence of faith, and they claim it as given them by their ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 47 A fountain marks the spot—not a stream. It was once highly adorned, and the numerous carved stones lying about evidently formed a portion of the channel by which its water was conveyed into the Sorec. Another hour brought us to Beit-jala, where the Latin Patriarch has a noble foundation for the education of the native clergy. Hence by a toilsome road until we reach the plain of Rephaim once more, from which, by a gentle bias towards the left, we arrive at a small oblong Turkish mosque, slightly elevated on the way-side, with a little white dome on the top, and a pointed arch on its side at the other end. We now know " There is but a little way to Ephratah, which is Bethlehem" for we are travelling in the foosteps of Jacob on his way from Beth-el to Edom, and we have reached the place where he buried his beautiful and well-favoured Rachel, who named her son Ben-oni (Son of Sorrow) as she died (Gen. xxxv., 18, 20). We halt here for a few minutes under the influence of tender and respectful feelings, the sympa1hy for a bereaved husband two thousand years ago ;—the homage of tears paid to a Jewish wife's humble tomb, which golden mausoleums of Zenobia and Cleopatra would fail to elicit. "Rachel died by me !" What power to wake emotion is in those simple words, while here we stand upon the spot where the patriarch lifted up his face and wept, and "there was great weeping and lamentation." But we are on our way to the birth-place of " The Man of Sorrows " at Bethlehem, symbolized probably-by these early tears of the Hebrew fathers, and completing their significance. As you go along you will see the shepherds and their flocks, the sheep and the goats, the camels and their loads, and the herds coming to the wells, just as Jacob saw them. The women wear the same dress, the men have the same free air and gestuve, the step and front of the shepherd race. Were we to wait until the moon is up we should, even now, see "the shepherds abiding in the fields and keeping watch over their flocks by night " (Luke ii., 8). Along this road walked the Virgin Mary to visit her sister. A field to the right is the scene of a legendary miracle, where the Virgin once, in passing, asked the owner for some beans, and the miserly curmudgeon having denied that he had any, all the beans there were converted into stones ; the stones are there still, and are round and small and smooth. As we go on we see Bethlehem. We are hardly half-an-hour from it. The road is nothing more than a mule track, but well trodden for some thousands of years. The ascent is gentle : the narrow ridge, on whose side is placed the little city, with its flat-roofed houses, and its clump of convents thick clustering round the spot of the Nativity, is not of great height. It is a confused and irregular pile of white buildings, but has a gay and smiling look, as if the Star of the East still shed its light and brightness over it. Over the town hangs a plain of green ; below it the hill is fashioned into terraces of olive trees, and vines, and fig trees. At its feet, sloping down in the valley, are the corn fields—yes, the very corn fields in which Ruth gleaned —there is the very farm of Boaz himself. It must be so. Already our artist is sketching the labourers who worked with Ruth (see p. 33), and there, along that path across the fields, going towards the deep gateway, is Naomi herself, just as she looks in the pictures painted by the great old painters, who so happily caught the spirit of the Scriptures—in the long gown of dark blue, and her veil of white cotton cloth to shade away the burn ing glare of the sun. She is returning from the land of strangers to her native village (Ruth, i., vii). Close by the gate is the well, for the water from which David longed. All about, we see the vineyards of Judah on every hill-side, with watch-towers and walls. Every place about is glowing with wild flowers, daisies, and the white Star of Bethlehem ; with a blaze of scarlet flowers, anemones, wild tulips, and the like ; the first pilgrims used to call them " the Saviour's blood drops." Bare and barren as is all around, these flowers, in this spring time, are a brilliant contrast. Behind Bethlehem, we see rising a huge wall of mountains, high, massive, and overshadowing. You know the effect of the distant Helvellyn. over the surrounding district—that is the appearance of the mountains of Moab over Bethlehem. The Dead Sea lies between, but there are the mountains, brown, huge, impending, never to be forgotten ; and this is why David, who as a boy had them always before his eyes, took care to secure refuge for his old father and mother in their heights when there was no longer safety for them in Bethlehem. An opening in these mountains shows the spot where Lot's wife was changed into a Pillar of Salt, and in the distance is the Wilderness of Engedi. The Church of the Nativity, is an enormous pile of buildings, covering a large space, originally built by the Empress Helena, repaired and enlarged by various Christian contributions, but still imperfect and in some parts ruinous. This ought not to be. There are three convents, Latin, Greek, and Christian, with the Church of the Nativity common to all. The nave, with its double lines of Corinthian columns and roof of Lebanon cedar, is what remains to us of the grand Basilica. The Church of the Nativity itself has a roof of English oak, the gift of our own Edward IV. Here Baldwin was crowned King of Jerusalem. On the columns of the side naves may yet be traced vestiges of the armorial bearings of the Crusaders, and the walls of the central nave still show the remains of Byzantine mosaics. It now seems but as a passage between the convents, and you will observe that it is also a place of meeting for the peasants of the vicinity, where they enjoy the shelter it affords from heat or rain, and tranquilly smoke their pipes, as they are now doing, while their children are receiving instruction from the pious brethren. From this we descend to the subterranean vaults under the floor of the Church, and going through a long narrow passage belonging to the Latins—the Greeks have another entrance—find ourselves in a little chapel, twenty-seven feet long and eleven wide, with a marble floor, adorned with tapestry and pictures, and lighted dimly with silver lamps. This is the Grotto of the Nativity. There are two small recesses, nearly opposite to each other ; a marble slab in the northernmost, which is semi-circular, and marks the spot of the Nativity, having upon it a silver star to designate where the Star of the East rested. There is also an inscription—" Hie natus est Jesus Christus de Virgine" (" Here Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin"). On the right, or on the south, is a chamber, down two steps, paved and lined with marble, at one end of which is a block of stone hewn out,—the stall,—from which was taken the wooden manger now at Rome in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and exhibited every Christmas in the presence of the Pope. Justin Martyr, who was born at Nablus and martyred at Rome in the second century, mentions this stone, and St. Jerome, who wrote the Vulgate in a chamber but a few paces from this spot, has vouched for its 48 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. THE CHAPEL OF ST. ROSALIE, NEAR PALERMO, IN CICILY. of the birthplace of the Saviour of mankind; and cold indeed must be the heart, and dead the very soul, of that man who, once on this spot, does not earnestly and sincerely share the enthusiasm of those poor pilgrims whom we now see in deep emotion, and with fervent thankfulness for His great mercy, prostrating themselves at the shrine of the Nativity. Local traditions abound. There is a grotto in the rock, just out of the village, to the south, where the Virgin sat down to suckle the infant Jesus, and the milk overflowing from the divine child's lips, has given to the grotto the virtue of assisting all weak mothers who pray at the altar therein erected. Turks, Greeks and Armenians alike vouch for this, and, you see, the limestone is scraped away in all directions; in one part a chamber has been scraped out, that women may drink water in which the powder from it has been mixed. There is also another grotto in which the Virgin remained hidden with her child during forty days, to escape the wrathful persecution of Herod, after the Magi had made known the successful results 'of their search for the Son of God and future King of Men. Passing through Bethlehem town—for we are now rapidly journeying towards Hebron—it is impossible not to notice the manly and spirited bearing of its people, or the beautiful form and fine expression of countenance in the daughters of Ruth. The men have a sturdy bearing and fearless look, something like the Highlanders. David came from here, and so did Joab and David's other valiant captains. These men are naturally hardy, for they are brought up as shepherds. identity, by choosing it for his residence. Here lived and died, that most illustrious of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Here he fasted, prayed, and studied ; here he gathered those bands of Christians together who still survive, in the numerous convents of the Holy Land. Over the altar in this Chamber of the Manger, is a picture of a stable and cattle, and, behind a little railing of iron, five lamps are kept constantly burning. Right opposite to this is an altar, that of the Magi, or Three Eastern Kings, on the spot where they sat, when they came to offer presents to the Son of God. There is a picture of this over the altar, in which one of the kings is painted as a negro. Near the door of the chapel of the Latin Convent you go down two flights of steps to a small chapel, dedicated to St. Joseph, where he waited during the confinement of the Virgin. At the end of this passage is St. Jerome's Chamber; and just out of the door, on the right hand, is his tomb. Opposite are the tombs of Santa Paula and her daughter, Saint Eustochia, two holy ladies who accompanied St. Jerome, and provided him with means during his lengthened and pious labours. Here also is the grave of his faithful and earnest disciple, St. Eusebius, of Cremona. Just by, in the first passage to the left, is a deep pit, into which, they say, the bodies of the infants, murdered by Herod's cruel mandate, were thrown at the time. There is an altar over it, but we looked down into the pit through an iron grating, and saw nothing. Be all this as it may, we know that, anywhere here, we are within a few paces ALL ROUND THE WORLD, 49 There are large flocks in the plain and on the hills; and see, where the reapers are cutting the barley, and their women and children gleaning, just as Ruth did—when Boaz came to look after his labourers (Ruth IL, 5-7). There, too, is a woman beating out the grain on a stone, as Ruth did (Ruth ii., 4), and they " dip their morsel in the vinegar," and eat " parched corn "—that is, the roasted ears, the chaff being burned off over a flame. We go on to the "Grotto of the Shepherds," where they lay at night, watching their flocks, and make our modest offering, as pilgrims, of a few wax candles to the little humble shrine, adorned with some poor paintings. Thence, a three-quarters of an hour's march to the Cave of A dullam, in the mountainous wilderness of Engedi. It is situated in a great rock that hangs on the edge of a narrow shelf of rocks in a fearful gorge, with towering cliffs above it, and to get to it you have to leap into a low window-hole. Within, it is a very large grotto, quite dry but very dark, with numerous passages ramifying in all directions; a veritable stronghold and hiding-place, such as a few bold men could hold against a host, armed as soldiers were in Saul's time. The ravine here is excessively precipitous. The cave has been made use of, even in late years, as a place of refuge for the inhabitants of the district in time of war. You read; in the accounts of the French Algerine campaign, of Marshal Pelissier and General Lamoriciere having suffocated some hundreds of peasant Arabs with their wives and children, in just such a cave, by lighting fires at the entrance, when they could by no means drive them out or venture in themselves. A rugged road brings us back to the mules' path and up the green valley of waters to the " Three Pools of Solomon," which lie all in a row, one below the other; each of an oblong form, of the respective lengths of 360, 423, and 582 feet. The largest, the easternmost, is 200 feet wide and 50 deep, so that when full—which it now is, and running over to the second and the third—it would float the largest man of war that ever ploughed the ocean. How beautiful must have been the gardens, hereabouts, in Solomon's time ! the vineyards and the orchards on the neighbouring hills and the valley to the north-west. Along the mountain side, winding in a conduit, is the channel to supply. Jerusalem, made by the wise king and restored by Pontius Pilate, as we learn from Josephus. It runs and meanders in various sinuosities for nine miles' distance, just as used to wind and wander, through the meadows of Islington and Hornsey, our own New River, in its old leaden conduit, from Ware to London. The high steep hill to the left—that enormous natural mound, rising 800 feet from the valley—is the Herodium of Josephus, a great fighting-place and fortress of the olden time, the " Frank Mountain" of the Crusaders, who had their last fight out here, and made here their last stand after they were driven out of Jerusalem. The old castle, the towers, and the walls connecting between them, still remain, but in ruins. At its feet lies Tekoah, whence came the clever woman to seek for the rebel Ab- salom's pardon from his father. We are nowapproaching, along the Valley of Eshkol (out of which came the great bunch of grapes that so surprised the Israelites), to Hebron, the oldest city in Canaan; one of the oldest, also, in the world ; for it was built seven years before Memphis, and has survived it. It was the border city of the Promised Land, the city of Arba, the Prince of Giants, the city of Ephron the Gittite, of whom Abrahambought his tomb-field, Machpelah (Gen. xxiii., No. 4 10), the first home of the patriarchs, as it is their last, " for here," says St. Jerome, " are buried A dam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Caleb chose it for his portion, for he had seen it when out witb the spies. The vale that leads up to it is delicious, rich in orchards and in vineyards, abounding in wells and fertile in soil. Harvest groups pass us on the road, with reapers and gleaners, pictures of the patriarchal time. The mosque is the most prominent object in the landscape. Once a convent built by Helena the Empress, it covers the tomb of Abraham in Machpelah, and lies on a sloping hill-side. At its base, in the valley, is the town in three divisions, each on a separate small hill. The green vallies and the corn-fields, the olive groves and the vineyards, stretching up into it, run right away to the desert, whence advanced the Israelites. The mountains of Moab look down, frowning, brown, and gloomy over all. About two miles before reaching the town, but still within view, we come upon a noble old oak, standing, alone, in the centre of a beautiful green sward. It is a fine ancient evergreen oak, twenty-six feet in girth, and its thick spreading branches extend over an area of ninety-three feet in diameter. See how it throws out its three giant arms, which again break into innumerable limbs ! The valley is full of figs, carobs, nut and fruit trees in all variety. Under that oak, as tradition tells, Abraham entertained the angels; but here another tradition interferes, which says that the oak of Abraham withered at the moment of our Lord's crucifixion. We had introductions to a venerable Jew resident -in this town, where there is no hospitable convent to receive travellers; so that after due refreshment some enlightened conversation followed on the condition of the Jews in Palestine, which our host considered to be improving, as the Turks were certainly humbled, though no less fanatic. We entered the town through a labyrinth of streets and ruins. The bazaar, however, was full of people, and all seemed brisk, active, busy, bustling, and interested. The mosque, to which access is denied, is a remarkable building with a strong high wall—built at the base with large stones, said to have been brought from the Temple ruins—and with two square minarets. The wallis ribbed with square pilasters. The Tomb of Abraham is in a chapel, within the square of the mosque ; under its dome is what is called the Tomb of Esau. On the right of the mosque-door is Sarah's Tomb, and just beyond it that of Abraham ; corresponding to these are the Tombs of Isaac and Rebecca, and near them is a recess for prayer, with a pulpit. These tombs resemble small huts, with a window on each side. They open with folding doors of wood and iron. Within each of these is an imitation of the sarcophagus which lies in the cave below the mosque. On the opposite side of the mosque are two larger tombs, where aro deposited the bodies of Jacob and Leah. There are also in this mosque the Sarcophagi of Jacob and Leah. A canopy in the centre of the mosque hangs over the cave of Machpelah, and through a hole in the floor a lamp is let down which is kept perpetually burning. No one is admitted to the actual cave below.' 1 The "Torch of Hearts," an essay on the authenticity of the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the learned Ali, son of Jafer-ar-Ruyz, gravely states, on the testimony of Abil-Horairah, a dependable witness, who heard it.: " It was said by the Apostle of God (Mahomet) t When the Angel Gabriel made me take the nocturnal flight to Jerusalem, we passed. over the tomb of ALL ROUND THE WORLD. There 'is a legend that a descent into this cave would be fatal. For a certain Seid-Omar Ettoher, a pious Mussulman, having been invited by Abraham to come clown, lost ' his eye-sight through his temerity. The fact is, that within these few years a Christian so attempting it would have lost not only his eyes but his head. There are two immense Pools in the town, very ancient, but they are rarely full of water. The people go clown to them by stone steps, and you see them constantly coming up and going down with goatskin bottles on their backs. A large monument is shown near the bazaar as the Tomb of Abner. Just beyond the mosque, on a rising ground, is the Fountain of Sarah, where she washed the clothes of Abraham and Isaac—a service, in those times, by no means unusual in the wives of great men or even queens—those good old days, when queens and princesses came down to the river side to wash their own and their husbands' garments. The country all round presents fine landscapes, and the land is richly cultivated ; but beyond rural life—the Moslems so religiously closing tire mosque to us dogs of Christians —there is little to be seen. So we mount our fresh horses, and make the best of our way back to Jerusalem, where we arrive at a late hour, having stopped in the moonlight to see the Convent of Mar Elias, opposite to which Elijah left the imprint of his we-tried body on a rock. There is behind this a mound from which you can see the Mediterranean on the one side and the Dead Sea on the other. From the Convent of Elias a few paces brought us to the Well near to which the Magi were reposing when the Star of Bethlehem appeared to them. We arrived in Jerusalem the same night, having accomplished in the most satisfactory manner a journey which is very unusual for the generally slow-pacing pilgrims who visit the Holy City. X.—TO JORDAN AND TO NAZARETH. THE pilgrims for Jordan, in a numerous and motley band of many thousands of all nations, having started from St. Stephen's gate over the Mount of Olives through Bethany, early on the previous day, with an escort of soldiers under the command of the Governoi, we resolved—by means of relays, previously arranged-6 follow them this moaning, and, contrary to the usual course of -travellers, to take the Convent of St. Saba on our way ; as our purpose was not to return gain to Jerusalem, but to proceed onward from the Jordan to Naiareth, and so homewards to the sea coast. So we carne out of the Zion Gate, and down the steep way to the bottom of the hill, whence, turning to the right, we halted at En-Rogel, or the Well of Job, at the junction of the Valleys, of Hinnom and. Jeho-shaphat, the locality of a tratlition, preserved by Josephus, of a tremendous earthquAke in the close of the reign of Uzziah, when the leprosy struck him (1 Kings, xv., 5). " Just as Uzzias was entering the Temple, the building suddenly started asunder; the light flashed through, and the same moment : the leprosy rushed into the king's face ; the hills around felt the shock, and a memorial of the crash was long preserved, in a large fragment of the rock, or landslip, which, rolling down from the western hill (of Evil Counsel), blocked Abraham, .and he said, 'Descend, and make a prayer with two genuflexions, for here is the epulchre of thy fathei Abraham, Then we passed Bethlehem, and he said, Descend, for hero was born thy brother Jesus.' Then we came to Jerusalem.! up the royal gardens between that hill and the Mount of Olives, at the junction of the two valleys by the spring of En-Rogel." We now make for the bed of the Kedron— called from its dryness, the Wad-en-Nar, or Valley of the Stream. of Fire—a wonderful gorge, that leads down by a long descent through precipitous, overhanging rocks, to the Plain of Jericho. We worked, over a steep and difficult way, through tangled ravines, and shelving gullies, and in two hours and a half, before the sun was too high and scorching, reached the convent of Santo Saba. Perched up high among the rocks—as if a portion added to the cliffs—with towers, bastions, walls, church and dome in picturesque array, an embattled fortress garrisoned by monks, overhanging a dark abyss, whose sides are pierced with caverns and hermits' cells hewn in the rocks by pious hands, now untenanted but by night birds or the vulture and the eagle,—this convent is one of the most remarkable localities in the Holy Land. The Wilderness and grim rocks present an extraordinary scene from the convent terrace under the two square towers. The buildings rise in terraces overtopping each other, and, to the monastery above access is permitted only through a low iron door, from which a basket is let down and the stranger is hauled up. To pilgrims there is admission to the lower tower up a ladder and through a low door to a large room, while, for guests of distinction, a smaller chamber, and separate, is allotted ; but to all a kindly and never-failing hospitality is extended. This is a Greek institution, and the chapel is therefore a very gaudy one, and contains an extraordinary picture, representing the Almighty with attendant angels, St. Peter with his keys, and a brawny minister weighing sinners in a pair of scales, to mete out punishment according to the heaviness of their sins. There is a devil with his legendary pitchfork, and Elijah doing battle manfully with Antichrist, while below are open graves and all the horrors of the Resurrection vividly depicted. The tomb of the patron saint has a small central chapel, and St. John of Damascus has another chapel devoted to himself, and the remnants of the bones (a vast quantity is shown behind an. iron grating) of 14,000 hermits, who were slaughtered here by the Turks. This most remarkable and picturesque. of con-vents—a wondrously fortified church, amidst savage scenery—was founded by St. Saba in the fourth century, when he led hither a great body of hermit brothers. It is the richest convent of the Holy Land, and stands in need of the good guarding which it enjoys. We saw the Grotto of St. Saba and the Lion, where the pious and hospitable saint used to live, and in which, returning late one evening, he found a lion had taken up his quarters. Too hospitable to drive him out, the hermit gave the King of Beasts a corner of his cell, and dwelt there a long time afterwards with his strange, laybrother. Having breakfasted handsomely, we started off with fresh horses forJericho, down an ever-descending road, that seemed almost to rush down to the deep depression of the Dead Sea. As soon as we had reached the bottom of one deep valley, another still 'deeper succeeded—naked and calcined rocks--a burnt up soil—all nature in desolation ! the whole landscape bears the grim aspect of an immense convulsion ; and below us, in the far horizon, stretches, like a mirror, the wan motionless surface of the Accursed Sea, buried amongst dreary and silent rocky hills. A narrow pass in the rocks ends in a plateau, whence a full view of the Dead Sea, from end to end. is obtained. The. Jordan ALL ROVND streams along, from the distance in a long, apparently narrow, line of green, where all about is sandy and bare, except where the barley harvest of the plains of Jerusalem is being gathered in—for we have arrived just at the same season as the Israelites, in " barley harvest ;" (Joshua, iv., 19.,) though the river no longer overflows all its banks, for the venerable trees and thick bushes in the upper of the three terraces, through which it flows at this spot, show that, for a long time, the river has not filled that part of its own channel, as a current. We now stand between the Mountains of Moab and the mountain ranges ofPalestine, Judea, and Ephraim; the "hills about Jerusalem," down which we have just come, ri'ing majestically from between. Jericho may be seen clearly below, on our left, with its wall of faggots of cactus, and its straggling white houses, in a dark green oasis, made by the waters of the Ain Hajld, (identified by Robinson with Beth Hoglah), the Wadi-kelt or brook Cherith (or the Cleft) and the Ain-es-Sultan, or Fountain of Elisha, where the prophet, out of compassion, made the bitter waters sweet (2 Kings, ii., 19). This fountain rises on a tell or mamelon, or mound, such as abound in Palestine, near large cities, and have apparently, in some cases, been raised originally for defensive purposes, but are in others, as is well known, mere heaps of ruin. They are not, however, always artificial, but mounds of rock, and, as in the Hauran, even extinct volcanoes. The water is transparent, sweet, cool and abundant, having in it small fish—avery rare thingin this country, especially so near the Dead Sea. In its neighbourhood grows a tree, bearing fruit, that looks like an apricot, beautiful to the eye, but nauseous to the taste, and said to be poisonous—in fact, the " bitter apples." Hereabouts must have lain the old city of Jericho; the modern village of Ridah, or Riha, is but a collection of poor dwellings. Hereabouts, also, must surely have stood the "City of Palm trees,"—the key to Judaea; for here, by the meeting waters of Eli-sha's Fountain and the other streams, are woody thickets and patches of corn and melons, that still wear the pleasant semblance of gardens from where we are standing; although much of the spot is thorny shrubs, where the wild boar haunts, and the lion of Judah might even now find a fitting lair. There is an ancient square tower, the rest of the castle is in ruins ; we shall be down there speedily to refresh our horses and seek a night's shelter for ourselves. The Jordan rises far north in snowy Hermori, flows through the high lake Merom, and running down 300 feet, passes, next, right THE JORDAN LEAVING THE SEA OF TIBERIAS, TH8 WORLD. 51 through the Sea of Tiberias, and out of it, with un-associating waters; then, comes out to lose itself—after a course of sixty miles—the latter part through twenty-seven rapids and a fall of 1,000 feet—in the Dead Sea, which absorbs it for ever into its withering bosom. That dreary lake lies fifteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, and at the northern end is 1300, at the southern only thirteen feet below the surface ; the shallow part of the Sea being fifteen miles in length, and said to cover the Plain of Sodom and the submerged cities. At this end, the southern and farthest from our sight, is a ridge of rock salt, but a party of the artists, who came with us, have started to make photographs of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities which it is now argued were not submerged but destroyed by fire. M. de Saulcy says he found them; M. Van der Velde has disputed this fact ; but, nevertheless, it is by no means improbable, and we believe the photographs are now in England. For ourselves we could not make the ruins, but we may have been too hurried, and, not impossibly, off the right track. To return to Jericho. There was, years ago, one venerable palm tree, near that old square tower, but like other recorded palm trees of the Holy Land, that one has gone, the last of that " forest of palm trees," for which the locality was distinguished. We must not altogether despise those thorn bushes—one of them is the Zukkum, and bears a nut, from which a liquid balsam is made by the monks and soldiers—the famous "Balm of Gilead." The vista of twelve miles that lies opened before us in the spread of the valley of Jordan, just here, is the locality of extraordinary scenes. From Pisgah, in the mountains, and more clearly visible on the other side (but no one knoweth where Pisgah is), Moses looked down on the Promised Laud and saw this plain and this valley, then fertile as the valley of the Nile. Here, on the spot where the pilgrims are about to enter, the Jordan rolled back twenty miles. The river had dried up from north to south (Josh., iii., 16), and the host of Israel came out of the deep channel, (here eight feet deep), and pitched their tents in the desert plains. They had seen Jericho from Gilgal, (where pilgrims still carry their children yearly to be circumcised), about five miles from the eastern bank, on the skirt of the forest, a vast grove of majestic palms, about three miles broad and eight miles long. Above the trees could be seen Jericho, " high and fenced up to heaven ;" behind it, the white limestone mountains of Judea, in which the spies had taken refuge ; just as the hermits did in the after Christian period, when they hewed out cells in that hill, now called the " Quarantania," which they regarded as the scene of the "Forty days Fast of the Temptation." Dowii that pass from Jericho went Elijah and Elisha to tl- e Jordan banks, and smote the waters and divided them, the sons of the prophets standing on the terraces to see the great ,prophet ascend. Those palm groves, now no more, were given by Antony to Cleopatra as a love-gift ; and Herod the Great farmed them for her, and afterwards bought them for himself, and built here a sumptuous palace, and died here, 4tricken, in his pride. Our Lord passed through here on his last journey to Jerusalem, and, along the road by which grew the Sycamore Tree (Luke, xiv.,4), went up into the wild dreary mountains, and so up the long ascent towards the City, past the old khan or inn that now marks the locality of the Parable of the Good 52 ALL ROUND Tilt WORLD. Samaritan (an English traveller was robbed and murdered there in 1820), and so to the friendly house of La7arus at Bethany. Night falls, and we look for and obtain a kind lodging from the captain of the guard in the old tower. Here we snatch a few hours' repose, which early is broken, in the dead waste and middle of the night, or rather about three o'clock in the morning, by loud shouts from the neighbouring camp.- Lights are flashing about and drums beaten, and then come, in a long line,—all carrying blazing torches of the turpentine,—the pilgrims who now advance towards the Jordan in solemn silence, the moon shining brightly above their heads. Before reaching the shore, we perceive the white cliffs and green thickets on each bank, just where the Greeks and Armenians bathe, which they do, rushing headlong, men, women, and children, in one undistinguished mass. The banks are perpendicular, and the stream flows strong ; and is ten feet deep, and rather muddy. We are more used to rivers, and wisely prefer a lower spot, which the Latin pilgrims use, and which our artist has sketched (see page 38), where the beach on one side is low. You will see fathers and mothers, delightedly, bathing their children ; that they may enjoy the advantages of a pilgrimage without the toil. There is little noise and shouting, though much haste and tumultuousness, but at the same time, no indecorous conduct. The bath is delightful, and the intermixture of the reeds, wild vines, and climbing plants, imparts much beauty of contrast. Copts, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, Protestants, from Abyssinia, Egypt, Asia, Turkey, Greece, Malta, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, America, and all Christian lands ; even Cossacks from Tartary, and Negroes from Abyssinia, were thronging along the shores. The forest of thorns was all alive with them. All brought back some memorial from the banks—long branches of the Jordan willow ; some even carry away trunks of trees, loaded on their asses, horses and mules, as a store from which to cut out relics for profitable sale at a distance. All, on their return, were engaged in singing hymns, the confused sound of which from so great a multitude, when harmonised into one sonorous hum or trumpet murmur by the effect of distance, had a surprising effect. At the camp are a large body of Turkish pilgrims, it is the time of their Moslem pilgrimage to Nebi-Moussim, the supposed tomb of Moses, which lies in the vicinity; matters being so politically arranged that, to guard against the capture of the Holy City by Christian pilgrims mustered every year at Easter, a similar pilgrimage of Turks is convoked for the same time; and Nebi-Moussim' or the Tomb of Moses, a small hillock near Jericho, is one of their important shrines.' A short distance above the Dead Sea the Jordan is 40 yards wide, and 12 feet deep ; then 50 yards wide, and 11 feet deep ; then 80 yards wide, and 7 feet deep; and, finally, 100 yards wide and only 3 feet deep ; at thebar, by its entrance. We proved the buoyancy of the Dead Sea by attempting to sink in it, but found the 1 Van t gmont speaks of this tomb as of a modern Mussuhnan Saint. But the prefix of Nebi (Prophet) to Monsa (Moses), Canon Stanley remarks, is nearly conclusive in favour of its being intended for the grave of Moses. Such is the opinion also of Jelal-ed-din. Sdhwartz describes a Keber Mosheh, or Moses' Grave, south of Hams, when it is well known the Rabbi adds, that the sepulchre of this holy man is east of the Jordan (Dent. 1 The ruins at Beitin and Bethel occupy the whole surface of the hill-point and cover a space of three or four acres. They consist of very many foundations and half standing walls of churches, towers, and other buildings. water very buoyant, and, at the same time, extremely bitter, and far salter than that of the ocean. It acts like alum upon the tongue, smarts like camphor when applied to the eyes, and stiffens the hair like cerate. Here are no fish, nor did we see any birds, and an unnatural gloom hangs over the sea and over the plain. One analysis of the water shows chloride of sodium, 8 ; of potassium, 1; of calcium, 3. Another says, chloride of calcium, 21; of magnesium, 101 ; of potassium, 1i ; of sodium, 61. The specific gravity is as 1200 to distilled water at 1000 ; but this varies, as do also the amount of saline substances according to the time or place at which the water may be taken. We made the best of our way up the Valley of the Jordan, but found the attempt to reach Jerusalem in that direction would be fruitless ; so we at once hastened back with the pilgrims, now in advance—who halted, however, at the castle,—in a long picturesque line towards Jerusalem. This, by taking up again the relay of horses we had left at Mar Saba, we were enabled to do before the evening fell. Next morning, at day-break, we started on the usual route out of the Damascus Gate to Nablus, and soon cleared the hills and rocks that skirt the city, and entered on the Plain of Jezreel, or Esdraelon. El Bireh, or the Well, the ancient Beeroth, is the first halting place of caravans on this route. One day a band of pious pilgrims were returning to Nazareth, after offering their humble sacrifices at the Temple. On their reaching this fountain, when the scattered caravan joined up to halt, a mother and her husband perceived with great terror that their only child was not with them. Devoured with anxiety, they retraced their steps towards Jerusalem, inquiring everywhere on the way for their little son, and found him in the Holy City, in the Temple, in the midst of the doctors or teachers of the law. A little chapel was built here to commemorate the Virgin's anxiety. The path winds through an uneven valley, covered with bare spots of rock. A little to the east are some blocks of stone, recording how Jacob had his dream on this spot. This is all that remains of Bethel, leaving it just what it was when the wanderer " who went out from Beersheba " slept on the brown bare rocks, and the beaten thoroughfare, and erected the stone which had been his pillow, in memorial of his dream. In the valley below was the " Oak of Tears," near where Deborah, the nurse of Jacob, was buried (Gen., xxxv., 6-8). Yet here, at Luz, as it was then called,' was the place of council — the IVA-tenagemote—of the old Cauaanites. This place small as it was, held out against Benjamin, until the strong family of Joseph captured it by storm, and made it their own (Judges, i., 22-25). The Jews then assembled here in the House of God, Beth-el. Next, Jeroboam built a Temple, which Josiah destroyed ; the old Canaanitish relish for idols hovered over the spot ; and Jeroboam him- . self, while in this Temple, by the altar which stood before the Golden Calf, was confounded by the terrible denunciation of the Man of God from Judah (1 Kings, xfii., 1). Thence it was called Bethanen, the House of Idols, which Josiah destroyed, with all its grows, and Ahaz and Hosea pronounced their emphatic curses upon the spot. It now bears the mark of their accomplishment. ALL ROUND THE WORLD, 53 to give as a special gift to his favourite son; the rest he equitably distributed:2 On the other side are a few broken stones, where was the well sunk by " our father Jacob," " to give drink thereof to himself, his children, and his cattle" (John iv. 12). " Jacob's Well" is the undisputed scene of Our Lord's conversation with the Woman of Samaria. He halted, as we and all travellers do, at this well ; his disciples went up the city ; and down the gorge, from it, came the woman, as do all women in the East, to the well to draw water. The same mountain, Gerizim, looked down upon that conversation, and the same fields of waving corn surrounded them as they talked. Six miles from Shechem, along the valley, in a wide basin, rises a steep hill, a position unequalled for strength, beauty, and fertility. This is the hill of Samaria, looking over the Plain of Sharon, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and up the green Valley of Shechem, to the East. It was the capital of the Kings of Israel, and second only to Jerusalem. Here is a grand gothic ruin, the church of the beheading and grave of St. John the Baptist, and a second "Holy Sepulchre." It is now a mosque, and carefully guarded by the people of Sebaste (the modern appellation of the town). There is a broken reservoir, which they tell us was the pool beside which Naboth and his son perished, as the murderers of Ish-bosheth ; and in which Ahab's blood-stained chariot was washed after the fatal battle of Ramoth-Gilead (Kings, xxii., 38.) The martyr has a tomb, and his memory is revered; but of the proud Herod, of his palace and his terraces, his sumptuous halls, and his feasts and dances, nothing remains, but a few broken pillars on the hill. All nature smiles around, as she then smiled; groves of trees, of corn and olives, rise in the valley, and up the hill sides; but the plough passes over the King's palace every season, and the peasant who drives it knows not the very name of Herod. Over the mountains. of Manasseh and into the Plain of Esdraelon, after a night's halt, we hasten, across Galilee, leaving Tabor, or the Mountain The hills of the main road from Jerusalem are passed, and we descend into a wide stretching plain, full of growing wheat, or barley being harvested, with here and there an olive grove peeping from the midst of the waving mass. Beyond us, to the right, lies the snowy brow of Mount Hermon. The crests of Mounts Gerizim and Ebal warn us of our approach to Nablus, the ancient Sichem or Shechem. The Samaritans claim that it was here Melchisedek met Abraham, and that on Mount Gerizim, and not on Moriah, was Isaac offered in sacrifice by Abraham. We are in the Vale of Shechem, a valley green with grass, grey with olives in the gardens sloping down on each side, with fresh springs running in all directions. Here was the first halting-place of Abraham, and here, at Moriah, he built the first altar of the Holy Land. Here was the first settlement of Jacob; the first capital of the conquest; upon Mount Ebal was the blessing pronounced, upon Mount Gerizim the curse (Deuteronomy, xi,, 29-30).1 There was a famous temple here, 241 feet from east to west, and 255 feet from north to south. The stones are bevelled after the ancient fashion. The temple was destroyed 130 years before Christ, but they persevere, even to this very day, in " worshipping the Father " on this very spot. The place is a singular one ; the streets are . dark and vaulted, and the brooks rush uncovered over their pavements in wet weather, threatening to sweep away the passers-by. The houses have gardens, and the mulberry, orange, pomegranate, and fruit trees, load the air with delicious perfumes. Here are nightingales and hundreds of other birds, and the valley—for the city lies right across between two prodigious masses of high moun-tains—is excessively picturesque. Mount Ebal is on the north, Gerizim on the south, and the city between. This was the locality of Abimelech's murder of his brothers. Sechem was the government seat of old Canaan, and it was easy to get up an insurrection there against the conquerors. From Mount Gerizim Jotham addressed his famous parable to the people (Judges, ix., 7), and you can see that from his position he would have time to escape before he could be reached on the overhanging mountain. It was on Ebal and on Gerizim that Moses, by the Lord's command, placed "the blessings and the curses" (Deuteronomy, xxvii., 4, 8 ; Joshua, viii., 30, 32). At the mouth of the valley we see, on one side, the white cupola of a Mussulman Chapel—that is the " Tomb of Joseph"—that is " the parcel of ground" left to him by Jacob on his death-bed (Genesis, xlviii., 22, as carried out in Joshua, xxiv., 32). A remarkable point is noticeable in this will of Jacob's, as, according to it, the distribution of property used to be regulated. What he inherited, no man thought his own, but for life, and therefore suffered it always to go in the fair order of his generation; but what he had earned, or himself obtained or added—" which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow"—that the patriarch considered himself entitled ?.." In their humble synagogues, at the foot of the mountain," says Canon Stanley, the most perfect and judicious, as well as the most picturesque writer of all the travellers in the Holy Land, " the Samaritans still worship—the oldest and the smallest sect in the world, distinguished by their noble physiognomy and stately appear-ranee from all other branches of the House of Israel. In their prostrations at the elevation of their revised copy of the Pentateuch, they throw themselves on their faces in the direction, not of priest, or town, or any object within the building, but, obliquely, towards the Eastern summit of Mount Gerizim ; in the fir back histories of the mysterious old time, the actual presence of God on Mount Gerizim is stated." An American traveller says, " The brother of my host was particularly fond of talking about them. He was very old, and the most deformed man I ever saw, who lived to a great age. He seemed to think there were many Samaritans in England and America, and told me to tell them, wherever I found them, that they believed in one God Omnipotent and Eternal, the five books of Moses, and a future Messiah, and the day of the Messiah's coming to be near at hand; that they practised circumcision; went three times a-year up to Mount Gerizim, the everlasting mountain,' to worship and offer sacrifice; and once a-year pitched their tents and left their virgins alone oa the Mount for seven days, expecting that one of them should conceive and bear a son, who should be the Messiah; that they allowed two wives, and, in case of barrenness, four; that the women were not permitted to enter the synagogue, except once a year, during fast, but on no account were they suffered to touch the sacred scroll; and that, although the Jews and Samaritans had dealings in the market-place, &c., they hated each other now, as much as their fathers did before them. I asked about Jacob's Well: he said he knew the place, and that he knew Our Saviour, or Jesus Christ, as he familiarly called him, very well; he was Joseph the carpenter's son, of Nazareth; but that the story which the Christians had about the woman at the well was all a fiction ; that Christ did not convert her, but that, on the contrary, she laughed at him, and even refused to give him water to drink." a The exploration of the tomb of Joseph at Shechem, the stone set up by Joshua at the same place to perpetuate the law of Sinai, and a description of the ruins on Mount Gerizim and. Mount Ebal, are still desiderata. 51 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. of the Transfiguration, green to its very summit, and towering in the prospect like a dome, as if isolated in the mountain range, on our right. Carmel, for eighteen miles, is on our left, stretching towards the sea, all verdant to its top with groves and glades, like Tabor. Gilboa all bare, and little Hermon, we have left behind. We now enter the Valley of Nazareth from the broader Valley of Jezreel, or Esdraelon. Nazareth, the dwelling place of Our Lord, is built on the steep slope of a hill, as will be seen from our illustration, and fifteen gently-rounded green hills form a barrier round the beautiful fields abounding in bright flowers, fig trees, and hedged gardens, in the midst of which sits Nazareth like a rose, with the mountains for its leaves, according to the poetic image of an old topographer, Quaresmius. Innumerable files of cattle and black goats may be seen winding towards it, and under a large pomegranate tree. On the way towards Saphorah (Sephorieh) the traditional residence of the Virgin's parents, may be seen a party of women and girls, with regular and delicate features, dancing under a pomegranate tree. We are now at the very source and first spring of Christianity. Here for thirty years resided the Saviour of mankind : " The word was made flesh and dwelt among us." At the north-west end of the town, we encamped by a well, which is called the " Spring of the Annunciation," where, says the early Greek tradition, the Angel saluted Mary as she went to it, as we see her countrywomen now coming with their jars and their skins, to draw water. Dismounting from our horses, we proceed to look at " The Mount of Precipitation" (Luke, iv., 1), the brow of the hill on the slope of which the town is built. This is just above the Maronite Convent, at the south-west corner of the town. The women here are verypretty ; nor did we notice that boldness in their looks which made a reverend American put the question to himself over again that Philip once put to Nathaniel, " Can any good come out of Nazareth 4 " The Church of the Annunciation, within, is very handsome, and without is very strongly guarded. We leave the Convent walls, and by a flight of steps descend to an altar, with a recess cut in the solid rock, but cased in marble, where the Angel addressed the Virgin ; under thatis an inscription, " Verbum taro Mc factum est:" "Here the word was made flesh." A broken column, hanging from its capital in the roof, designates the place where the Angel stood. Below the altar is the house of Joseph and Mary,—that cave, the kitchen, keeping-room and bedroom. The House that miraculously transported itself from this spot to Loretto, is said, here, to have been the other half of the holy dwelling. Close by, however, the "Workshop of Joseph" is left us, though in a very different style of architecture and material ; there is also, the little Synagogue where Christ, by reading the book of Isaiah, and applying the passages to himself, exasperated his townsmen to thrust him out of their city. It may not be generally known, perhaps, that Pope Sixtus V. had actually negotiated a treaty with the Sublime Porte, to purchase the Holy Sepulchre, and convey it bodily to Rome, with the surrounding shrines, so that Christendom might possess the actual sites of the Conception, Birth, and Burial of our Saviour. We were strongly tempted to continue our tour, and visit Cana, Nain, and Tiberias ; but an intimation of the `steamer's departure drew us once more from the Sacred Past into the regions of the busy present ; and diverging to the left, from Nazareth, we worked our way on to Caiffa, and thence to Jaffa, where we re-embarked, thus concluding our seven days' jeurney in the Holy Land, out of which we had spent FIVE DAYS AT JERUSALEM. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 11 !!'!"11:,1;' ' ' '!,,' 66 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. SICILY AS IT IS. L —IN AND ABOUT PALERMO. THE triumphal entrance of Garibaldi into Naples having released us from the charge of attending his victorious career, which we might have accompanied from his landing in Marsala and during his progress across Sicily to Palermo, we are enabled to turn to that island which is now likely to assume a very interesting position in European affairs, and complete our knowledge of its present condition and the prospects of its possible future, by a tour completely round and across it. This is no very difficult task apparently, for the whole island is only 560 miles in circumference, 220 miles in length, and 150 miles in breadth; but there are 500 cities, although there are only two post-roads and one stage-coach ! Palermo is reached in the steam-boat from Naples in seven hours. This ancient City' stands on the margin of its beautiful bay, in a wide rich valley, backed by an extensive plain, and surrounded by a grand amphitheatre of mountains, verdant to their summits, and of a varied and picturesque outline. It looks down smiling upon dark blue waves, while around it the palm, the orange tree, the fig, the olive and the vine, cheered by the brightest sun and refreshed by cool breezes, shed forth their verdure, and fringe the shell of gold,—the Conca d'Oro,—for so the plain is called—that contains -" Palermo the Beautiful," as if within a frame. The town has an eastern appearance ; white and square houses with flat roofs. We could fancy the Saracens were again in possession of the place, and that the gongs sounding so loudly were intended to call the Moslems to their prayers.2 1 The origin of Palermo is lost in the night of antiquity. Thucydides says it was originally a Phoenician city, which passed under the Greeks, and eventually Carthaginians, the principal seat of whose dominions it was. Eventually the Romans won it. During the decline of the empire, it was overrun by the Barbarians and Goths, until, by the valour of Belisarius, it was restored awhile to the Byzantine Emperor. Then the Saracens took it, then the Normans, then the French, then the Spanish. At one time there were three codes of Law ; the Normans had the Custom of Normandy, the Saracens the Koran, and the Greeks and the Sicilians the Roman Law. Six Languages were spoken at the same time; French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The city, like the country, has been Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Norman, French, Spanish, Sardinian, and Neapolitan, and preserves traces of each one in its buildings, as well as the language, manners, habits, and appearance of its inhabitants. 2 But how did the Saracens come here? Dux fcemina facti. There was a woman at the bottom of it. Goths, Vandals and Byzantines followed the Romans, and it happened that at one of the gratings, justsuch as we nowsee apairof bright eyes and apale face uvler a white muslin veil looking dawn from the balconied The lovely bay is eight miles broad. To the west it is closed by Mount Pellegrino, where once was Hyccara, whence Nicias, who did little else, brought away the fair Lais, who fascinated all Athens, and seduced -the great Pericles to listen and admire. The Eastern headland is Mount Catalfano — the ancient Solus or Soluntum, and at the foot of which is a small port, with a fort called Castelli di Solanto. The Marina, the loveliest ride, walk, or drive in Europe, open to the sea, and guarded only by a dwarf wall, with flagged pavement for pedestrians, is a broad road, along which, on the other side, are the palaces of the nobility. Even now, there is a procession of carriages—every one rides in Palermo—and a, band, whose music from above floats softened over the sea. We have very little trouble- in landing, and as for the Custom House that used to be so vexatious, " we" and Garibaldi, nous croons change tout cela. Farewell, for a while at any rate, to official extortion in Sicily. We hasten to the Victoria Hotel, on the Upper Marina, where we " greatly daring dine ;" and then, out to enjoy the evening fragrance of the orange groves and the amphitheatre of lights round the bay, and the busy, bustling scene of the Marine Promenade. The sweet silvery bells chime out here for vespers—Sicilian vespers ! It is only half a mile from here to the Church of San Spirito, in a field by which took place that famous assassination on so huge a scale,3 that set people second story in the High Street, he saw a pretty nun and fell in love with her. Love laughs at locksmiths, so the nun got out of her window at night, and was just stepping off the rope-ladder intothe arms of herlover, when a friar, returning late to hisconvent, discovered her. The power of the Church in those dayi(it was in the same year that Egbert was crowned King of England,) wasnot to be trifled with even by Byzantine Generals; so Euphemius was sentenced tai be flogged through the streets, the nun being compelled to stand at her grating and witness the degradation of her lover. But by the aid of some of his fellow officers, he ventured upon a most hazardous escape. The keeper of his prison was poisoned befere midnight and the keys obtained; he then swam out into the bay, where he remained floating, until a fishing boat took him up, and for a heavy bribe put him on board a vessel bound for Africa. Once there he instigated the Muhammedans to an easy conquest of Sicily ; and they ruled the Island with rigour for upwards bf two hundred years, enriching its cities with graceful palaces. 3 It was here, on Easter Tuesday, March 30th, 1382, about half a mile from the city at the Church of San Spirito, that, when a great concourse of the citizens had taken place, ostensibly for the purpose of attending vespers, a party of French soldiers, tothe number of two hundred, under suspicion of the people wearing arms, began to search for them, and one insolent young officer, named Drouette, stepped up to a very handsome young married lady who was walking surrounded by her friends, under pretence of searching for a weapon, rudely thrust his hand into her ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 57 bosom. The lady fainted in her husband's arms, who, furious with rage, struck at Drouette, crying " Death to the French !" " Death to the French !" echoed the crowd, and armed with knives and clubs they fell desperately upon the soldiers and killed them to a man. Inflamed with rage and blood, the mob then hurried to the city, where they broke into the convents and killed every French monk they could trace. A horrible butchery followed—not even the altars afforded refuge—men, women, and children were alike sacrificed to the national hate. The French were hunted to their homes everywhere, and murdered without mercy. Eight thousand fell miserably murdered in this impetus of fury, which long repressed, now suddenly and awfully burst forth. In the universal massacre a single individual was saved, William of Porceletta, the governor of a small town. He had stood aloof from the tyrannies and insolence of his countrymen, and had made himself beloved. The Sicilians, who, 'throughout the country, had risen on the tolling of the vesper bell of San Spirito, refrained from injuring his abode, and honourably conducted him on board one of his own vessels to Provence, first compelling him, as it were, to receive the price of the possessions he left in Sicily. A remarkable example of popular justice and the power of virtue. This insurrection had been carefully prepared beforehand by John of Procida. " His birth was humble," says Gibbon, " but his education was learned, and, in the poverty of exile, lie was relieved by the practice of physic, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose except life, and to despise life is the first qualification of a rebel. The island was roused to a sense of freedom by his eloquence, and he displayed to every baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of the Greek*Emperor, and of Peter, King of Arragon, who possessed the maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a crown was presented which he might justly claim by his marriage with the daughter of the sister ' (Constantia, the daughter,) " of Manfred " (the last of the Norman Kings), " and, by the dying voice of Conradino," (the young grandson of the Emperor Frederick's son, ruthlessly slain by Charles of Anjou), " who, from the scaffold, had cast a ring to his heir and avenger. Paleologus was easily persuaded to divert his enemy from a foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of 25,000 ounces of gold was most profitably employed to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a monk or a beggar, the indeihtigable missionary of revolt flew from Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa; the treaty was signed with the seal of Pope Nicholas, himself the enemy of Charles ; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter from the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused, and so freely circulated, the secret was preserved for above two years with impenetrable discretion ; and each of the conspirators imbibed the maxim of Peter " (of Aragon), " who declared that he would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the intention of his right. The mine was prepared with deep ant dangerous artifice; but it may be questioned whether the instant of explosion at Palermo were an effort of accident or design." The French were long taught to remember this bloody lesson. "If I am provoked," said Henry the Fourth, " I will breakfast at Milan and dine at Naples." "Your Majesty," replied the Spanish Ambassador, " may, perhaps, arrive in Sicily for vespers." Charles threatened dreadful revenge, but the Messinese, who were the first attacked, defeated his army most ingloriously, and in the meantime Peter of Arragon had been sent for and arrived. Since that day, until the coming of a new John of Procida in Garibaldi, the Spanish family have reigned in Sicily, personally or by viceroy. The island having, in 1713, only for a brief period passed to the House of Savoy, waft by them exchanged with Carlos, son of Philip the Fifth of Spain, for the Island of Sardinia. In this manner the Spanish Bourbon dynasty entered into Sicily. But how did the French come into Sicily ? A woman did this also. At a festive entertainment, held in the French Court, Beatrice, Countess of Savoy, married to Charles of Anjou, brother to Louis IX. of France, was removed from the superior range of seats occupied by her two younger sisters, the Queen (Eleanor) of England and the Queen of France. Mortified by this humiliation, she returned to her apartment, excited by ill humour, and ddeso ii in tears. On learning the cause of her chagrin and on There are the strange Sicilian nobility in their carriages, with every trace of Spanish blood,—proud, lazy., and polite. Many an one of them half starves himself, and lives in a humble lodging up a dirty back street, for the sake of rolling along in that elegant equipage on the Marina every evening. The Spanish veil is not yet uncommon with the women ; but the best dressed ladies wear Paris bonnets and cloaks. All the men are smoking, and the gay uniforms and the bright eyes and the rapid animated conversation, the strange black-looking priests, and the pale-faced nuns peeping from their grated windows in the upper story, combine to form an extraordinary scene. There are 200,000 inhabitants in Palermo, and it is a tolerably busy town. They are about to have a Parliament in it, and you will hear of some strange goings on before all is over, for the Sicilians are famous in history for winning their liberty, and not knowing how to use it or to keep it. They have done this several times before ; the last time was in 1812, when King Ferdinand, then a refugee from Naples, convoked his barons in a Parliament, and imprisoned them for protesting against an arbitrary tax. Then Lord William Bentinck landed troops, and threatened to depose the king, and drew from him a constitution. But the Sicilians quarrelled amongst themselves, flew off into parties, and the king tricked them out of the constitution, as a toy too cumbersome and troublesome for them to play with. In 1847 they carried another revolution, and they beat the soldiers in Palermo, and they captured the citadel, and the Capuchins distributed arms, and led them on, as they did this year. In 1848 they defied the king, and Lord Minto interfered in their behalf, but they unwisely sent an expedition to Calabria, which failed ; and then the king threw them all over, and bombarded the town and gained the day, and, as they tell us, imprisoned, flogged, tortured, shot, and hung them, up to the coming of Garibaldi. Whether they will manage better now-a-days is the question. However, all are enjoying the present. Gallant cavaliers dash past, pedestrians press along from their evening walk in crowds. It is the hour of enjoyment. The children of the rich, dressed like dolls—of the poor, dark-eyed, fine, and beautifully graceful, are all at play at this cool evening ; the artisan sits at his door ; the coffee-house loungers occupy the pavement with their chairs ; ices and refreshments are handed about—the bay is silvered over with the moon ; Pellegrino stands out like a giant in the shade ; the sea breeze blows in fresh ; and the song of the homeward fishermen comes over the gleaming waters. It was about midnight before we could tear ourselves from the scene. Palermo is a pleasant and easy place for travellers. No street directory is required; there are only two streets besides the Marina, and these crossing at right angles, divide it necessarily into four parts. Out of these her saying she would give her life to be able to confine her tresses for one hour beneath a diadem, Charles embraced her affectionately, and added, " Set your heart at rest, Countess, for before long I will make you a greater queen than either of your sisters." So he promised to her. He defeated Manfred, who died bravely fighting, and caused Conradino to be executed, lie himself and Beatrice witnessing the bloody spectacle. A similar promise is said to have been made by the late Emperor of Russia to his Empress, when they were stopping together in the vicinity of Mount Etna, who promised his Empress Sicily for a summer residence, after he had taken Constantinople,—which he did not. thinking that it was not always necessary to endure oppression, and that a people when resolute were equal to any disciplined force with a bad cause.' 5$ ' ALL ROUND THE WORLD. ••••,,„ ••,;k 4 - • '''', • u.%A., • 1)4 • s„. -a" _ 4 • 0111! ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 77- _ - • • _ 10,1, f() tiO ________ --• ,-:.--,---: -- ..• ....,...... ,_---.1,-,—__- ---,-____-... ,------ -__ -. —=_—_-_1=- 1:11-.1::-..-- -___ „.T____-_:-.-- ----2:_c_T--",- - , 1 , '—..----.-.' ••<....7---: • ..--- il ,..-,' -.4.; .,___._ =____,,,t- -,--- - ;'-',,\•,,._ :: - 7.---':' ---- -----.''' VA,;----`, - --'---.-,' ',--,,x,%/ z__7=___ ..._= _=.v ----r-----_'•_- --- ----..,<—:-='.... -..-'-'---.------;-__-- -_.:_...._••=----_-:.--... ---- ,7,4 ---------,----s •-------- ---- ::-:1"-- --- ----------- ------t,,- ------ COSTUMES AND INHABITANTS OF SICILY. RUINS OF AGRIGENTUM (GIRGENTI), IN SICILY. -2.-- ' .ncniani IY 60 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. great streets shelve and slope narrow alleys and lanes, in which clothes, hung out to dry, are ludicrously conspicuous. There is a fine St. Giles' element about the prospect, in spite of the arches and archways, and the deep blue sky, and the bright blue sea, and the occasional palm tree. The first great street is cllaed the Cassaro, and was the Al Kasr or Street of Palaces, also called Via de Toledo, of the Saracens—it is a mile long. The houses on either side are tall and stately, with bold cornices and projecting balconies ; the flowers and striped blinds of the windows give colour and effect ; the ground-floors are all shops, of a second-rate, country-town-shop-like description. The front of each is an arch ; the proprietors live above ; hence the lodgers have almost all the house. A circus adorns the intersection of the streets ; this is ornamented with statues of the Seasons, of sovereigns, and of saints. The gates of the city are very handsome, with fountains and marble columns. The second street is the Macqueda, which at the close opens out into the mountains, which seem as if they were exactly at the end, though in reality at least three miles distant. Both streets are lined with churches and convents innumerable, a small piagga, part of the Cassaro, contains a very elaborate fountain, extremely handsome, but too complicated in its machinery ever to throw up water. It is circular, and of white marble, and gleams with statues of exquisite workmanship. It has no business to be in a public street. It was designed and executed for a private garden, but was bequeathed to the Senate, who caused it to be erected here. We now hire mules and start off—three boys have tired us out with asking us to do so. Our object is to reach Monte Pellegrino and the Grotto of Santa Rosalia.1 Monte Pellegrino has been compared to the Rock of Gibraltar, and is about the same height-1,963 feet above the level of the sea. It was an impregnable stronghold in the Carthaginian period.' The grotto of 1 This glorious virgin, says the legend, was born at Palermo, in 1130, of noble progenitors, the descendants of Charlemagne. Educated with the utmost refinement of the period, she fled, at the age of twelve, from her father's house to the neighbouring mountains, where she passed her whole time in acts of devotion and penance. At length she retired to a cavern on Monte Pellegrino, where she died, without her place of refuge having been discovered. During that terrible plague of 1624, when all efforts to stay its ravages proved ineffectual, the Saint appeared in a dream to a certain inhabitant of Palermo, and disclosed to him the spot where her mortal relics yet remained unburied, which were reverently gathered up and deposited in the custody of the Archbishop. Still the pestilence refused to leave Palermo, until one day a certain Vincenzio Bonelli, a soap-maker, wandering about the mountain to deplore the loss of his better half, was encountered by a beautiful damsel, who said to him, " Come hither with me, Vincenzio, and I will show you my grotto." Bonelli, all in a tremble, demanded her name. " I am Rosalia," replied the virgin. " Then why," asked the soap-maker, plucking up courage to address her, "do you abandon your country to so many afflictions ?" " Such has been the will of Heaven," interrupted the saint, " but I am now sent to announce to you, that so soon as my body shall be carried in procession through the city, the pestilence shall cease." She then showed Bonelli her place of retreat, advised him to confide all that he had seen and heard to his confessor, and, moreover, predicted that in four days he should be with her in Paradise. Bonelli, of course, fulfilled his mission, and died himself four days afterwards in corroboration of it. Her bones were carried through the City, and the plague was stayed. In honour of this, a yearly festival takes place in Palermo, a magnificent car is conducted abbut, 20,000 wax-lights are lighted in the Cassaro, and a splendid exhibition of fireworks takes place. 2 Of course the Carthaginians and the Romans had a battle here. It came off on the banks of the river Oreti, now a mere mountain stream. Hasdrubal came from the eastern plain with an the celebrated cavern of Rosalia is extremely cnrions. The chapel is hewn in the rock, and contains a white marble statue of the fair young saint of sixteen, arrayed in gold and siver, jewels, flowers, and lamps, that hang around all night and day (see p. 48). The annual festival is very gay. St. Rosalia parades in an immense car, as high as the highest palaces of the Toledo or Cassaro. It is splendidly fitted up with gold and silver embroidery and painting, the body being formed of a huge mount of orange-trees, corals, vases of flowers, and on the top of all is St. Rosalia herself —a silver statue. There is a grand show of fireworks to close the scene. Returning into Palermo, we observed the fruit exposed for sale in the market. Pine cones, which are eaten roasted, the produce of a flat-topped pine; red-cheeked apples; figs of the cactus, of which the seller strips the skin off and hands them to you to swallow, and delicious they are when you are once used to them; chesnuts—the chesnuts of the sunny south, fine and mealy; dried figs; tender green lemons—the most charming of fruit; ripe oranges, nuts, and melons. We saw, too, what will soon be the last lottery (for one of Garibaldi's first steps was to abolish this cheating method of taxation), where, in a red balcony, in a great house in the Piazza, standing where the Inquisition used to be, a little child in white, with due ceremonies, —such as we ourselves used to have in Guildhall about thirty years ago,—drew the lucky ticket from the wheel, and made one man happy with a few pounds extra, while he disappointed a thousand others. What import? the Government raised £200,000 a year by it. There was now no end of sight-seeing, all within easy distance. The Convent of St. Maria di Gesu, at the foot of a mountain, buried in cypresses, round-topped pines, olives,3 oleanders, the vine, the date-bearing palm, and aloes innumerable ; the aloe here being thick and strong—a hard trunk of fibres a foot round, and strong enough for a beam. The pathway behind this convent goes up to an ivy-clad hermitage, with a wide-spreading yew tree of giant size. The view hence over the plain of Palermo, the sea, the bay, and the City, to Mount Pellegrino, which heaves up as the back ground to the picture, is something never to be forgotten for beauty and brilliancy, Coming back, we pass the Church of San Spirit°, surrounded by a cluster of cypresses, the scene of the Sicilian Vespers. There is the large Campo, or burying-ground of the City, and a convent, which enjoys a vaulted burial ground, where the occupants are dried into mummies ; and there they are, in coffins with immense army of elephants, trained for war, on whose terrific aspect he relied to scare the Roman troops at the first onset. But Marcellus opposed craft by courage, and told Lis soldiers to affect fear at the slow, desperate march of the beasts, and fall back. As soon as a number of the elephants had crossed the river, and while others were crowding in and to the ford, a volley of darts, discharged upon them by the Romans, threw them into confusion, and they turned upon their leaders, and, trampling down the Carthaginian ranks, threw their army into such confusion that the Carthaginians lost 20,000 men. 3 The olive trees take long to grow. The Saracens exempted from taxation, during thirty years, those who made a plantation of olive trees. The olives fall in August, but then are green and small; they swell and grow greener until quite black and rips in October. Then the olive plantations are crowded with men, women. and boys harvesting the crop; the women and children pick up the fallen fruit ; the men climb up ladders, sit on the trees, and shake down the olives into the sheets spread out below. The olives are crushed in a rude mill—very rude indeed, and here there is much room for improvement and capital. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. STROMBOLI—ONE OF THE LIPARI ISLES, NEAR SICILY. - _---,-,WW -----------= -_,,,..,-_-i-xT- __------ -- .-:--.-,- .-,-,----,--- , ..---- -.'i .----- ------------------------ --_,--Z------------------------- ----='72-7-:-,-;.-, -.;,-- -:_--7---= .-- - •,.. - _--,,•:,,,7 .7,' .-T,-== -i" - -„ ,F04,44 • glass cases, in the very clothes they used to wear in life —a well:dressed skeleton in white kid gloves ; a soldier in regimentals ; a child preserved with glass eyes ! But we have had our seven penny-worth of carriage out (it costs you two tari, of about three pence half-penny each, fifty-seven—there ought to be sixty—to a pound), the fare in Palermo, for a carriage,— and it is time we started to survey the curiosities of the town. One of the greatest of these would be, if we could collect them together, its four thousand lawyers, or at the rate of one attorney to every five hundred inhabitants, which, allowing the usual set-off of wives, women, and children, would be about one per cent. for every able-bodied man in the town ; deduct from this a liberal per tentage of noblemen, all the members of whom are forbidden, by their rank, to trade, deduct also the clergy and the monks, and how few will be left to earn a living for themselves and the rest I Yet all day long there are processions, and incense and prayers; every other day, almost, is a holiday, and every third evening a ” festa," with fireworks. We once heard tell of a Staffordshire working week as follows : "Monday a holiday ; Tuesday we go on an excursion ; Wednesday we talk about it ; Thursday we go to work ; Friday we get our wages ; Saturday we all drink ; and Sunday we go to sleep." A Sicilian week would be nearly the same, but that the Saturday and Sunday would be better spent ; the evening of both, however, being enlivened with a dance, —one night to celebrate the close of labour, and the other, after prayers. Milking the cows, pruning the vines, or crushing the grapes and tending the silkworms,' or basking in the sunshine, constitute the most of a Sicilian peasant's labours, unless in the sulphur district, where he really works hard. There are three hundred churches in Palermo, and therefore we cannot see them all. Let us begin with the Cathedral on the right hand of the large open square at the head of the city. Severe and simple in the exterior, with its stone burnt to a yellow by the sun's heat, it is impossible to say whether it be Sicilian, Norman, Gothic, or Saracen in its construction, but it has all the characteristics of a noble Spanish Cathedral. There is a grand Saracenic old door for front entrance, and its interior contains numerous side-chapels, each enclosed by marble balustrades and dedicated to special sin. Its altar of lapis lazuli is magnificent, and Gagini, the Sicilian Michael Angelo, has adorned it with 1 In the month of May the women take the eggs, wrap them in a fine linen cloth, and pace it in their beds when they get up in the morning. The chilling influence of the air is sedulously avoided. When hatched the young worms are placed in a basket with the tenderest mulberry leaves. These are given fresh every night, being merely laid on the worms' backs. When full-sized the worms are fed no more. The women take it out of the basket and drawing it back see the silk protruding from its mouth; they then place it on a dry tray, where they weave their cocoons. They are taken hence and baked in an oven or roasted in the hot noonday sun. Then, in the month of August, when the two crops of silk are in—the second begins in June—the cocoons are thrown into a cauldron of boiling water, which loosens the silk, the loose threads are dexterously caught and thrown on a reel, and the silk is wound off. 62 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. a fine picture of' the Redeemer ; mosaics of porphyry and verde antique brighten its pavement, and among the five grand Sarcophagi is one containing the body of Frederick Barbarossa, opened in 1781 by barbarous hands, when the Emperor's dress, of a gorgeous triple robe embroidered with gold and jewels, was found to be still in excellent preservation. Here lies Roger the first King, 1 there too, lie the two Constantia's, Queen and Empress, and the Norman King Henry VI. 1 Our own William the Conqueror was not the only knight adventurer of the Norman race about the same period as he invaded England. It was in the year 1003 that Drogo, a Norman chief, from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, landed with about forty companions at Salerno. The Saracens attacked the town whilst the Normans were there. Drogo, with his companions, put himself at the head of the people, and repulsed the invaders. The Duke of Salerno having witnessed the prowess of the strangers, pressed them to remain. The pilgrims excused themselves at the time, but engaged to return. In the following spring, Drogo, with a band, augmented by no small number of bold adventurers, fulfilled his promise, returned to Italy, and entered into the service of the Duke of Salermo. Profiting by the dissensions of the Pope, the Lombards, the Byzantines, and the Saracens, they sent over in 1022 for a reinforcement of their countrymen to reap the golden harvest; whereupon William, Drogo, Tristan, and Raynulfus, four of the twelve sons of Tancred, a Norman gentleman of small fortune, came out with a party of martial adventurers to Italy. The three entered into the service of the Greek Emperor, on condition of half-shares in the spoil; and the eldest, William, the very model of a knight of romance, signalised himself by transfixing on the point of his lance the Saracen Governor of Syracuse, and his brethren largely aided in the release of Sicily from their new invaders. But the Greek general tried to cheat them of their reward, and made the worst of the bargain ; for the Normans elected Iron-Arm (the name given to William) as their chief, and crossed to Calabria, where they seized several cities. William was made Count of Apulia; and on his death, two more of his brothers, Robert (afterwards surnamed "the Devil") and Hubert, came out in the disguise of pilgrims. A Sicilian party assassinated Drogo, and attempted to shake off the invaders, but in vain. Even the Pope himself, when he attacked them, at the head of his own army in person, was taken prisoner. The Normans now gave a proof that they possessed as much wisdom as courage. Aware of the spiritual influence of Rome on the minds of men, they knew that any injurious treatment offered to the head of the Church would infallibly bring down upon them a deluge of indignation. Instead, therefore, of treating the Pope as a captive, the Normans fell at his feet and implored his pardon and his blessing. They welcomed and conducted him as it were in triumph to Benevento. Leo IX. was so touched by a conduct the very opposite of what he expected, that he confirmed to the Normans all they had conquered, or might conquer, in Apulia or Calabria, and made an alliance with the very men whom he came to expel. Humpliry was now Count of Apulia, and Robert made himself Duke of Calabria, by movements which obtained for him the appellation of Guiscard, or " the wily." On one occasion, when, from the natural strength of its situation, he despaired of taking the citadel of Malvito, he sent word to the monks of a convent within its walls, that one of his officers was dead, and besought them to give him burial in their church. The bier was carried and accompanied by unarmed men. In the middle of the funeral service, the corpse started up in complete steel, and put swords into the hands of the escort. The garrison, taken by surprise, laid down their arms, and the gates of the fortress were opened to Robert by his own soldiers. Finally, in 1059, Roger the youngest son of Tancred, came over, the last and most fortunate of the adventurous band. History here repeated itself. A fugitive Greek general had brought over the Saracens; a Saracen chief, Bereet-Themmah, dispossessed of the government of Catania, revenged himself by persuading Count Roger, whom he found at Mileto, in 1061, to invade Sicily. Roger, nothing loth, crossed the Straits of Messina, defeated the Muhammedans, and finally won the island. His son succeeding him, reduced into order what his father bad conquered, and his fellow-adventurers saluted him king; and thus it came to pass that the son of the youngest of the twelve sons of a poor Norman gentleman, who had left his country with no posession but his sword, was crowned at Palermo, the first monarch who had ever ruled over the whole of Sicily. The Sarcophagus of Roger is supported by kneeling Saracens. There are four large sarcophagi on a pedestal, under a marble canopy, supported by four pillars. The interior of the Cathedral no longer produces the same harmony of effect as of old, for some Sicilian churchwarden has whitewashed it. All the fine ornaments produced by the taste of the founder, Archbishop Walter, the English prime minister of the Good King of Sicily—whose plans are said, however, to have been mainly chosen from those bequeathed by King William the Bad—have been defaced by the rude hand of overcareful cleanliness.2 Proceed we next to the Palazzo Reale,—royal palace no more ; for poor old Prince Castelcicala, long its lieutenant-governor, has vanished out of the way. The world got too fast for him, and has pushed the old diplomatist aside. While he cut and shuffled, the game was lost. We have just passed Cicero's house in the Cathedral square, and the Romans have gone ; we have seen where Hasdrubar fought, and the Carthaginians are gone ; we have seen Barbarossa's tomb, and the Suabians are gone • and the great Count Roger's, but where are the Normans ? The bells of St. Spirito have told us how the French went. Here is the King's Palace, and the Bourbons have gone. What next, and next ? Beautiful staircases, furniture delicately classical, roofs fretted and arched, floors of marble, and prospects the most charming ; but there stands a fellow in a red shirt, with an English rifle on his shoulder, and he is explaining to another fellow without a shirt, and with his mouth full of figs, how to give his vote; while yonder beggar, reclining against a wall on the shady side of the way, just raises his hat, and taking his cigar (about a foot long) out of his mouth as we pass, asks us " Charity for the lifie of God." We walk on ; another beggar meets us without a cigar. He follows and begs—" what, not a farthing !" We have no change—" he will give it to us." We don't wish to trouble him. " Then will the signor give him the cigar he is smoking, in charity for,"' &c. Aroused and angry, we rebuff him, but not comprehending why 2 WALTRE OF OFAMILIO—whom William II. the son of William the Bad selected for his prime minister when he came of age—was an Englishman of humble birth—the son of a miller, it is said. He had been recommended to the Court of Sicily by our Henry the II., who wished to bring about an alliance between his daughter Joan and the young King. Walter was a man of great ability, and faithful to his English as well as his Sicilian master. William the Bad, the successor of the first king Roger, was a weak and indolent prince, addicted to luxury and governed by unworthy favourites. He shut himself up in his palace and neglected the affairs of his kingdom. Whilst indulging with the ministers of his pleasures, a formidable insurrection aroused him, the conspirators seized upon his youthful son, the Duke of Apulia, and threat- ened to depose William; who at length awoke, and with -a vigour becoming his bold ancestors suppressed the dangerous commotion. But a melancholy domestic tragedy darkened his triumph. The young duke, as soon as the tumult was over, ran open-armed to his father, when William, irritated by the supposed complicity of his own child with the conspirators against his throne and life, dashed him off with such great force, that the poor boy fell back, expiring, into his mother's arms. Nothing could assuage the grief of the wretched king, who throwing aside his royal mantle, cast himself on the ground in an agony of deep remorse. Recovering at length from his dejection, he shut himself up in his palace, and desiring his servants henceforth to exclude anything that could occasion him the least anxiety, gave himself up to his favourite pursuit of architecture, until suddenly cut off in the very prime of an inglorious and unhappy existence. ALL ROUND THE WORIJD. 63 we are angry, he finally beats us by " At least the signor will give him half the cigar, in charity for,' " &c., and so we give it to him. Up a broad staircase, by open colonnades and Moorish frescoes, to a chapel, which, though mysteriously sombre, yet glitters with a thousand gems. It occupies the whole of one side of the Palace, and is the most remarkable feature in Palermo, combining the perfection of Byzantine and Saracenic art, as it was built by Roger, the first Norman king. It is in the form of a Latin cross (a Greek cupola rising from the intersection), with a long nave,. supported by exquisite Corinthian columns, from which spring pointed Arabesque arches. The whole entrance of the church is ornamented elaborately with rich mosaics on a gold ground, and the effect produced is wonderfully rich, softened as it is by the mysterious shade purposely brought about by the narrowness of the lancet windows. Everywhere you may see frescoes, antique paintings, mosaics, and rare and costly objects; the high altar is crowded with some exquisite antique objects, and the floor is laid with choice porphyry, jasper, and pietra-dura. The roof is richly fretted, and resembles that of the Hall of Justice in the Alhambra, so familiar to all of us from Owen Jones's miniature of it in the Crystal Palace. Continue this room by expanding it to one hundred feet by fifty, and place composite pillars on each side—gild walls and roof; and then panel them with exquisite stones, and slices of gems—on each side aggregated into pictures of scenes in the Lives of the Apostles—place a vast, gigantic picture of the Almighty—a half length—at the bottom, just behind the high altar, before which blaze seven colossal candles—and you will then have but a feeble idea of the Capella Reale of Palermo, because you will want the side-chapels and the apses, and that exquisite façade of which no words can convey an idea. We must return to the Palace, and enter the Royal apartments through the hall of the Viceroys, hung with the illustrious personages of Sicilian History; and long for time to examine some fine portraits by Velasquez in another ball. The audience room is hung with Spanish tapestry, which tells the exploits of Don Quixote. The armoury is now stripped of all but one of the rams ofArchimedes, the last of four that used to stand at the port of the ancient Syracuse, and were so contrived as that the wind rushed through certain holes punctured artfully in their mouths, in such a manner as to proclaim by loud roars from what quarter ships might be xpected. In a hollowed vault below this chapel, four noble Sicilian matrons expired, after enduring the slow test of lingering starvation rather than betray the retreat of their husbands and their forces during one of the desperate struggles of the island with its oppressors. " Worthy sisters," says the " Unprotected Female," " to those whose lovely hair strung the bows to dart arrows from the walls through the bosoms of their invaders! Yet we Northerns say the Sicilians fail in constancy." The fair writer pronounces the Sicilians to be " more sincere than the French, more courteous than the English, more refined than the Germans." This is not saying much, and so far, at any rate, we can adduce evidence to her experience. We must give up the rest of the churches, but at St. Caterina you may look for a real Vandyke of the Virgin; and everywhere see strange mixtures of the devout and the saintly ludicrous, startling to our colder northern notions ; but to warm southern feelings, suggestive and edifying. Here the infant Saviour and the meek-eyed Virgin—there silver crowns and wax legs and arms, and models of distorted limbs, restored by prayer-won intercession. Pass on, nor scoff; the method is rude ; but the humble acknowledgment of God's great mercies has made itself a testimony. Let us respect the feeling. Away, then, cochi2re, and outstripping the pursuing beggars, whom even war has not cleared away, carry us to the Ziza, the last house of the last Saracen in Palermo. These walls we pass are not of Moorish gardens, such as Cervantes opens to us in his exquisite tale of the Captive ; no, they are walls of the gardens of the Nunneries, and there floats a veil, as the pale-faced dark-eyed girl disappears from her post of vantage, at the sound of our approaching coach-wheels. How exquisite this monastic retreat ! How luxurious this hall ! Thanks to some kind influence, some spirit of a Lalla Rookh that has preserved it so far unharmed ; for hardly a corner of the house is as it should be, that is, as it was. Some one has made it "comfortable," and placed high-backed chairs and a toilet-table and piano. There are the three recesses where the ladies sat; and there, before the centre recess, is the cool fountain, flowing down to a marble channel in the marble floor. As for the lovely garden that used to be (so late as 1526) where the road now is, which had a fountain in a fish-pond fed from that fountain, and where, in the upper floor, the ladies used to sit and watch the fish play, while all around was a " beautiful garden, filled principally with oranges, lemons, and other shrubs," and " an inclosure, with wild animals," they are all of the past. There is, however, just such a fountain in the garden on the other side of the road, and Garibaldi has brought with him wild animals enough, Heaven knows! There are Palaces in plenty to be seen. The Favor-ita, half-an-hour's drive from the town, with its splendid avenues, four miles long! round the side of Mount Pellegrino, and skirting the sea. It was a royal residence, but " something ails it now." Then there is the Butera Palace, with itsball-room ornamented with coral. There is here a little chapel with kneeling wax figures in Trappist garb. The group commemorates the sacrifice which a young Sicilian maiden made to atone for having driven a devoted lover to a cell and despair. Repenting too late, she, however, assumed the habits of that rigid order, and passed her sorrowful existence by his side, undiscovered till her dying day. And the gay, light, elegant Forcelli Palace—so exquisitely furnished—where the late Emperor of Russia used to live, and whence every night he used to come forth to walk about on the Marine Parade, with his daughter hanging on his arm. No, we must pass the Palaces, although all their owners have not gone, and many will fight, as the Sicilian Barons of old did for their country. There is some prospect now of advantage for education, refinement, and intelligence. There was none before.' 1 Every spark of intelligence was but viewed with the utmost suspicion and dread by the Government of the Two Sicilies. Every attempt to move forward was met by disgrace and imprisonment. Hard and decisive steps were taken to repress the desire for advancement of every kind; any man a shade above his fellow in intellect and activity, any man enjoying public confidence, and considered by public opinion as worthy of esteem and 64 ROUND THE WORLD. THE ROCK AND TOWN OF SCYLLA, COAST OF SICILY. So off for Monreale, an old mountain town founded by William the Good, and charmingly situated—through the great sea-gate, Porta Felice,—the Happy Gate,—by a gentle ascent into the interior of the island, out of the side of Palermo farthest from the sea, and opposite. We are on a good broad carriage-road, and we climb along across through what was once a wild country. The legend runs that the spot was formerly covered with a wild forest, whither William II. repaired from Palermo to indulge in his favourite amusement of hunting. When overtaken by slumber after his fatigues, the Virgin Mary appeared to him in a vision, and desired him to erect a church in her honour on the very spot. The pious monarch determined to outdo all his former efforts, and the result is seen before us, standing out beautifully, midway, on the mountain side, as we drive up the valley between hedges bordered with cacti, gorgeous in spring with red flowers, and rich with the delicious fig. The church is a marvel, with its bronze gate and two hundred pillars. The bronze gate is richly ornamented with small figures in compartments, and a grand arabesque pattern. It is the work of Bonani of Pisa, the joint architect (with William the Tuscan) of the celebrated Leaning Tower, and is a work of curiosity, because, until this one, bronze gates—a much coveted church ornament—had been brought solely from Constantinople. Gregory VII. (or Hildebrand) brought those of respect, any one connected, either by ties of nature or the bonds of friendship, with men of learning and practical progress, was -marked out for judicial persecution though humble and silent under the tyrant's sceptre. St. Paul's at Rome from Constantinople, when sent on an embassy to the Greek ,Emperor. The interior is glorious in historic pictures ; the walls being covered with representations of the whole Bible History, and all of them are as fresh and untarnished as on the day when they were first set up. The capitals of the pillars consists of volutes, with foliage and figures intermixed; on one of these capitals the pious King who founded it, is seen introducing to' the Virgin, who enjoined the building of so sublime an edifice; the architect who designed it. In the centre apse is a colossal half-length of the Almighty; envi-roned by the Vision of the Apocalypse and all the Apostles. Here are thrones for the arch-bishop, and for the King, over which is a mosaic of the Redeemer blessing the good monarch. The effect of this picture is not so intense as that of the great one over the altar; which, wherever you go, seems to follow you with earnest piercing look, and being of vast size, has a strange and by no means pleasant, though a very striking effect. William the Good is buried here in a porph_yry sarcophagus ; and in the Benedictine monastery attached is the famous picture, by ovelli, of Saint Benedict blessing that good Monarch. All --the ornamentation of the Cathedral is wrought upon a gold ground, as in the Capella Reale ; from which the splendour of the whole can be imagined. Luckily, we had no ladies in our party, and were at liberty to go where ladies are not admitted,---to the top of a steep winding path from Monreale,—on mule back, (never walk in these sunny climes if you can avoid it), up to the Benedictine Convent of Saint Martin. ALL ROTIND THE WORLD. I" rl '1#6101Ak_q No. 5.. H'1ifIiJI ALL ROUND THE WORLD. We pass, by the way side, an old castle, once a fortress, then a monastery, but now deserted. Monreale and Saint Martin have squabbled about it. The quarrel is settled now, for in the large oblong pile, with thick walls, we saw the red shirt and the gleaming of a bayonet that told us of an outlying piquet, and, per Bacco ! as good luck would have it, they were a party of our own countrymen ! Oh, the pleasure of that ten minutes on that mountain, looking over that valley, over that City, to that Bay ! Never before was luncheon enjoyed in such a prospect, and many were the kind interchanges of thought, and memories of home and of the past. We had enjoyed some slight skirmishing together, and had known what it was to dance to the music of a whistling bullet, on Milazzo heights, as well before and after breakfast as without dinner, and with more showers than great coats ; so we hob-a•nobbed and passed on ; they to embark for Capua and glory, Forward! and we, to top the ridge, Excelsior! for the no less picturesque than celebrated convent of Saint Martin. It was just here that we came upon a vehicle of a strange construction, a lettica, or sleeping carriage, they call it, —a kind of slice of a double carriage without wheels—, an exaggerated sedan chair—on poles, with miles in place of chairmen, one before, and the other behind. We took a sketch of it, and you will see it in the mountain background (just as we saw it ourselves) of the tableau of Sicilian costumes, (see p. 52). You cannot always get carriages in the country and, when you do, you would be puzzled to find a road for them to travel upon. So, as it is, you will have 'to go dingle-dangling between two donkeys, through the country if you must travel in such out-of-the-way places. But we are at this famous convent, and as carefully shut out of the world as if in a wilderness. Take a bowl and plaster its sides with rock shape excrescences, stick a house at the bottom, and palm trees all round. Let there be a beautiful green lawn and a garden, and apples and oranges and lemons and almonds down at the bottom, and rough and dark broken massess of foliage all round up the sides, and that will be, San Martino and its site. See how charmingly the purple convolvulus trails its luxuriant wreaths, and see the good father is inviting us in to luncheon and repose. There is a capital library, but is not the wine good? and how much more interesting that bunch of grapes than the manuscripts! The road home, downwards to Palermo, presented everywhere a view, like a forest of gardens, rich and diversified. It is easy to comprehend how Sicily could have been the granary of Rome, and how the "herds of the Sun" might well have been said, in ancient times, to have pastured in these plains, or rather those of Etna, whose distant cone is just perceptible, from the topmost point over towards our right, as we go towards the sea. The flowers that led Proserpine's feet wandering in the Valley of Enna, are still smiling all about. Every mountain dale is bright with anemones of many colours ; the orchis plants are singularly beautiful. The daughter of Ceres has bequeathed her floral tastes to high and low throughout the land. Everywhere the streets are full of nosegays, and women of every rank festoon their evening dresses with flowers, looping them up tastefully, and trimming them with bouquets and real flowers. As for the men, they all wear a short cloak or cape, something after the old Spanish fashion, and they trim their clothes with pistols and knives. Every one is armed, and everywhere that a tree can be found with a bird singing on it, bang! goes a gun; for there are no game laws here, and every one shoots everything. We don't think they have much stomach for real fighting, these Sicilians; perhaps good drilling may make them soldiers, and officers they can trust may bring them up to fight ; but they have the Spanish partiality for long shots, and the Italian aversion to close quarters. Our next excursion was to Bagaria (Bagheria, commonly called Baaria,) or Mount Catalfano; on the opposite horn, headland, or cape of the Bay, to Mount Pellegrino. It is nearly seven miles distant, along a pretty road by the sea-side, and being the Richmond of Palermo, and the suburban pleasure residence of the nobility, there are four or five omnibuses, of most uneasy springs, running up and down to the decent little white-painted village through the day. The grand curiosity of the place is the Palargonia Villa, once so celebrated for its monkey monstrosities, and that of the Prince Serra di Falco, whose gardens, with their long alleys of oleander and groves of lemon and orange trees, their labyrinths of jessamine and aloe, and all the rich foliage of the beautiful Sicilian climate, are now noticed for a little trick of a hermit's cell, into which you are gradually led on by a rustic path, and opening the door, you see a monk, who jumps up at your entrance, and gesticulates violently and angrily. The figure is an automaton, and you tread upon the spring as you enter. Of course you are startled, and get very hot; but you are soon cooled by another hermit a short distance off, on approaching whom, unless you have been liberal beforehand to the guide, a copious discharge from innumerable water-spouts awaits you. The guide can put you just upon one righteous spot, which the water does not touch, but he is not polite enough to do this in all cases, and the butt of the party is generally made the water-butt for the occasion. In our rides backwards and forwards we observed groups of fishermen engaged in the tunny fishery, a large and important industry throughout- the Mediterranean,—in fact, the cod-fishery of the South. The fish are driven in shoals within large nets, and gradually compressed into a smaller space, or room, as it is called ; then large flat-bottomed boats close round this chamber of death, the net is weighed, and the fish are dextrously struck on the head with a club, armed with a small spike. The scene is one of violent excitement, the activity of the men and the struggles of the fish giving great animation to the whole, especially as the fish are so large that you will see steaks of them from four to eight feet in length hanging up for sale at the corner of every street. The sun along the road is intensely scorching, undo the shadow of a cactus—grown into a large tree, by the road side—a horse and cart are sheltered; there, at the spring side, is a group of peasant women, the centre one with a terra cotta jar on her head, just as we have sketched her in our illustration (see p. 52) ; the young man on her right is a muleteer; the dark looking Irish kind of "jontleman" on her left is a shepherd, an ordinary peasant; the jolly fellow with the cowl a friar —they get the best of everything in tithes and the best of good wine ; we say good, for your Sicilian wine is of charming quality whenwell tended ; as a white wine, that of Syracuse especially—zit is something between sherry and Madeira, the clearness of one and the richness of the ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 61 other—and two-pence a quart. The red wines are rather earthy in flavour—like those of the Cape—" South African the wise it call"—but this from want of care. Barrels and bottles would turn out a wine just between Port and Burgundy, that would exactly fit the English palate; and then—hurrah for Mr. Gladstone ! and farewell to beers of all kinds, black, sweet and bitter, so far as enjoyment is concerned; for it is quite possible to have it over in England, and sold by retail at a shilling the quart. Bagaria is a thriving little town, with a busy population of 6,000 souls, whose principal occupation is a good fishery ; they appear to be an orderly and quiet class of people, and the place has always a holiday look, especially on those evenings -v,ilen its little bay is full of pleasure-sailing craft, and its road crowded with carriages of Palermitan gentry, who come to enjoy the drive there, its fresh and bracing air, and its enchanting scenery. We leave with regret its gardens and palaces for the sultry sea-side road,—its coast, indented with recesses, upon which the bright sea dashes, sparkles, and foams; its hamlets, hills, and vales, backed with ranges of far-rising mountains, overtopping each other, and Mount Etna rising over all; the tall, waving palms, that rise across its blue sky, the dark cypress alleys, the magnolias, the brilliant verdure of the lemon and the yucca (Adam's needle), eastern and • tropical, all growing free without hot-houses ; the fountains and the flowers; the sparkling anemones and rare scarlet flowers, and shrubs with bells of blue or darkest purple, with velvet variegated leaves, and the wide sea, sweeping around all, below; then, too, the women, with their dark petticoats and bright short-skirted pelisses and jackets. ':;:-,z,The purple mountains were almost veiled with mists '`of heat, and the country lay rich and luxuriant to the mountain's feet, beyond which a thin white sheet, like' smoke, marked the cone of Etna, lost in the greyness of the distant sky. We passed through a little village, the maccaroni and onions hanging i:t streaks across the grated windows, orchards of fruit trees skirted the winding road, above hedges of tall, slender laurels, and quaint, grim-fingered, cactuses, with aloes twenty feet high, and geraniums and fuchsias enlivening the dense dark green background. Observe, as we roll along, those white-hooded peasant girls, those fishermen and muleteers, and a carriage and six, a regular drag, with post horses, belonging to some rich Count ; mules laden with sulphur, mules laden with tobacco, a butcher killing an ox by the road-side, and peasants squeezing oil from olives in a rush basket, squadrons of rural cavalry, the mounted National Guard, in French kepis and red shirts, with long boots, volunteers, cacciatori (felt-hatted riflemen of Lombardy), squadri (Sicilian militia), volunteers and pressed men ; the box, the priest, and the cross by the way-side, to remind us to say our prayers and leave a few tars; but a taro, which is just less than a fourpenny-piece, goes as far as a franc (which is tenpence) in France, or eighteen-pence in England. The friars of various orders are the best men in Sicily, and showed themselves so in the late conflict. It is only a pity that, like the nobility, they are too well off to have to work for their living. A country without trade and commerce, with no education, and no industry, requires something even more than religious feeling to regenerate it. Ha ! the Sirocco ! The air is hot and dry; then up gets the wind until it blows a hurricane, and then, for two or three days, a gale ! The mention of a wind makes you think of coolness and refreshing ; but this sirocco is a hot blast—it dries you, suffocates you, and presses down your spirits with a weight like lead. No! let them boast their sunshine and their blue sky—we will give them their moonlight, their flowers, and their music ; better a Lambeth fog any evening than a Sicilian sirocco. We hasten home, and shut ourselves up, to make preparations for our tour round the island, and to read and write letters. Letters ! A Sicilian letter is indeed a.curiosity. It is just like what they bring in to the clown, in a pantomime, for a letter—a large square thing, with an immense seal, and a paper of the roughest and least white. It can't be that they have no rags to make it of ; for next to Ireland, Sicily carries the palm in rags ; and as for fibrous material, they have aloes enough—all fibre—to furnish paper-stuff for all the possible paper in Europe—no bad addition, on some future clay, to their general exports of sulphur, wine, oil, marble, amber, coral, alum, antimony, salt, hemp, sumach, vanilla, fish, figs, honey, oranges, lemons, and a few minor articles. It is one o'clock, and the shops even in the main street are, almost all of them, half-closed. The shopkeepers are asleep, or enjoying a bath. Every one takes it easy—though, save the sirocco, there is nothing very enervating or relaxing about the climate ; the temperature in summer being about 80°, and seldom without a cooling breeze from the sea, and in winter about 450, but then the breeze is warm, But they are a pleasure-seeking people, and the climate tempts them to late hours—for with the hour of sunset a new life seems to begin. Then, along the Marine Parade, is heard the music of the regimental bands, while the whole merry-hearted populace turn out, to ride or drive, or walk or gamble,—prince, count, shopkeeper, and beggar,—to quaff lemonade, drink ices, smoke, and play cards until twelve. Cards, too, are an amusement all day ; the poorest and the lowest may be seen " making their game" in the streets, in the doorways, even in the church porches. The Sicilian ladies of the higher order are of the. Spanish breed, short and slim, with fine lustrous dark eyes, but their mouths are large and their faces too thin. The children are lovely. The gentlemen are finer looking than the ladies, with pale clear skins, fine dark eyes, and an intellectual expression, tall and well-made, and fastidious in dress in public. They all follow French fashions, but their favourite colours are claret and brown. Of the clergy the Jesuits are the most aristocratic-looking, and are a talented class of men, but they avoid foreigners and take no part in politics, content with that primary power which their having the main control of education of the male and female population gives them. The Capuchins, on the contrary, are more of and with the people, as they showed themselves in the late fight at Palermo. Their care of the sick and dying endears them to all, and they go about in all weathers, barefooted and bareheaded, in their common woollen frocks, aiding, strengthening, and supporting, while they themselves live on charity, for they have no more lands but those gardens round the convents. The brave benevolence of the brethren of this order during the raging of the cholera will never be forgotten by the grateful Sicilians. Out of doors, amusement is the fashion; they only eat, drink, (very moderately), and sleep at home, and get up in the morning to do—what do you think I—to fly kites! The Kensington Gardens of Palermo are at the west ALL ROUND THE WORLD. end. Theyare called the English Gardens, because of the long avenue of trees that leads up to them and their general style. This is the place where fashionables walk. Trees, intertwining roses and honeysuckles, and green sloping banks, and every variety of shade, and shrubberies of myrtle, and little lakes, and marble seats, about which hover the gay throng ; these are their delights. Up and down the long shady avenue go the carriages of all sorts, from a tandem to a drag, crowded with ladies in blue and green, and mauve, festooned, and bonneted, and flounced, and crinolined to the last Paris fashion ; but all of a gaudy hue. The very maid in attendance on the over-dressed children (in pink satin or blue silk,—close resemblance of their mammas) are gay with yellow shawls over their heads. On Sundays, both these, and the Flora or Botanical Gardens, with the orange walks, and vast bird cages, and fountains, are crowded with the middle class, and even the poorest. Not but that Sunday in Palermo is very much like Sunday in London. All the shops are shut (after ten o'clock) and all the streets are quiet ; the people only being seen on their way to or from their churches at all hours in the day, especially in the early morning. IL—ALONG SHORE TO MESSINA. OUR bargain for travelling was of a satisfactory nature. For six piastres (somewhere in the whole about five and twenty shillings) a day, we contracted with a muleteer, one Luigi, or Louis, for four mules, two for our own riding, one for our baggage (principally consisting of wine and victual, and cloaks), and one for the muleteer himself : besides this, we were to be provided with beds at the best inns, and have breakfast and dinner found us. So that travelling in Sicily is by no means dear, as you can see; indeed, when we tell you that good wine is twopence a quart, that a fowl costs not quite fourpence, and that the finest wheaten bread never exceeds a penny a pound, and is generally less, that salad vegetables are thrown in, and apples, peaches, and oranges given in any quantity for a halfpenny, you may judge that our muleteer was not the loser even by such an apparently bad bargain. We start with the dawn, in the Eastern fashion, carrying with us knives, cups and plates, with a due provision of cold pork and baked cream, universally used throughout Sicily in place of butter. Our first start into the country was through high walls, just like those about Richmond and Brent-ford — only of stone — and belonging to the villa gardens, sadly knocked about in the last fight here. Then came the sea shore, and the murmur of the breaking waves, and the tinkling bells of the goats browsing on the mountain sides rising to the clouds ; olives waving in the fresh morning breeze, and the pink flowers of the tall oleander glittering in the early sunlight. The bees were up and out, and humming amongst the meadow anemones and daffodils. A string of mules, bearing grain, meets us. Then a herd of cows, with bells, going to be milked, into the villages, in which not one chimney rises up, and most of the inhabitants are stirring, and, already, coming outside their doors to transact all their business, according to the Sicilian custom. All along we could see the fishing boats going out, and coming in with the spaletta, a huge fish like a small shark, that cuts up into something like hard beef-steaks, and has a wooden taste, with a coarse pork flavour; horses and mules, very lean, but dressed out very fine, drawing pointed little two-wheel carts, set far back in the shafts, and driven, a la coster-monger, at a rattling pace, by picturesque blackguards in white jackets, bell buttons, and black velvet breeches or leather gaiters. The horses have no collars but the broad leather strap across their chests, like our funeral-coach horses. We had an early cup of coffee with milk—they always serve it so in Sicily, and the peasants habitually come to the village inn for it in the earliest morning—the charge for it to us, with bread and butter, was threepence half-penny. We breakfasted and dined at village inns on the way, and just before sunset came to the Fiume Grande, a great river, one of the largest streams in Sicily, which obstructed the road and must be crossed before we entered Termini. This is one of the interesting events of Sicilian travelling, for you can't always get across ; the river won't let you. The stream runs shallow, it may be, but is furious as a torrent ; the bottom is sandy and the banks steep, and travellers in carriages are sorely bested ; all the luggage has to be taken out, and the unhappy pair—for it sometimes happens to honeymoon travellers, as it did to Sir Robert and Lady Peel—are compelled to sleep in a little river-side inn, where waiters spend most of their time in the metamorphosis of fleas. We contrived to get over . with our mules and reach Termini at sunset. Cicero tells us of the citizens of Himera, a town higher up,—where there are some fine remains of an amphitheatre and an aqueduct four miles long to be seen,—coming down to this spot, where were their baths (Thernam Himerenses), and building a small town, when their own had been destroyed by a siege during the Carthaginian and Roman quarrel, of which the poor Sicilians paid all the expenses. Termini is said to mark the spot where Hercules rested from his Mediterranean labours. We found the little place—it has 12,000 inhabitants, (22,046 according to A. J. Du Pays' Itin de L'Italie et de La Sicile,)—all agog with music and singing and dancing. It stands on a green hill, by the sea-side, and has some handsome churches. They tell us it is a thriving town, and drives a prosperous trade in anchovies, oil, and wine. Anywhere else it would be run after for its beauty, for the numerous antiquities in the neighbourhood and in its museums, for its churches and convents paged with mosaics and adorned with antique columns, its thermal springs, and its romantic castle on the top of the hill : but here such beauties are common. Our twenty-four miles' ride, or rather crawl, on mule-back, gave us a good appetite for sleep. So we left our muleteer dancing the tarantella, and after a saunter through the street and up the valley to the castle on the rock behind the town, retired to rest, not conscious that we constituted a raree show for all the beggars and the idlers, and that the chinks in the wall and the key-hole had each their curious occupant, Early in the morning, as we had a three-and-twenty miles stage before us to CefaM, we took our coffee and mounted our mules. Our ride was such as poets love to sing about—through myrtle groves and orange bowers, and almond trees. Indeed, it was like a Swiss scene, with goats and cows and sheep in the sloping meadows. You never see a cottage or a farm house alone—they are always collected, like stone blocks, in some snug cranny on the ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 69 mountain slope. The hills on the other side of the bay, at the extreme front of which stands Cefalit, and its ancient cathedral, founded by the great Count Roger, in gratitude for his escape from a storm off the coast, are clothed with olives, and as we look back we can see capes and promontories jutting out into the bright sea from beyond Palermo. Every one was at work in the streets, outside the shop doors, as we crept on—for your mules at a journey's end make no such clattering and noise as a French courier on entering a country town. There are 20,000 inhabitants, and the town, which was built in the middle ages, and abounds in gothic-painted windows, stands on a edge of rock just above the sea ; the harbour is full of xebecs, feluccas, and speroneras—their sails furled, and the boats run up on shore. The Cathedral is a fine one, and the outside, at the east end, is richly ornamented. The building is Roman Gothic, and the decorations Byzantine. But the most interesting feature of Cefala is a Cyclopean wall of enormous uiihewn stones, a relic of the old great city of Cephaledium. We had nothing to complain of in lodging, food, or beds, and rose refreshed. Everywhere at the inns we observed the frugal, temperate living of the people—fruit, fish, and maccaroni, and no strong drink. Their highest luxury is a water-ice and a melon; and with a penny a day you can send home a beggar happy. The rest of the day seems to us to be taken out in singing, and dancing, and sunshine; not but that Cefala has its mournful reminiscences, for here, many a Sicilian patriot broke his heart in prison. The fresh morning air made us look out our caputos, or brown cloaks with pointed hoods —the general wear throughout the island for all who don't wear shaggy sheep skins, which the peasant labourers do,—for there is a cold wind in the morning and evening. We pushed on for Tusa, where there was nothing to see ; and then on for St. Stefano, a stage of twenty-four miles, passing through which we entered Caronia (anc. Calacte), a small town on a rugged hill, with the sea in front, and a forest on its skirts. It was on this beach that Verres the Proconsul (whom Cicero so abused, for private reasons, as he took his place afterwards), halted and robbed the people of Aluntium of their valuable bronzes, just as coolly as the great Spaniard Balboa, and the rest, did the chiefs of New Granada of their golden ornaments. The forest is noticeable for its extent of twenty miles, and its containing oak (old and well grown), elm (a sure sign of a good soil), ash and pine. We halted here for the night, and next day we came to a village on a little plain, called St. Agatha ; the fair Goodness (such is the meaning of her name,) has not availed to preserve the village from malaria, a dismal complaint, that leaves you half insane when quite cured, and poisons all your blood ; so we pricked our mules with the spur, and jogged apace through the fever district, until we reached San Marco, where we managed to get some tea out of our own stores, and were served with the milk from an Etruscan-shaped vase, and the tea from a Wedgewood black tea-pot. We had an excellent dinner of veal and maccaroni,. 1 Cephaledium derives its name from its situation on a lofty precipitous rock projecting into the sea. Roger I. transferred it from its almost impregnable position to one at the foot of the rock. The Cyclopean relic, the only one of the kind in Sicily, is an edifice consisting of various apartments. Rude mouldings, approximating to those of the Doric order, are hewn on the face of the massive blocks. flavoured with " a suspicion of garlic," as Ude used to Call that artistic tonic, and then pushed on to Naso, the ancient Agathyrna,2 where the ancients bored Artesian hot springs for rheumatism and nervous complaints. One of the springs is well impregnated with iron, for if you put into it a white cloth, it comes out a black one. The knowledge of a spring of this character may be useful to our travelling countrymen. A mixture of iron and sulphur in a hot spring is rare, and for some disorders likely to be exceedingly efficacious. We slept on mattresses, with clean sheets, laid on boards, as in convents or barracks. Borro, twelve miles distant, with castle on a sea-beaten rock, was our next halting-place; thence to Patti, where the coast is mountainous, and the rugged slopes are covered with olives. The town stands high on a pyramidal hill of its own, backed by lofty mountains. The streets are narrow, winding, and ill-paved, and there is a little cathedral of romantic associations; for there are the bones of Queen Adelaisia, the widow of the great Count Roger, whose hand was sought in marriage by Baldwin, King of Jerusalem. The monarch wanted the lady's wealth, and she, dazzled by ambition, accepted the offer ; but discovering after two years that King Baldwin had another wife alive, she returned home in disgust, and buried herself in a convent on this spot, where she lived in grief and despair for a short period, and then died of a broken heart. Her pious son, then King of Sicily, raised this cathedral over her remains. The old tomb has fallen to pieces, but a modern one, with a recumbent figure of the injured wife, has been raised by the piety of her descendants. They make tasteful earthenware at Patti; which is celebrated throughout Italy for elegance of its design. There is a fine view from the height, of which the cathedral tower forms the apex, over grounds that seem to heave and rise tumultously, and vineyards and olive groves. On one side you see Gioiosa, a little village in ruins, that we passed on the road, perched on a hill-top, and deserted, because too much exposed and often struck by lightning ; and on the other, rises Tyndaris—to which we are making, on a height seven miles distant. We mount up to it through a beautiful pass, with a fine view, on our left, of the Lipari Isles, Vulcano, Stromboli and the rest. The ancient port off which Octavius, with Cmsar, defeated the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, and won the empire of Rome, is now choked up with sand. Tyndaris,3 so named from the father of Castor and Pollux, and where Dionysius of Syracuse placed the colonists of Lacedae-monia, banished from their own country, is now but a wretched village, with little to profit its inhabitants but the tunny fishery.4 There is a glorious view from 2 The site of Agathyrna or Agathyrnum, so called from a son of JEolus, may possibly be at Naso, but this has been much dis. puted, on account of the great discrepancy between the authorities as to its distance from Tyndaris and Calacte. 3 There is a legend that the earthquake at Our Lord's crucifixion shook down all the temples at Tyndaris ; some say that the whole town was destroyed, nothing being left but one crag and some idols, which the, waves refused to retain, and threw them upon the shore. 4 The chief monuments of which the ruins are still extant of this city—one of the latest of all the cities in Sicily that could claim a purely Greek origin—are the theatre, of which the remains are in imperfect condition, a large edifice with two handsome stone arches, commonly called a Gymnasium, the remains of the place where the cliff has fallen in, in the manner recorded by Pliny, two gates, and some Roman tombs. 70 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. the convent of the Madonna, over the sea and along the coast of hill villages and convent towers on projecting points. We proceeded along the bay towards princely Milazzo, famous for the recent battle. Its castle, standing on a high granite promontory, would seem impregnable but to those who saw it, as we did, so gallantly captured by Garibaldi and his little army; the town, which is divided into upper and lower, about a mile in length, is surrounded by a fortified wall. It rises on a peninsula, three miles in length, with a lighthouse on the point, and has always been regarded as a strong position in Sicilian warfare. Here Hannibal and Drusillus fought a hard battle in the first Punic War ; here Caesar and Sextus Pompey fought for the empire ; here the Saracens had a long sea-fight with the Emperor Basilius; and here, finally, was the crowning and liberating victory won by Garibaldi. There is a large tunny fishing here of two seasons, from April to June, and from August to September; and hither come the great people of Messina to spend their winter months. It is here that the fabled oxen of the Sun were pastured, the slaughter of which by the companions of Ulysses led to the fatal prolongation of his voyage, consequent on the just anger of the offended deities. You must read the story in the "Odyssey," and carry Homer with you (we advise Lempriere also, if you have still got your school books), for we are in the very centre of mythological localities, and scarcely a town but has a classical allusion in its name, By the bye ; the Ulysses of modern history, Louis Philippe, found refuge in the Milazzo during his first long exile from France. III.—STROMBOLI AND THE LIPARI ISLES. ON the beach at Milazzo a speronara was lying, the wind was fair for the .olian Islands' that lay out in the sparkling sea, and we resolved upon a sail there and back. Now a speronara is a large open boat that can either sail or be rowed, and as we had six stout fellows with us to pull us back again, we stowed a basket of provisions and wines, and made up our minds, if needful, to sleep under the sail thrown over the boom. We had just twenty miles run out to the open with a spanking breeze that sent us spinning before it, until we reached Vulcano, the nearest of the eight Aolian Islands, consisting, with it, of Lipari, Salina, Felicudi, Alieudi, Panaria, Stromboli, and Baziluzzo.2 1 These wild, fantastic looking rocks, starting from the sea, were supposed by the ancients to be the chimneys of a vast subterranean cavity, inhabited by Meropes, Brontes and Arge, and the cavern in which Eolus imprisoned the winds (that he let out to worry Aneas and the Trojans) were also in this archipelago of fires. Here also Diana was placed by Latona in her infancy. Here Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove, and here the sooty Brontes embraced a rainbow instead of the Queen of Chastity. bolus, a clever navigator and weather-wise, here lived with his wife, the daughter of Liparus, the son of Anson, who passed over from Italy and built a city. 2 The Eolian Islands were also called Vulcanise or Hephnstin, from their volcanic character. They werea-1. Lipara, still called Lipari. 2. Hiera, sacred to Vulcan, from whence its modern appellation of Vulcano. 3. Strongyle, now Stromboli, so called from the roundness of its form. Sir Charles Lyell says, the volcano of Stromboli serves as a barometer to the Lipareans, being quiescent in fine weather and disturbed previous to the coming of had. 4. Didyme, now called Salina or Isola delle Saline. It was called Didyme from its two high conical mountains, which rise to a height of 3,500 feet. 5. Phcenicusa, so called from the palms in which it abounded, now Feliculi. 6. Ericusa, from the abund- Vulcano, which is said to have been thrown up out of the sea five hundred years before the Christian era, was consecrated, by the Greeks to Vulcan. It is eight miles round, and has a silent crater three miles broad and half a mile deep. It is a "lonesome place," and inhabited only by a few goatherds, whose flocks may be seen browsing happily, and skipping merrily under very difficult circumstances of locality. The bottom of the crater has an awful look of stillness, and all around are shining pieces of black and green glass (obsidian), and above, pumice and sulphur. There ought to be something well worth looking after in such a Plutonic formation ; but somehow or other no one likes to interfere with the place. The hares, rabbits, and wild fowls, of many kinds, have a pleasure-place of their own, and seem to have multiplied accordingly-. A dashing run of five miles brought us over to Lipari, which is 'quite a large place, comparatively, fifteen miles round, and with twenty thousand inhabitants. The soil, being broken lava and pumice-stone, yields excellent crops, and the mountain sides smile with cornfields, orange groves, and vines. The town of Lipari, as you enter, looks like a beautiful scene in a play. A castle and ramparts standing out upon a rock, and an ancient tower and cathedral right opposite to you, with a mountain rising high behind. Those who like sulphur baths ought tar come here. It is hardly pleasant to think, as we stand away for the next volcano—Stromboli—a real one, that has never ceased smoking, burning, blowing and belching out lava for a thousand years—that here we are sailing over what must once have been one united crater, which the sea has detached and broken through into separate islands. Fortunately, Stromboli catches what it throws up in its own mouth, or else the sand, black ashes, and red-hot stones which it sometimes ejects to such a height, might render its aspect even more awfully grand. Even at the present moment, when a long banner of smoke ascends from its top (which is like a pyramid with the cone cut off) it would render the approach and the ascent, which we are meditating, not very desirable.3 There are about thirty houses on the island, for the most part built of lava, and the whole island is only one mountain, which is more than a mile high, green almost to the top, but most unpleasant to ascend, as emitting sulphurous vapour in the higher regions. Up through a path of shifting sands, among vines and thistles and prickly cactuses, but not without trusty guides and stout staffs, we ascend to the point where .vegetation ante of heath, now Alicudi. 7. Euonymus, or "that which lies on the left hand," now Panaria. Several small inlets adjacent to Panaria are now called the Dattole, the largest of which, Bazziluzzo, the Hicesia of Ptolemy, may be considered an eighth island. Vulcano and Stromboli are the only two active volcanoes. "Superstition" says Smythe, "is not idle with respect to this wonderful abyss, and even Pope Gregory I. seemingly believed it to be the abode of the damned. Here Theodoric, the great Ostrogoth, despite of his virtues, was plunged by the ministers of divine vengance on earth ; while William the Bad of Sicily, and poor Henry the VIII. of England, have both been detected endeavouring to make their escape from this fiery cauldron. An eminent contractor of biscuit for the supply of the British Navy is supposed, among English sailors, to be in durance there; and by a remarkable trial at Doctor's Commons about seventy or eighty years ago, the judge in his decision seemed to acquiesce in the opinion of the 'bakers' being confined to its domains for ever. The culprit was a Mr. B—, I have forgotten the name, but I can never lose the remembrance of the effect that reading this trial from the Naval Chronicle had on a naval audience while passing the Island." ALL ROUND THE WORLD, 71 disappears. In three hours we reach the top of the old cone, 600 feet above the present crater, and on our arrival are saluted by the demon of old Stromboli with an eruption. The abyss kindles below us, and a jet of fire rushes up with the roar of a cannon. This is no despicable crater, for it encloses six mouths ; two are ejecting smoke with the agreeable accompaniments of hydrochloric and hydro-sulphuric acid gas,—the third is vomiting fiery stones, that, in their uninter-mitted rise and fall, have the sound of a heavy surf breaking on a beach. This gives fewer eruptions than the rest, but emits the highest jets of burning rocks and cinders, and makes the sharpest and loudest noise. The other three mouths are intermittent in their fiery vomitings, two of them kindling and going out at the same time. Such a sight was worth waiting for until evening, when in the darkness the red brightness of the lava shone terrifically, and the three mouths playing together in a magnificent eruption, lighted up the triple enclosure of the crater. We made our way down, not without difficulty and perhaps danger, and lay off the island during the night, under the sail,, the dim rays of a suspended lanthorn alone interfering with the grand light of the stars, the moon, and the volcano. The sea too added its silver fire to the illumination in the phosphorescent luminosity of those glow-worms of the deep, the free acalephaze, and medusse with which this sea abounds. We took out a bucket of the sea-water, and as we poured it back again it looked like molten lead ; while the waves breaking against the shore encircled it with a shining border, and every cliff had its wreath of fire. So we lay, lulled upon the gently heaving waves, until volcano and heaven and sea went softening into one dreamy light ; and we slept, on the bosom of the friendly sea, soothed by the suppressed murmur of the distant waves as they broke on Scylla. In the morning, with the first fresh breeze, our bark bore back to Milazzo, where we landed as men do who have returned from fairy land. Our route hence to Messina was through deliciously romantic scenery over the mountains, and past several small towns, that looked like illustrations of the romances of our boyish days ; Romalletta, especially, on the top of a high, straight, uprising rock, with old Moorish castles and towers. We look down upon Messina ; what a glorioui panorama ! We could see the sickle shape of the port,—the Gregks called it Zancle, or the sickle, and say that here Ceres, in her sorrow for her daughter Proserpine's loss, when Pluto carried her off from the fertile plains of Enna, dropped the sickle from her hand, and so gave to its shores their lovely curve.' And there stands the bright city in a semicircle of hills, having the Faro Straits in front, with their rushing, free, flowing waters, and the high Calabrian coasts on the opposite side to bind in their wandering waves, which, passing the white palaces of Messina, go smiling by the proud statue of Don John, that confronts them at the pier head; past the forts on the heights, the convents on the greenest of slopes, the woods, the mountains, the whirling Charybdis, and the treacherous Scylla—round to the poetic shores under Mount Etna, and the beautiful bay of ancient Taorminium. 1 The word Zancle has been supposed to be of Sicilian origin, and hence it has been argued that there was a Sicilian settlement at the Messana or Messene of the Greeks before it was occupied by the latter ; but no mention of this is found in history, and all ancient writers describe Zancle as a Chalcidic colony, IV.—MESSIN.A. WE found Messina, which, from the port of Cape Faro that forms its bay, is but three and a half miles from. the Calabrian coast, all in an agony of excitement and impatience for news of further progress in Italy.2 But; for all that, Punch was screeching funnily to a laughing crowd on its beautiful marine promenade (see p. 49), and in spite of politics and war, the convent bells were ringing, and they were celebrating a fester, or holiday, in the name of some pleasure-giving saint. Bombarded so ficquently by its later sovereigns, and worried with earthquakes by the vicine Etna,3 it is a miracle that Messina stands bright, shining, and beautiful as it now does, though the palace along its Marina, and the half-dismantled fort and broken-down castle, still bear evidences of both. The environs are lovely, and the view, from wherever taken, over towards the higher rising mountains of Calabria,—the back-bone between the Adriatic and the editerranean,—is magnificent : not even the views on the Bosphorus can surpass that of the Straits of Messina. The Marina Drive, or Corso (as will be seen from our illustration), is along the sea shore, at the foot of the hills that rise in gentle slopes, covered with fruit-bearing trees in their gardens, hedged with the aloe and the prickly pear, and blooming with vines, figs, and olives. You are never further than five minutes from a grove in any part of the town ; Messina being is as celebrated for its walks, as Palermo for its drives. There is another parallel street with the Marina, which used to be called the Ferdinanda, but has changed that now odious name for one more popular. We took up our abode at the Victoria Hotel on the Marina, and enjoyed the sight of the gay equipages, and bright coloured dresses of the promenaders—ladies and child-ren—as we sat at our dinner. On the one side of the town (the right of our illustration), is the terrace where Goethe wrote the famous lines,— " Snowest thou the land where citrons scent the gale P" and on the other side is the fortbuilt by our King Richard Cceur de Lion,4 and beyond, over the deep blue sea, rise 2 The distance from the castle on the promontory of Scylla to the Torre del Faro, is stated by Admiral Smyth at 6,047 yards, or rather less than 3A- English miles, but the strait afterwards contracts considerably, so that its width between the Punta del Pezzo (Cmnys Prom.) and the nearest point of Sicily does not exceed 3971 yards, or little more than two English miles. 3 A. terrible earthquake, in 1783, threw down all the splendid buildings of the city, with the exception of the cathedral and a few other edifices of uncommon strength and solidity. The first shock drove all the inhabitants to the sea-shore, where they awaited in dismay two days and nights. The greatest shock came at eight o'clock on the second night. The sea swelled suddenly, and precipitated its towering waves on the beach, en-gulphing upwards of 2,000 souls. The same tremendous swell sank ten vessels in the port and destroyed the quay. The dogs in Calabria seemed to anticipate this awful convulsion of nature, by howling piteously; the sea-fowl flew wildly into the mountains; and a noise like carriage-wheels running round with great velocity over stone pavements preceded the shock; while a dense vapour extended over Calabria and Messina, accompanied with a strong sulphurous odour. In 1852 there were thirty shocks felt at Messina in one night. In 1743 the plague carried off thousands of its inhabitants. In 1854 the cholera raged fearfully, twenty thousand persons died, and the Government was obliged to release the galley-slaves of Palermo, on condition of their coming to Messina to bury the dead. They did so, and not one of them died. 4 Philip Augustus of France' and Richard of England, having agreed to meet in Sicily, on their way to the Holy Land, arrived at Messina, Tancred hastened from ram= to show every mark 12 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. I HONG KONG. • the magnificent heights of the Italian Appenines; the town seen under them is Reggio. There are some fine churches, but the most conspicuous is the old Norman cathedral, founded by the first king, Roger, the nave of which was burnt in 1254, on the occasion of the funeral of Conrad, son of the Emperor Frederick II. of courtesy to his illustrious guests, and contributed to the expedition an armament of one hundred sail, to fulfil completely an engagement of his predecessor in the sovereignty. But the king of England demanded, in addition, the cession of the County of St. Angelo in Apulia, with several town and castles, by way of dowry, for his sister, the wife of the late king. Tancred, astonished at a demand so unexpected, interposed delays. The impetuous Richard, whose forces were encamped without the walls of the city, attacked and took possession of the fortress near the Faro, as the shortest way of bringing matters to a conclusion. This aggression led to a skirmish between the Messinese and the English; upon which Richard put himself at the head of his men, stormed one of the gates, entered the city sword in hand, slew many Sicilians, and planted his leopard standard on the walls of Messina. But this act of violence led to a further imbroglio ; for Philip Augustus, the French King, considered it to be so disrespectful to himself, as well as unjust to Tancred, that he offered the King of Sicily the use of his whole army to revenge the insult. The prudent Tancred, however, aware how inexpedient it was to add the wrath of Richard to all his other embarrassments, preferred moderation, and made the King of England so handsome a proposition, in satisfaction of his demands, that the misunderstanding was terminated, and the Kings of France and England remained six months at Messina, in the course of which Richard learnt to admire the frank and gallant character of Tancred. On the return of spring the two royal visitors set sail for Palestine, to the Ito small relief of their hot, - - The catafalque, or funeral trophy, was so lofty, that the lights on its summit caught the rafters of the nave and the roof; and it and the body of the Prince were all consumed together. The Madonna is, herself; the patron saint of the city; indeed there is a letter in Latin, said to have been written with her own hand, (preserved in the Cathedral, and exhibited once a year,) in which she specially adopts this city and its inhabitants, who, from this cause, have almost all of them " Letterio," or " Letteria," in the feminine, as one of their Christian names." There is a tolerable theatre, the Santa Elizabetta, and an excellent " Flora," or Botanical Garden. The port is generally full of foreign vessels, and the brisk trade has brought to the place a large mercantile population, very greatly to the improvement of its society. The number of inhabitants is somewhere about 100,000, and Messina vies with Palermo for the honour of being the capital_of Sicily. Messina is not famous for the fine arts ; but in the Church of " The Cross-bearing Fathers" you, may see a large picture of the Raising of Lazarus by Caravaggio, and in St. Andrew's Church is an Ecce Homo, by Michael Angelo. The Convent of St. Gregorio stands high on the hill, on the site of Jupiter's Temple, 1 The discovery of this letter has been attributed to Constantine Lascaris. The Jesuit Melchior Inchofer wrote a vPlurce in folio (1629) to prove its authenticity. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 73 *OVOVIN iV Mild ON 7'4 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. is necessary to know that it is 100 miles round, thougli its immediate base is only from thirty to forty miles in circumference, and that it rises in a pyramidal shape to 10,874 or 10,882 feet, according to the best authorities. It is twenty-five miles to the top, by an easy and gracefully winding-road. The Zones of Etna are celebrated. Around its lower slopes cluster villages, farms, and villas, with gardens and fruitful fields. Next comes the temperate zone—of woods and waterfalls, and herds and shepherds, and balmy air. Above this is the cold region — where are the pine forests. Next is the frozen zone—where ice and snow make the traveller shiver. Then comes the region of fire and ashes, and smoke and desolation. The first day took us up to Bronte, where Nelson's vineyards grow right up to the snows, and a short distance from which there is an old convent, which the farmer of the estate has made into a snug dwelling. The only agrarian disturbance in the last revolution took place here, from a mistaken notion of the peasantry that the Nelson estates were about to be divided amongst the cultivators ; but the error was explained away by the presence of a few of Garibaldi's riflemen, one or two of whom, being Englishmen, found means to announce emphatically that no robbery of Horatio Lord Nelson was intended by the liberating army. They call Bronte a small town in their books, but it contains 14,000 inhabitants, and makes no slight figure on the slope of Etna, which his been good enough to spare it by dividing every stream of lava just' at its extremities, leaving it complete in the middle, with all its glowing vineyards. There is a valley just beneath, with a river flowing in its bottom, and both sides green with olives. All the land round is arable, and the distant heights are covered with woods. We saw the point at the green vineyard where the lava had stopped, after creeping for miles up to it, slowly and silently. There was the streak of the lava from the volcano, darkening wood and vineyard, above and on either side, but just here was the line—the point of separation, and Bronte—as an oasis blooming in the midst of a burning desert. There are churches, and convents, and Norman walls and ruins, and it is pleasant to stop the night here, and get up in the morning and stroll over the lava, through the wild looking country, seeing. Etna's top covered with snow, on our right ; centred in groves of oak and chesnut, till we reach the old walls, the old houses, the winding streets, and fine churches of the old Lombardia") Randazzo. There are some houses here of a very moderate size, richly decorated, and offering very desirable models for domestic architecture for our young students,—examples to be met with nowhere else. Thence, by a picturesque country, abounding in oaks and chesnut trees, past Malvagna to Luigna, or Lingua Grossa, where there is a poor inn, at which we advise you not to attempt sleeping, but keep on descending through the rich country over lava streams until you reach Giardini on the sea beach, and finish the evening, as we did, at that lovely village, amidst orange trees and rocks, diverging only to Naxos, the first settlement of the Greeks in Sicily. To Taurominium early in the' morning is a two-mile walk over the beds of torrent streams, framare, rushing down to the sea, past hills topped with castles or white vi" ages, shining in the sunlight, and at every opening vista the deep blue sea. Taorminia, the ancient Taurominium, which contains five thousand inhabitants, but we could not obtain admittance, the Lady Abbess being absent, so we missed seeing its fine marbles and relics. We walked down to the quay, where stands a broken statue of Don John of Austria, who sailed hence on his expedition against the Turks, and joined a party on a cruise over to Scylla, on the opposite coast. The Channel widens as we leave Messina, where it is three-and-a-half miles across, but below the Faro point, it diminishes to little more than two miles in width. Just beyond this, we enter upon the circling eddies of Charybdis, a whirlpool formed by the meeting of the currents from the straits and the harbour. In a northerly wind, the vessel clearing Charybdis on the left is not unlikely to be carried full on to the crags of Scylla on the right, a jagged rock; rising just above the surface, as will be seen in our illustration (p, 64) under a high rock, where are caverns, into which the waves rush, murmuring and roaring, when there is any wind. Homer and Virgil describe the sea monster Scylla —as fastened down in these vast caverns, and tormented by wolves and mastiffs. There are shells, stones, and strange sea animals in the museum of the little city below, which are said to have been found in these rocks, which rise boldly and abruptly 200 feet out of the sea.' On the other side are the fruitful hills of Sicily, and at the extreme point of the island is Cape Pelorus.2 V.—ROUND AND UP MOUNT ETNA. WHEREVER you go on this side of Sicily, you have Mount Etna rising, as a great fact, before you, and compelling your attention. Not that it appears so very high; for its hugeness and vast upheaving circumference of a hundred miles partially detract from its height, but it seems omnipresent, and weighing upon your mind until you have ascended it, which you know to be your fate, a consciousness that impels you to the performance of the task. To get a good idea of Etna, it Anaxillas, the despot of Rhegium, being struck with the natural strength of the position of the promontory of Scyllmum, fortified the rock, and established a naval station there for the purpose of checking the incursions of the Tyrrhenian pirates. This was the origin of the " Oppidum Scyllwum," and of the existing fort and small town which stretches down the slopes towards the two bays. 2 Hannibal is said to have put his pilot to death, off here, on suspicion of treachery, from finding that he was about to take his ship through the Faro Straits, and afterwards, on discovering his error, erected a temple on the spot, to his memory. A modern naval authority remarks, that as the Athenians and Syracusans, as well as Locrians and Rhegians, did not hesitate to fight in the Faro Straits, they could not have been considered so fearfully Horrible by ancient sailors as they were by ancient poets. Charybdis, however, is known to be from seventy to eighty fathoms deep, and its eddies are strong enough to whirl round a seventy-four gun ship, when the current and the wind are con-traryto each other, and both in great violence. Especially when the sirocco blows, the swelling and dashing of the waves in Charybdis is more impetuous and extensive ; it then circles in eddies, and if, at this time, vessels are driven into it, they rock and slightly whirl round, but are never drawn into the vortex ; they only sink by the waves beating over them, and this would be frequently the case with the undecked vessels of the ancients. When larger vessels are forced into it, whatever wind they have, they cannot extricate themselves without the aid of pilots, who know how to bring them out of the course of the current. These are always ready along the shores, and rush out, like our Deal boatmen, to vessels in distress. Admiral Smyth says he has seen several men-of-war, and even a seventy-four gun ship, whirled round on its surface. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 75 is still famous for its salubrious air and glorious view of Etna (see p. 57). The houses are built in the Moorish style, and adorned outside with arabesque patterns, in black and white; a striking and novel effect. On the ridge of a height outside the town, fronting the mountain and looking down upon the sea, stands the ruins of the old Greek Theatre, whose walls once were lined with marble and adorned with statues and Corinthian columns. The Greeks built it, and the Romans completed. It held 40,000 spectators, and nau-machia, or naval battles,—in which real ships fought in real water, and real sailors (prisoners) were killed,—used to take place here. There was a corridor all round for protection to the spectators from stones, and, vast as its structure, a whisper or a sigh could be heard in its remotest extremity. The Mediterranean, seen from this spot at sunrise, is, of itself, a sight of surpassing loveliness ; but add to this the magnificent sweep of one side of Etna—the fortress—the old tower—the peaks—the heights, and, on the other side, Messina, and the whole coast up to it, dotted with towns, trees and bushes, and you can imagine, even did our illustration not suffice, how exquisitely beautiful is Taurominium. Next came Riposto, whence Polyphemus threw the rock that disturbed the loves of Acis and Galatea at Aci Reale, a town on the mountain, standing " on seven beds of lava," each with a stratum of earth over it, every one of which they say takes 400 years to form. Diodorus Siculus mentions one stream of lava coming down here which stopped a body of troops marching to aid the Syra-cusans, who were besieged by the Romans in the second Punic War. At La Trezza, but a short distance away, is the Bay of Ulysses, where are the Lava Islands, said to have been thrown at his ship by the Cyclops. This port rounded, we come upon the white and bright-looking city of Catania; but just before reaching it we made an excursion to Giarra, and six miles beyond it up the mountains, to see the famous chesnut tree called Cento Cavalli, said to be a hundred and ninety feet in girth, and to have covered a hunched horses (cento cavalli) with its shade. The old stock is in the earth, but young trees have sprung from it; just such a growth may be seen in Kew Gardens. Catania is a modern town, standing on four beds of lava. Its very harbour has been filled up by an eruption in 1699, which sent down a stream of lava that rose sixty feet in height, over-topped the walls, and poured upon the devoted city. You go down seventy feet into what looks like a well, but it is the old city wall; and over it hangs what looks like a rock, but is actually lava. There is a Benedictine Monastery hard by, which the lava spared by dividing and running on each side of it, as at • Bronte. The fiery flood came, within ten yards on one side, and five on the other. We had no time to stop for other curiosities, for rumours of a lost battle here reached us, and our duties superseded further excursion. So we passed through Catania (observing how its houses were built of lava, and its streets paved with it—how the liquid fire had filled up its harbour, consumed its gardens, and overturned its walls), and pushed on, over lava pavement first, and black sand afterwards, through cactus hedges with scarlet flowers, for Mount Etna. Fourteen miles, after passing two obelisks that mark the Etna road, brought us at a creeping pace to Nicolosi, where we got some wine and cold meat, as if going over Helvellyn or up Snowdon. They tell us here, as everywhere on the mountain, that the village has been, some time or other, a victim to its treacherous parent, fire, and they speak of earthquakes as we do at home of great storms. Behind the houses of Nicolosi we see rising the double summit of Monti Rossi, or the Red Hills, so called from the dark red colour of its scoriae. This was the crater that threw up the lava by which Catania was nearly buried. It consists of two cones, close to each other, and nearly 1,000 feet high. We hero received the kind hospitality of Dr. Gemellaro, to whom, and his two brothers, travellers on Etna have been so much indebted. In 1804, they built and furnished a cottage for travellers at an elevation of 9,587 ft. above the level of the sea. Two years afterwards it was destroyed, but soon replaced. Then, the English troops being here, Lord Forbes and his officers subscribed and built a more solid shelter—now called the Casa Inglese— or English Cottage. The herdsmen of Mount Etna stole the furniture, and when it had been replaced, the Austrian officers, quartered at Catania, broke open the door (this was in 1820), and burnt the furniture as firewood. After passing through forests, broken down in many places by lava torrents, in which we roused herds of affrighted cattle, we saw above us the enormous lava beds of the Boccarelle del Fuoco—the "Little Mouths of Smoke" which, not quite a century ago (1666), destroyed a million of oaks in the forest ! At a hut in the wood, a mere shed, we rested, and then entered the desert region. At the foot of Monte Minar-do, one of the largest secondary cones, are seen the glaciers of Catania. Bitter, indeed, was the cold, and great were our sufferings from difficulty of respiration ; but we pushed our way, with the undaunted " pluck" of English travellers, and at last, just before dawn, looked down from the edge of the crater into the very bowels of Etna. Beneath us yawned the great crater, a deep and irregular valley, bristling with blocks of blue, green, and white lava, and variegated with lines of curling vapour issuing from a hundred rents, and almost suffocating us with their sharp, acid emanations. The sun, rising from an eastward sea, now gave us a most astonishing prospect. The whole of Sicily lay before us westward. The hundred smaller cones and hills immediately around, rose up as from a flat surface of overspreading mist, and beyond was a sea of mountains rising like waves, over which, like the shade of some vast cloud, was thrown, as the sun rose, the gigantic shadow of the mountain itself,—a purple darkness, reaching across the entire island to the remotest horizon, and gradually shortening as the sun rose above the Ionian Sea. Now the mists rose from below, and standing, as we were, two miles above it, all Sicily lay at our feet. We saw the whole triangle of the island, its three promontories, and all its fabled and storied localities,—the Boot of Italy, Calabria, the Adriatic, Lipari Islands, and the Mediterranean. The shade of Etna was clearly defined, a cone slightly curved on one side,—the last earthquake of 12th December, 1857, had toppled down a large portion of it—and we could see clearly the whole circumference of the water, about three miles, and its depth, about 700 feet. Down below us were the plains of Enna, where Proserpine went a-maying, and found herself entrapped by Pluto. After a parting look at the crater, the guides lead us to the brink of another crate-, which, in 1842, threw its lava into the Val di Bove (Valley of the Ox), so called from, its resemblance to a pair of horns. The scene 76 ALL ROUND THE WORLD, is strange and terrific. Eddies of fiery smoke issuing from a large vent, with deafening and whistling noises following, and thousands of crossing and re-crossing streams of smoke, whose sulphurous vapours speedily forced us to retreat. From the Caso di Bosco we descended to the Torre del Filosofor, or house of Empedocles, the vain philosopher, who wished to be thought to have been carried up to the skies, but whose brazen slipper, thrown up by the crater, betrayed the method of his self-sought death. From hence we saw the Val di Bove, six miles long, and three broad, enclosed by perpendicular walls Of- lava, older than the human race, and rising in plades to more than a thousand feet from the base. From here we soon found our way back to the road and into Catania, where, after inspecting the silk manufactory, which is its chief industry, and is made two yards in width, we left our neat hotel, with its cool red-tiled floor, and hastened on to Syracuse ; passing La Braca, famous for oysters ; Agosta, with 12,000 inhabitants, who export wine, oil and honey, and where there is still a plantation of sugar canes, the last remnant of the Moors : across Erineus, where Demosthenes (not the orator,) fought a battle with the Syracusans, which he lost ; and thence to old Syracuse (see p. 56), where we heard the Sicilian sailors chanting the evening hymn, in the ancient harbour. The city is interesting from its classical association, and its olive groves are said to be the oldest in the world, those about Jerusalem alone excepted. The Syracusans have all Greek features ; and there is a population of about 25,000, as against a million in ancient days, with an army, besides, of 100,000 infantry, and a navy of 500 armed ships. The fountain of Arethusa, the patron goddess of Syracuse, once so famous, is now a washing-tank, the common rendezvous, not of nymphs, but of washerwomen; and the site of the Temple of Minerva is occupied by the Cathedra, although some of the ancient columns are still standing. Santa Lucien occupying the place of the Goddess of Wisdom. A Grecian basin forms the baptismal font. The Church of St. John here is said to be the oldest Christian church in the world, and they say that St. Paul preached there. There are miles of catacombs under the city, marked with Christian symbols, when the early Christians sought refuge there from persecution. The amphitheatre, that once held 60,000 spectators, is a mass of ruins ; but the semicircle of seats is still defined, and there are yet remains of the Nymphwum, or music-hall, that held the tripod of Apollo. The castle seen in our illustration (see p. 56), was built by Maniaces, the Byzantine general. In this castle died the Dutch Admiral De Ruyter, and in this harbour Lord Nelson stopped to water his fleet before sailing to Aboukir Bay, for the victory of the Nile. Down in the Latomias, or excavations which abound at Syracuse, and at the one called Latomia del Paradiso, is the famous Ear of Dionysius. It is an excavation sixty-feet in height, which gradually tapers to a point, whence a narrow channel conveys sound to a chamber in the rock; the crumpling of a piece of paper below can be heard above, but there is at present no way of access to the chamber, except by being let down to it by a rope. The reputed tomb of Archimedes lies near this; and at the gate of Agrigentum we hired a boat and crossed the harbour to the mouth of the Anapus, which we found rather a ditch than a river, passing through plantations of flax, its flat muddy banks on either side being rank with vegetation. We had to pole and push our way up, but at last succeeded in discovering the papyrus—the plant (whose stem, split into thin slices, sufficed the ancients for paper,) growing on its banks. This is a curiosity, for the plant grows nowhere else in Europe. It is a tall rush of very great height, with a naked stem terminating in brown tufts. ' Satisfied with our voyage, we returned to our wine, and fortified ourselves against the malaria with pleasant draughts of the Syracusan Muscat wine, whose quality is such that should recommend it to English consumers, and its price something between fourpence and sixpence a bottle. We cross an angle of theisland to Terranova, the ancient Gela, where ./Eschylus is said to have been killed while walking on the beach, by an eagle dropping a tortoise on his bald head, which the bird mistook fora stone. Hence, through wild heaths and lovely mule tracks, to Girgenti, the site of the ancient Agrigentum, a Greek colony, the site of which is now covered with luxuriant groves of fig, orange and olive. It was here that Pha-laris had his brazen bull, and made Perillus, the inventor, the first victim, by enclosing him in it when heated red hot. It was this lovely city that a population of 200,000 Sybaritic citizens quitted in one nightrather than endure the shortness of a few days' provision when besieged by the Carthaginians. Our sketch shows on the right the ruins of the Temple of Concord, and, on the left, that of Juno Lucina. The former stands, grand and simple, on a lonely crag looking over the sea. The view, from a distance, of the high plateau, on which the town stands, is delicious. The population is 25,000, and it is an emporium for the sulphur which comes here from the neighbourhood of Siculiana. Zeuxis selected five women of Agrigentum, and painted, from their combined beauties, his celebrated picture of Juno—using them as models of grace, expression, symmetry, elegance, and modesty. The town of Siculiana contains 5,616 inhabitants, who are engaged in working the mines of sulphur which, being mixed with lime, is easily burnt and run out, pure, into moulds and boxes. The occupation is very profitable, and numerous moderate fortunes and incomes are realised in this trade. We now crossed over to Palermo, leaving Segestum with its Temple, and Mount Eryx—where was the celebrated Temple of Venus Erycina, the most voluptuous and vicious, in her rites, of all the Venuses—to our left. At Palermo we took the steam boat, and reached Naples in time to welcome the installation of the new dynasty. ALL ROUND THE WORLD. CHINESE BOAT. CHINA, COCHIN CHINA, AND JAPAN. 'illartakiMELIMIRRAIri 71 I.—HONG KONG. THE sending an army and a fleet to the mouth of the Peiho River, with the intention of advancing by a short cut across the country direct to Pekin itself, entailed an amount of commissariat preparation which necessitated our reaching China for some months in advance of the Expedition, as well for the making ourselves acquainted not only with the means of obtaining ready supplies for the present, as for acquiring such a knowledge of the habits and manners and language of the people, as well as the resources of the several parts of the country as would render us masters of every means, and prepared for every contingency, in case of a longer continuation of the campaign. As we near Hong Kong, it reminds us, as it is done others, of the Western Highlands. The mountains rise apparently barren and uncultivated, but on passing Green Island an agreeable surprise awaits us. The town of Victoria spreads out in a semicircle at the water's edge, stretching three or four miles on each side of the Bay, and going back from the water's edge, one building above another, right to the mountain's side. The Bay is full of shipping, but as seen from the town appears land-locked; so that in going out and coming in, the city springs up before you directly behind the island which you pass. Hong Kong is 26 miles in circumference, 9 miles long, and 8 broad. These seas, on every side, are full of such islands; but we got this one as a bonus for 23,393 chests of opium destroyed by Lin, and paid for by the Chinese, and once getting a foothold, in spite of all obstacles of position 78 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. and cumate, we have changed the Lilliputian fishing-town to another Singapore. The 1,500 poverty-stricken Chinese of 1840 have increased to nearly a quarter of a million. Hong Kong is to China what Gibraltar is to Spain—or rather it is the Liverpool of China. It is afflicted with a Governor, a Council of Five, a Chief Justice, and an Attorney-General, who quarrel with each other, stand upon dignity, and make distinction in rank between gentry and merchants, wholesale and retail dealers, and such kind of "genteel " nonsense. Of course there is a race-course, and there are two roads, and the watering-place once used to be called Chuckee, but it is now known as Stanley,—the place where the Chinese, who did not know what they were going to do, tried to steal Mr. Chisholm Anstey. There are barracks, where the soldiers cannot live; and a prison, which is so overrun with rats, that the poorer Chinese consider it a favour to be sent there. The club-house is most creditable to the place, and the stranger, not caring for the hotel, is very comfortably off if introduced by one of his friends who may be a member. A good library, and all the English periodicals are on the table and in the bookcase; while good chow-chow,—which means food and all a man can want,—good attendance, and good beds, can be had for about fifteen shillings a-day ; but, in China, most gentlemen are immediately taken possession of by those who may be known to them, and then their house is your home, according to the established usage of the land. The first thing that strikes the stranger is the busy, untiring industry of the Chinese in their little shops. Women and men, and sometimes even little childrenl, are hard at work, making combs, trunks, or shoes, some chopping up meat, others arranging their vegetables for sale.2 Here a party of masons erecting a bamboo stage, and there a chain gang of convicts, ascending the hill under a soldier's bayonet ; coolies carrying water, an enormous load ; sedan chairs borne by two or four ; boys hawking about candies and sweetmeats ; boatmen and house servants, coming and going, all dressed in that peculiar national blue, wide trowsers and butcher jackets, and their long tails either wound about their head or trailing In China, the children begin to work very early—almost too young ; they get serious and sedate, are wonderfully old fashioned, and think for themselves very soon. Though there is great respect shown to old age, juveniles are not snubbed for being precocious, on the contrary, the little fellows may often be noticed giving their opinions freely before their elders. The first thing a child longs for is a sapeck (a coin of about the 10th of a farthing) ; the first use it makes of its speech and intelligence is to learn to articulate the names of coins. When his little fingers are big enough to hold the pencil, it is with making figures that he amuses himself, and as soon as the tiny creature can see and walk, he is capable of buying and selling. In China you need never fear sending a child to make a purchase ; you may rely upon it he will not allow himself to be cheated. Even the games, at which the little Chinese play, are always impregnated with this mercantile spirit; they amuse themselves with keeping shops, and opening little pawnbroker's establishments, and familiarise themselves thus with the jargon, the tricks, and the frauds of tradesmen. 2 The Chinese grow a cabbage expressly for its oil and seed. The Brassica einensis is its botanical name. It ought to be bred in the open air by English farmers. It produces flower stems, three or four feet high (just as our cabbage,) with yellow flowers andlong pods. In April, when the fields are in bloom, the whole country seems tinged with gold, and after a shower of rain, the fragrance emitted is delicious; Tke seeds are ripe in Nay, when they are cleaned and pressed. There is a great demand for the oil, the refuse is used as oil-cake, or broken up as a manure, which is highly advantageous to the land. clown behind3. The streets of Hong Kong offer a thousand reflections to those who have never been brought in contact with the Celestial race. There are drawbacks : the Chinese are not of the most respectable classes ; the summers are hot ; the town of Victoria is not the most healthy in the world; but there never was a colony established without some sacrifices. Perseverance is an especial British characteristic, and manifold precautions and sanitary measures are being taken to diminish the amount of sickness. There are grievances of a more amusing character, and which take strangers aback on arrival. The first is the system of transport, which is by palanquin. Chinese porters, especially in Hong-Kong, are by no means so tractable as Hindoos ; and it has happened that a gentleman invited to dine at Government House, has, through their pig-tail obstinacy, been too late for the repast. Again, it is customary in Hong-Kong that guests should take their " boy " with them, and certain members of the French embassy declare that, not being provided with a young Chinese fresh from the barbers with his tail gracefully twisted and a long white robe. they ran great risk of perishing from hunger and thirst at a table spread with every imaginary delicacy. The bazaars, the curiosity shops, and the studios of the native artists are among the lions of Hong-Kong; but the sing-songs, which might he mistaken for an Englishism, or theatrical representations, which are given by wealthy Chinese merchants, carry the day. The stage is a great platform of bamboos, and the crowd is incessantly on the move, going and coming, for the representation begins at eight in the morning and lasts till eight at night, without a place remaining in want of a spectator. Heroes of all descriptions, genii, demons, and gods, have their turn on the stage, and engage in fabulous combats. Nothing can surpass the pantomime of the Chinese actors, or the luxury of their costumes. They are glittering with silk and gold. Women never appear on the stage in the Middle Empire ; their parts are taken by young Chinese. But the voices of the performers are so like shrieking, and the music is so noisy, that after a short time European spectators generally have quite enough of it, and get away as soon as manners will permit. Then there is the Happy Valley, where the turf is rolled every day, equestrians take their exercise, and the races are held. The name of the place is said, comically enough by a traveller totally ignorant of the Chinese language, to have been given to it from its being situated amidst burial grounds, and a Parsee cemetery or charnel house, where bodies are burned. The Chinese cemetery4is decorated with upright stones, 3 The tail of a Chinaman is not a little tuft on the crown of the head, but is formed by hair suffered to grow luxuriantly in a mass at least four inches in diameter. The hair is smoothed down, and the tail, plaited from it, begins at the nape of the neck, and hangs below the waist, often to the ankles, and labouring men while at work generally have it wrapped round the head. 4 The more wealthy individuals often convey their dead a considerable distance, and employ a kind of fortune-teller, whose duty it is to find out the most appropriate resting place. This man goes with the corpse to the place appointed, and, of course, pretends to be very wise in the selection of the spot, as well as in the choice of the soil with which the ashes of the dead. are to mingle in after years ; and, upon trial, should the earth appear unsuitable, he immediately orders the procession off to another place in the neighbourhood, where he expects to be more successful. "I believe," says Mr. Fortune, " many of the Chinese have this point settled before they die; for one day when one of our principal merchants went to call on old Howqua, the late Hong ALL ROUND THE WORLD. planted amid rocks and pines, with a bench for the ghost of the departed to rest upon occasionally, and silver and tissue paper scattered about to deceive malignant spirits. These, tempted by the glitter, and thinking they are money, stop to pick them up, and thus give time to the ghosts that are out for an airing, to get back into their graves. The Chinese, who are such adepts in cheating Europeans, fancy that they can even deceive the bad spirits. The Chinese have, it is well known, a national idiosyncracy for getting rid of a redundant population. The Sisters of St. Paul have, much to their credit, founded an establishment at Hong-Kong for succouring children unnaturally abandoned by their parents, and they bring them up to useful occupations. If the future traveller wishes to dine, as we did, in Chinese style, there are no want of restaurants. He may there, by the aid of chop-sticks, make a very satisfactory repast off eggs a year old, preserved in clay, sharks' fins and radishes, pared and boiled into a thick soup, beche de mer, or sea slugs, shrimps made up into a paste with sea-chesnuts, bamboo roots, and garlic, rendered piquant by the addition of soy and sundry other pickles and condiments, and washed down with warm samshu in minute cups. Dishes and plates are all on the smallest possible scale, and pieces of square brown paper (made of silk, an article not used for that purpose in England) serve the purpose of napkins.' A walk in Hong Kong soon shows you why China is called the Central Flowery Land. The red, white, merchant at Canton, a tray was brought into the room with several kinds of earth upon it, which the old man examined with great care, and then fixed on the one in which he wished to be buried." It is certain, however, that a real Chinese dinner would be very odd in the eyes of a stranger, especially if he was one of those who think, as some people do, that there is only one way of living. To begin dinner with the dessert and end it with the soup; to drink the wine smoking hot out of the little china cups; and to have your food brought to you ready cut up into small pieces, and presented with a couple of sticks instead of a knife and fork to cat it with; to have, instead of napkins, a provision of little bits of coloured silk paper by the side of your plate, which, as you use, the attendants carry off; to leave your places between the courses to smoke or amuse yourself; and to raise your chop-sticks horizontally upon your cup to signify that you have finished your dinner. All these things would, doubtless, seem very odd, and create the curiosity of Europeans. The Chinese, on the other hand, can never get over their surprise at our way of dining. They ask how one can like to drink cold fluids, and what can have put it into our heads to use a trident to carry food to our mouths at the risk of pricking our lips or putting our eyes out. They think it very droll to see nuts put on the table in their shells, and ask why our servants cannot take the trouble to peel the fruit, and take the bones out of the meat. They are themselves certainly not very difficult in the nature of their food, and like such things as fried silk-worms and preserved larvae, but they cannot understand the predilection of our epicures for high game, or for cheese that seems to belong to the class of animated beings. One day at Macao, we had the honour to be seated at the dinner table of a representative of a European power, when a magnificent dish of snipes was brought in. But what a disappointment ! The Chinese Vatel had taken out the entrails of this incomparable bird. He knew not what a perfume and savoury treasure the snipe holds in the stomach. The cook was forced to appear before the arbiters of taste, who received him with wrathful looks, and the delinquent was struck with consternation, on hearing that he bad committed a culinary crime, too heavy to be a second time pardoned. Hoping to make amends, the unfortunate cook, a few days afterwards, took care to serve up, in all their integrity, some birds that were not snipes, and thereupon a new storm of wrath fell on the devoted head of the poor Chinese, and was followed by his dismissal, in a state of utter despair, that he should never be able to exercise his art in a manner conformable to the astoundingly capricious tastes of Europeans. 79 and purple flowers of the Layerstrcemia are as common in the low grounds as hawthorns are with us. The scarlet heads of bloom of the beautiful Ixora coccinea arc flowering in profusion in the clefts of the rocks. The ravines are full of ferns, and the elegant lilac bell flowers of the Chirota sinensis peep out under the next rocks. Up - in the mountains, high up in the hill, valleys—fifteen hundred feet above the sea—you all know the azalea and its gorgeous striking beauty, here they spring wild in masses of dazzling bright-. ness, with myrtles, dahlias, wild roses, honeysuckles, and the Glycine sinensis hanging its flowering branches in graceful fashion along the mountain path. Everything here comes from the mainland, and the Chinese Mandarins thereby hold a kind of power over their own people; but one of them in the late war having mis-used it they resisted and drove him off to the other shore. Now that they understand themselves to be subjects of Queen Victoria•, they go on very differently; indeed, your Chinaman is never so great as when following an example.2 Give him the best model and he will imitate it exactly ; show him roguery and cunning and he will beat you at the game. Industrial arts and mechanical science are what are wanted in China. The men who have heretofore visited them have not been of a character to teach any people much that is good. They have bought, and sold, and smuggled, and they have cheated, and lied and bullied, mutually. It is time that both parties came to a better understanding. II.—MACAO. WE leave Hong-Kong as quickly as any man should do, who has no business to keep him there, and taking the steamer a pleasant voyage of thirty miles, the last four of which is through shallow water, arrive at the Praya Grande, the celebrated promenade and landing place (seep. 73) ,to the quaint old settlement of the early Portuguese kings, Macao. This voyage, short as it is, and through a narrow sea, as crowded as the Thames, was not until the present year secure from disorderly, roving bands of Chinese seamen and boatmen, who organise themselves into fleets as pirates, and way-lay vessels, not even excepting the passage steam-boats, one of which, " The Queen," it will be remembered that they captured, and murdered all the foreign passengers.3 2 There are few things your Chinaman cannot do as well as an Englishmen or a Yankee. For several years many Chinese have been employed in steam boats as deputy engineers and stokers, their skill, sobriety and carefulness are exemplary. In men-of-war steamers the employment of them as firemen and supernumerary stokers, while coming within the Tropics, or on the east side of the Cape of Good Hope, would be desirable. They aregood sailors always, and in the last war, "The Bamboo Rifle" or "Coolie Transport Service," deserved mention from Lord Elgin. As ship carpenters, it would be difficult to find better workmen and, lately some who have been employed in setting up iron steamers, speedily learnt to perfection the art of rivetting, under the guidance of a clever engineer, sent out by Messrs. R. Stephenson & Co. 3 We were not lucky enough to have a brush with the pirates ourselves ; but Mr. Fortune has given us a good account of what befel himself on his way in a Chinese junk from the Fow-choo-foo, by the mouth of the MM river to Chusan. " About four o'clock in the afternoon, and when we were some fifty or sixty miles from the Min, the captain and pilot came hurriedly down to my cabin and informed me that they saw a number ofjan-dous right ahead, lying in wait for us. I ridiculed the idea, and told them they -80 Alit ROUND TIM WORLD. PAGODA AT WHAMPOA. 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He could wend his way imagined every junk they saw to be a pirate; but they still maintained that they were BO, and I therefore considered it prudent to be preparedibr the worst. I got out of bed, ill and feverish as I was, and carefully examined my fire-arms, clearing the nipples of my gun and pistols, -and putting on fresh caps. I also rammed down a ball upon the top of each charge of shot in my gun, and put a pistol in side' pocket, and patiently waited for the result. By the aid of a small pocket teleseope, I could see, as the nearest hank approached, that her deck Was crowded with men. I then d 110 longer any doubts rettiding 'their intentions. The pilot, an intelligent old man, now came up to me, and said that he 'thought resistance was of no use; I might manage to beat off one junk, or eon two, but that I had no chance with five of them. Being at that time in no mood to take advitie;tor to be dictated to by any one ' I ordered him off to look after own duty. I knew perfectly 'well' that if we were taken bythe pirates I had tot the' alighted chance of escape, for the first thing•they would there and back in a tanka, or native boat, or he could stroll there by the sea-side. Now we can visit pagodas of fax more imposing aspect and dimensions ; nay, we do would be to knock me on the head and throw me overboard, as they would deem it dangerous to themselves were 1 to get *Map At the same time I must confess I had little hope of being abitiftb beat off such a number, and devoutly wished myself wolflike rather than where I was. L-; " The scene around me was a strange one. The capta3n,' Olot, and one or two native passengers were takin' g rip:the-beards of the cabin-floor and putting their money and other valuables out of sight amongst the ballast. The common Wiens, too, had their copper cash or tsien to hide; and the' Whole place was in a state of bustle and confusion. When all their -more yalnable property was hidden, they, began tO- make some preparations for defence. Baskets of small stories were brought up from the hold, and' emptied 'ant on the most convenient'parts of the deck, and were intended,to be used instead of firo-armi when the pirate came to close .quarters.- • Thisis a .coinmon, niodeof defence in various-parts: °Whine, and in effectual ikon& whoa/the ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 81 TARTAR CAVALRY (CHINESE TARTAR ARMY). even meet one that far surpasses it on his way—the great Pagoda of Singapore. But if the temple of Macao is poor and badly kept, its position is highly enemy has only similar weapons to bring against them ; but on the coast of Fo-kien, where we were now, all the pirate junks carried guns, and, consequently, a whole deck-lead of stones could be of very little use against them. "During the general bustle I missed my own servant for a short time. When he returned to me, he had made such a change in his appearance that I did not recognise him. He was literally clothed in rags, which he had borrowed from the sailors, all of whom bad also put on their worst clothes. When I asked him the reason of this change in the outward man, he told me the pirates only made those prisoners who had money, and were likely to pay handsomely for their ransom, and that they would not think it worth their while to lay hold of a man in rags. "I was surrounded by several of the crew, who might well be called •Job's comforters,' some suggesting one thing and some another, and many proposed that we should bring the junk round and run back to the MM. The nearest pirate was now within 200 or 300 yards of us, and, putting her helm down, gave us a broadside from her guns. All was now dismay and consternation on beard our junk, as every man ran below except two, who were at the helm. I expected every moment that these also would leave their post ; and then we should have been an easy prey to the pirates. "` My gun is nearer you than those of the jan-dour,' said I to the two men ; and if you move from the helm, depend upon it I will shoot you.' The poor fellows looked very uncomfortable, but I suppose thought they had better stand the fire of the pirates than mine, and kept at their post; large boards, heaps of old clothes, masts, and things of that sort which were at hand, were thrown up to protect us from the shot ; and as we bad every stitch of sail set, and a fair wind, we were going through the Nb. 6. picturesque. The inner harbour, with its legion of junks and tankas, lies at its feet ; above it are huge blocks of granite, and secular trees, whose vigorous water at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour. The shot from the pirates fell considerably short of us, and I was therefore enabled to form an opinion of the range and power of their guns, which was of some use to me. " Assistance from our cowardly crew was quite out of the question; for there was not a man amongst them brave enough to use the stones which had been brought on deck, and which, perhaps, might have been of some little use when the pirates came nearer. The fair wind, and all the press of sail we had crowded on the junk, proved of no use; for our pursuers, who had much faster sailing vessels, were gaining rapidly upon us. Again the nearest pirate fired upon us. The shot, this time, fell just under cur stern. I still remained quiet, as I had determined not to fire a single shot until I was quite certain my gun would take effect. The third shot which tbllowed this came whizzing over our heads and through the sails, without, however, wounding either the men at the wheel, or myself. "The pirates now seemed quite sure of their prize, and came down upon us, hooting and yelling like demons, at the same time loading their guns, and evidently determined not to spare their shot. This was a moment of intense anxiety. The plan which I had formed from the first was now about to be put to the proof; and if the pirates were not the cowards which I believed them to be, nothing could save us from falling into their hands. Their fearful yells seem to be ringing in my ears even now, after this lapse of time, and when I am on the other side of the globe. "The nearest junk was now within thirty yards of ours; their guns were now loaded and I knew that the next discharge would completely rake our. decks. Now,' said I to our helmsman, Keep your eye fixed on me, and the moment you see me ,fall flat on the deck you must do the same, or you will be shot.' I knew S2 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. roots fasten in the crevices ; while close by are kiosks and little oratories in honour of inferior divinities. On the portico is a great junk painted in red, and there is an inscription in Chinese on the neighbouring rock. The air of respectable antiquity presented by the old Portuguese settlement of Macao is refreshing after the parvenu character with which its ostentatious magnificence invests Hong-Kong. The narrow streets and grass-grown plazas, the handsome façade of the fine old cathedral crumbling to decay, the shady walks and cool grottoes, once the haunts of the Portuguese poet, his tomb, and the view from it, all combine to produce a roothing and tranquilising effect. Hong-Kong represents the commercial and political movement of the present ; Macao is the city of calm and of the past. The time is gone by when the intrepid Portuguese navigators dominated in these seas. Their degenerate descendants are now reduced, in order to obtain a livelihood, to seek for employment in the great English or American houses. The bright day for Portugal is gone by, and fickle fortune rallies under other standards. If the colony passes by chance into the hands of a man of genius like Amaral, he is assassinated by the emissaries of the mandarins ; and if the Court of Lisbon, bent upon avenging the outrage, despatches its best frigate to the Chinese seas, it is blown up in the very harbour of Macao by a reprobate who gluts his vengeful fury for a slight punishment by the destruction of 300 of his countrymen ! Amaral, a captain in the Portuguese navy, had dis- that the pirate, who was now on our stern, could not bring his guns to bear upon us without putting his helm down and bringing his gangway at right angles with our stern, as his guns were fired from the gangway. I therefore kept a sharp eye upon his helmsman, and the moment I saw him putting the helm down I ordered our steersmen to fall fiat upon their faces behind some wood, and at the same moment did so myself. We had scarcely done so when bang, bang, went their guns, and the shot came whizzing close over us, splintering the wood about us in all directions. Fortunately none of us were struck. Now, 3.1 now they are quite close enough,' cried out my companions, who did not wish to have another broadside like the last. I being of the same opinion, raised myself above the high stern of our junk, and while the pirates were not more than twenty yards from us, hooting and yelling, I raked their decks, fore and aft, with shot and ball from my double-barelled gun. " Had a thunderbolt fallen amongst them they could not have been much more surprised; doubtless many were wounded, and probably some killed. "At all events, the whole of the crew, not fewer than forty or fifty men, who a moment before crowded the deck, disappeared in a marvellous manner. Another was now bearing down upon us as boldly as his companion had done, and commenced firing in the same manner. Having been so successful with the first, I determined to follow the same plan with this one, and to pay no attention to his firing until he should come to close quarters. The plot now began to thicken; for the first junk bad gathered way again, and was following in our wake, although keeping at a respectful distance, and three others, although still further distant, were making for the scene of action as fast as they could. In the meantime, the second was almost alongside, and continued raking our decks in a steady manner with their guns. Watching their helm as before, we sheltered ourselves as well as we could; at the same time, my two fellows, who were steering, kept begging and praying that I would fire into our pursuers as soon as possible, or we should be all killed. As soon as they came within twenty or thirty yards of us, I gave them the contents of both barrels, raking their decks as before. This time the helmsman fell, and doubtless several others were wounded. In a minute or two, I could see nothing but boards and shields which were held up by the pirates to protect themselves from my firing ; their junk went up into the wind for want of a helmsman, and was soon left some distance behind us." • played so much energy and ability as Governor of Macao as to have drawn upon himself the most malevolent feelings of a reprobate race of people and mandarins. He had defeated organized bands of robbers on several occasions, and visited piracy with condign punishment. A price had in consequence been set upon his head; but the brave old captain, who had lost one arm in the service of his country, disdained to take any precautions. Every evening he used to ride out, accompanied only by his aide-de-camp, and with only a brace of pistols in his holsters. On the 22nd of August, 1849, he was returning from his usual ride at sunset, when a number of Chinese suddenly presented themselves to obstruct his progress. A child, who carried a bamboo, to the extremity of which it appeared as if a bouquet had been attached, mov''l out from the crowd towards the Governor. Amaral, thinking that he came to present a petition, was about to ztoop, when he felt himself struck violently on the face. " Manto," rascal! he exclaimed, and pushed his horse on as if to punish his assailant. But at the same moment six men rushed upon him, whilst two others attacked his aide-de-camp. The assassins drew from beneath thtir garments their long, straight, and not very sharp swords, generally used by the Chinese, and repeatedly struck the governor with these upon his only arm. Taking the bridle in his teeth, Amaral made vain efforts to get at his pistols. Attacked on all sides and covered with wounds, lie was soon struck down from his horse, when his murderers, throwing themselves upon him, tore off his head rather than cut it off, and added to their horrid trophy the only hand that remained. This accomplished, they fled into the interior; the Chinese soldiers, who were on duty at the town gates close by, witnessing the tragedy, without condescending to interfere. In the meantime the terrified horse had galloped into the town without a master ; the first who saw it felt that an accident had happened and hastened towards the gate, but on their way they were met by the aide-de-camp, who had only received some slight wounds, and whose torn habiliments and expression of horror told too plainly of the sad event, which was soon confirmed by the discovery of the unfortunate old Governor's mutilated remains. The neighbourhood of Hong-Kong takes from Macao almost all its advantages as a free port ; add to which, the sea is daily invading its harbour, as it does the whole of the right shore of the Canton river. Vessels of considerable tonnage are obliged to anchor a mile or two from the harbour, and only small gunboats can lay off the quay of Praya-Grande. Nevertheless, Macao, notwithstanding its decline, is not wanting in claims to interest—the claims of memory more especially. This town was, for a long period of time, the sole centre of the relations of Europeans with the Chinese. Camoens, Saint Francois Xavier, and other great men, have lived there. Its churches, its convents, its public monuments, dark with age, attest of splendour long gone by. The garden of Camoens is in the present day private property • it belongs to a Portuguese gentleman of the name of Marques, who allows strangers to saunter beneath shady recesses so rare in China. Within this garden is the celebrated grotto where the poet is said to have in main part composed his " Lusiad. Quotations from that immortal epic are now cut into the marble, and what is more delightful to French visitors, some Gallic verses in honour of the poet and the locality. The inner port can be contemplated from a ALL ROUND THE WORLD. terrace in this garden as from the Pagoda of Rocks, but with a less oppressive noise, the shouts of the tankaderes, or boatmen and boatwomen, and terrible gongs, heard so assiduously beaten to drive away the evil spirits from a junk about to proceed on its journey, come here softened by distance. The Parsees have a cemetery that rises in successive steps or terraces above the sea; and this, with the little Portuguese forts, built like eagles' nests, the so-called Green Island, the narrow strip that encircles Macao to the main island, and the wide extent of the Celestial Empire beyond, fill up a picture that is not easily forgotten by those who have once seen it. We wandered about this splendid relic of gaiety and wealth, now a disjointed collection of deserted palaces, haggard boat women, ugly dames of Portuguese descent, with handkerchiefs pinned over their faces, long narrow alleys, decaying churches, walks, parades, gardens, forts, all corroded by time. From the top of a great stone arbour, in the old palace garden, we had a fine view of the old town and both harbours, the inner and the outer. We came back through the Chinese town, where, with restless activity, mechanics were working at their respective trades. Shopmen were doing a thriving business, while barbers never were busier—and your barber is an important personage here, as elsewhere, as such a man needs must be where every man has his head shaved twice a week. No Chinaman uses anything but hot water; his razor is onlytwo inches long, by an inch wide, which is sold for twopence, and the strop, a piece of stout calico, may be had for a penny. See here the sallow Chinaman, stretched at full length in an easy chair, is enjoying his shampooing and pommellings. Shaving the head costs half a farthing, yet there are seven thousand barbers in the city of Canton only. To which city we will now go, steaming on as fast as the crowd of boats will let us. III.—UP THE CANTON RIVER. The tankas (see p. 77), or wherries of the Canton river, constitute one of the essential features of its waters. It is well known what a variety, what a number, and what gorgeousness of display every great Chinese river, canal, or port, exhibits in its junks and boats of various descriptions. Yet do none of these strike the stranger more forcibly than do at first the humble tanka, and its still more humble and industrious yet lively occupants—the " joyeuses batelieres," or " happy boatwomen," as a Frenchman calls them. The tanka is a small boat, almost as wide as long, and differing therein much from the sharp and narrow canoes of the Malays. The crew generally 'consists of an elderly woman, who sits or stands at the stern, rotating with a vigorous and experienced arm the long oar which is the great propeller of all boats in the Celestial Empire. There is also a younger woman, who, seated at the bows, sweeps the waters far more lightly, and with less effect, with the flat of her oar. Not unfrequently one or two urchins, as represented in our illustration (see p. 77), help to give animation to this boat-scene. But where, we might ask, are the father and grandfather, for the urchins are manifestly the children of the junior tankadere—probably engaged on board some larger junk, whilst the women ply the more humble wherry. Some, however, hint that the tankaderes are a kind of gypsies, and do not trouble themselves with any perman6ht efigagements with the other sex, but live solely in and with their boats, sheltered from the burning heats of the sun and the severities of winter alike by the circular roof of bamboo so graphically depicted here. A few moveable boards cover in the daytime the bed on which they repose; the fire destined to cook their frugal repast sparkles near the poop; gravely seated on the mat of rattan, and with the quiet aspect of a precocious manhood, the copper-coloured urchins wait in silence for the anticipated plate of rice, whilst the protecting genii, secreted in a more obscure corner, are not forgotten, but have their daily allowance, the incense of sticks, and perfume of sam-chu. These tankas positively swarm in the waters of the much-frequented harbours of Hong Kong and Macao. And it is not an easy matter for a stranger to know how to select one; for if the touters and boatmen of Europe are sometimes noisy and importunate, the gipsey boatwomen of China are a thousand times more so. And if any hesitation is manifested, they will carry the happy party off bodily to the shelter of their bamboo and rattan canopy. But neither tankas nor tankaderes are met with in the north of China : they belong especially to the river of Canton.' The son of a tankadere cannot become a mandarin : if, disguising his origin, one such should succeed in passing his examinations, and obtain the blue globule, and then his origin should be discovered, he would be immediately degraded. The shape of the boats tell of the different districts from which they come ; thus, from Kiang-soo, where there is little but water-travelling, as in Holland of old, the boats, which pass through a net-work of large canals, are roomy and wide, affording every convenience, as if you were in a house. In Cheh-Kiang, where are the coal mines, the boats are narrow and flat-sided, as in Staffordshire, to push easily through the narrow sluices ; in Fo-kien they have mat sails and an immense plank out at the stern, which acts as a rudder to assist the helmsman in working his boat quickly through the rapids; and the Kwansi boats have long and flat bows at an angle of 45 degrees from the floor, that the boats may not rush under the water in rapidly passing down the sluices. A child overboard ! Observe the hubbub. The little amphibious yellow thing has a gourd attached to it as a life-preserver; it is quite safe; see the mother has picked it up and hushes it on her bosom. Are these the people with whom infanticide is universal I There must be some mistake. Yet that horrible story of the Tower near Shanghai ! Let us give the Chinese women, poor illused creatures, the benefit of the doubt. They do sell their children, we know; perhaps they may not destroy them. There goes a young girl, twelve years old, with full charge of the boat, sculling away with the large poised scull, and flying about through crowds of boats, and hark to her little sharp tongue! as saucy as a London cabman in a crowded throughfare during a stoppage. 1 Here, too, we first see the Lorcha (the " ah" is pronounced as "ur" in lurcher) a name made so familiar in Parliamentary debates. It is nothing more than a junk slightly improved. They are owned indifferently by Chinese or foreigners, and have sailing letters accordingly. There never would have been a dispute about the "Arrow," had there been an interpreter present; but how much these useful persons are wanting can be judged from the fact that at one time in Singapore there were 70,000 Chinese, and no one that could understand them. ft ALL ROUND THE WORLD. One of the most striking sights on the Canton river is the immense number of boats which are moored all along the shore, near the foreign factory. There are hundreds of thousands of all kinds and size, from the splendid flower-boat, as it is called, down to the small barber's boat, forming a large floating city, peopled by an immense number of human beings. In sailing up the river you may observe a very small boat, perhaps the smallest you ever saw exposed on the water, being nothing more than a few planks fastened together. This is the barber's boat, who is going about, or rather swimming about, following his daily avocation of shaving the heads and tickling the ears and eyes of Chinamen. By the by, this same barber has much to answer for; for his practice has a most prejudicial effect upon the eyes and ears of his countrymen. He, however, works his little boat with great dexterity, and with his scull manages to propel himself with care and swiftness through the floating city of boats, larger and more powerful than his own. Then you see boats of various sizes, such as those at Macao and Hong Kong, covered over, divided into three compartments, and kept remarkably clean and neat. These are hired by either natives or foreigners for the purpose of going off to the large junks or other vessels moored out in the river, or for short excursions to the island of Honan, the Fa-Tee Gardens, or such places. The centre division of the boat forms a very neat little room, having windows in the sides, ornamented with pictures and flowers of various kinds. The compartment at the bow is occupied by the rowers, and that at the stern is used for preparing the food of the family for whom the boat belongs. The boats of the Hong merchants and the large flower-boats are very splendid. They are arranged in compartments like the others, but are built in a more superb and costly manner. The reader must imagine a kind of wooden house raised upon the floor of the boat, having the entrance near the bows, space being left there for the boatmen to stand and row. This entrance being the front, is carved in a most superb style, forming a prelude to what may be seen within. Numerous lanterns hang from the roof of these splendid showy cabins; looking-glasses, pictures, and poetry adorn their sides ; and all the peculiarities of this singular people are exposed to our view in these their floating palaces. Then there are the chop boats, which are used by the merchants for conveying goods to the vessels at Wham-poa;—the passage boats to Hong-kong, Macao, and various parts of the country ; the Mandarin boats, with their numerous oars, which have a strange appear. ance as they pass up and down the river; and lastly, the large unwieldly sea-going junks. There are various modifications of all these kind of boats, each adapted for the particular purpose for which it is designed. At festival times, the river has a singularly gay and striking appearance, particularly at night, when the lanterns are lighted, and numberless boats, gaily decorated with them, move up and down in front of the factory. The effect produced upon a. stranger at these times, by the wild and occasionally plaintive strains of Chinese music, the noisy gong, the close and sultry air, the strange people full of peculiarities and conceit, is such that he can never forget, and leaves upon his mind a mixed impression of pleasure, pity, admiratjon, and contempt. Throughout the whole of this immense floating city, the greatest regularity prevails. The large boats are arranged in rows, forming streets, through which the smaller craft pass and repass, like coaches and other vehicles in a large town. The families who live in this manner seem to have a great partiality for flowers, which they keep in pots, either upon the high stern of their boats, or in their little parlours. The Chinese Arbor vitae, Gardenias, Cycas revoluta, cockscombs, and oranges, seem to be the greatest favourites with them. A joss-house—small indeed in many cases, but yet a place of worship—is indispensable to all these floating houses. There the joss-stick and the oil are daily burned, and form the incense which these poor people offer to their imaginary deity. Inside the Bogue, or Bocca Tigris, as it is called, the river widens very much, and presents the appearance of an inland sea. The view now becomes beautiful and highly picturesque, the flat cultivated land near the shores forming a striking contrast to the barren hills on the outside of the forts ; the mountains in the distance appear to encircle the extensive plain ; and although, like the others, they are barren, yet they make a fine back-ground to the picture. A few miles further up the river, the shipping in Blenheim and Whampoa reaches come into view, and the celebrated Whampoa Pagoda, with several more of less note, besides numerous other towers and joss-houses, all remind the traveller that he is approaching the far-famed city of Canton, one of the richest and most important in the Celestial Empire. The noble river, with its numerous ramifications, forms many islands, on one of which the small town or village of Whampoa is built. Large quantities of rice are grown, both on the islands formed by the river, and on the flats on the main land. The tide is kept out by embankments, and the ground can be overflowed at will. These embankments are not allowed to lie idle, but are made to produce crops of plantains. W hen the land is too high to be flooded by the tide, the water-wheel is brought into play, and it is perfectly astonishing bow much water can be raised by this simple contrivance in a very short space of time. Sugar-cane is also grown rather extensively near Whampoa, and in its raw state is an article in great demand amongst the Chinese. It is manufactured into sugar-candy and brown sugar ; many kinds of the latter being particularly fine, though not much used by the foreigners residing in the country, who generally prefer the candy reduced to powder, in which state it is very fine and white. The Pagoda of Whampoa (see p. 80), exhibits some peculiarity of design. It stands upon a terrace, its porch is a flight of steps, its vestibule or anti-sanctuary is a covered building, and its inner sanctuary is one of those Taas or lofty towers which are so characteristic of Chinese ecclesiastical architecture, and which consist of several stones, diminishing in height and width as they ascend, each having a projecting roof of glazed tiles, and generally ornamented with bells. The imitation taa or pagoda in Kew Gardens, erected by Sir W. Chambers, is well known to our readers, and is a lofty and fair specimen of what it is intended to represent. The celebrated taa or tower at Nankin, composed of porcelain, is, like most others, an octagon upwards of 210 feet high, and divided into ten stories, each of which has a marble gallery, with gilt lattices, the stairs being formed within the thickness of the walls. The summit is surmounted by a cupola, from ALL ROUND THE WORLD. S5 CHINESE BOAT WOMAN. which rises a lofty pole or mast with oriflamme, as we see erected in front of the Pagoda of the Rocks at Macao, about 30 feet high. There is a similar tower at Ting-tshang-fu, the exterior of which is of porcelain, but the walls themselves are of marble. Others have a single staircase in the centre, carried up through all the different stories. Although so completely dissimilar in style, their towers bear a strong analogy to the Gopuras and Vinanas, or lofty pyramid tower-temples, of the Hindoos. Both seem to have originated in a common idea, differently modified, according to the taste and mode of building of the respective nations. Whampoa island is the last but one, and, indeed the last island of any size or importance met with on ascending the Bocca Tigris to Canton. On the left bank are French Folly, Lin's Fort, and- the Barnes' Forts ; on the other, Honan and the French Islands. Hence it was, that, during the late war, Whampoa, which was formerly a place of importance, and has two pagodas, became a great rendezvous, and a conference was held there on the 21st of December, 1857, by the plenipotentiaries and naval and military commanders, shortly before the assault and capture of Canton. " Our principal amusement," says one present on the occasion, " was rambling over that picturesque spot : though not above five miles in circumference, the island was broken into hill and dale and fertile glens, where a rural population lived peaceably amid all the troubles, and seemed utterly indifferent as to the fate of their provincial city. Indeed, many of them who had suffered severely by the interruption of trade, rather hoped for our success than otherwise '• and in one of the villages, a man was met who had formerly lived at Whampoa, and spoke a little 86 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. English, who assured us that he expressed a sentiment very common among his countrymen when he said, " You takee Canton chop-chop, my no gotchie money." IV.—CAN T ON. From Macao to Canton, is from Gravesend to Black-wall—only more densely crowded ; and, by all the powers of Cockneyism, there is a boat race.' Pull away, lads! on she goes, and our little steamer after her, stem on, and close up! on they go. No, by all that's unlucky, over they go ! Surely these are wager boats, and Mr. Searle is umpire. They are all righted again. Now by rice-groves, lichen trees, and banyan forests, by docks, by the battle-ground of the Fatshan River (where the brave Keppel won his laurels), the whole looked down upon by a kind of Richmond Hill, where the fort used to be under which the " Coromandel" ran aground—by the old and picturesque shipping, with the many flags flying. There is nothing picturesque about the city itself, no more than there is in Wapping. The grey roofs stretch in long lines, out of which rise pert pigeon-houses on poles, with ladders It is customary in China, at certain seasons of the year, to have junk races, and for the towns near navigable rivers and the sea-ports this is an occasion of great rejoicing; the magistrates and sometimes the rich merchants of the locality distribute the prizes to the victors; and those who wish to enter the lists organize themselves into a company, and appoint a chief. The junks that serve for these games are very long and narrow, so that there is only just room for two benches of rowers; they are most richly carved and ornamented with gilding and designs in bright colours. The prow and the poop represent the head and tail of the Imperial Dragon, they are therefore called loung-tchouan, that is to say dragon boats. They are hung with silks and tinsel, and along their whole length are,displayed numerous streamers; bright red pennants float in the wind, and on each side of the little mast that supports the national flag are placed two men, who leave off striking the turn-turn and executing rolls on the drum, whilst the mariners, leaning over their oars, row on vigorously, and make the dragon junk skim rapidly along the surface of the water. Whilst these elegant boats are contending with one another the people throng the quays, the shore, and the roofs of the neighbouring houses, and the vessels that are lying in the port. They animate the rowers by their cries and plaudits; they let off fireworks; they perform at various points deafening music, in which the sonorous noise of the turn-turn, and the sharp sound of a sort of clarionet, giving perpetually the same note, predominate over all the rest. The Chinese relish this infernal harmony. It happens, sometimes, that a dragon boat is upset in a moment and emptied of its double line of rowers, but the crowd greets the incident with a shout of laughter; nobody is at all disturbed, for the men who row are always good swimmers. You soon see them emerge from beneath the water, swimming about in all directions to catch their oars again and their rattan helmets; the water springs up beneath their abrupt and rapid movements, you might take them for a troop of porpoises disporting in the middle of the waves. When every man has found his oar and his hat, again the dragon boat is placed once more on her keel, the streamers are put to rights as well as circumstances will permit, and then comes the grand difficulty of how to get into her again ; but these people are so agile, adroit, and supple that they always manage it somehow. The public have often the satisfaction of witnessing these little incidents on fete days, for the boats are so frail and light that the slightest fault in the movements of the rowers may capsize them. These nautical games last for several days together, and are continued from morning till night, the spectators remaining faithfully at their posts all the time. The ambulatory kitchens and the dealers in provisions circulate through all parts of the crowd to feed this immense multitude, which, under pretext of having no regular meal at home that day, is eating and drinking continually, whilst rope dancers, jugglers, pickpockets, and thieves of every species profit by the opportunity to turn their talents to account, and vary the amusements of the day. The official fete is terminated by the distribution of prizes, and the rowers wind up with merrymaking, and sometimes also with quarrelling and fighting. to them, which they tell us are watch-boxes. (The Chinese do all things by contraries :53 we used to place our watchboxes on the ground—they put theirs in the sky.) Then mandarin poles with flying streamers; then, the line is broken by high square warehouses, just such as you see about our docks, and these, we are told, are the pawnbrokers' shops; for pawning and money-lending are carried on in Canton and throughout China on an enormous seale.8 2 We mourn in black—they mourn in white ; we regard coronets and crowns as badges of dignity—they respect the boots; we build solid walls—they make them hollow; we pull a boat—they push it; we place the orchestra in front of the stage—they hide it behind ; we feed the living—they get dinner ready for the dead. "In a country," says Mr. Wingrove Cooke, " where the roses have no fragrance, and the women no petticoats ; where the labourer has no sabbath, and the magistrate no sense of honour; where the roads have no vehicles, and the ships no keels; where old men fly kites ; where the needle points to the south, and the sign of being puzzled is to scratch the antipodes of the head; where the place of honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect is in the stomach; where to take off your bat is an insolent gesture; we ought not to be astonished to find a literature without an alphabet, and a language without a grammar. We use a white flag for peace, they brandish it in war; and a want of knowledge of this fact led to the rebels firing upon Lord Elgin's party in the Yang-tse-kiang river—the return of which fire has brought on an awkward imbroglio between foreigners and the insurgents, who accuse us of favouring the Anti-Chinese party of the Tartar Mandarins. 3 A part of the pawnbroking establishments, so numerous in China, also belong to the government. The rate of interest is 2 per cent. per month, for jewels, and articles of the metallic kind. The legal interest of money bas been fixed at 30 per cent. per annum, which makes 3 per cent. per month, as the sixth, the twelfth, and the intercalary moon (when there is one,) do not bear interest. One would like to know what object the Chinese government had in view, in fixing the interest of money at so enormous a rate, andto understand their mode of regarding questions of political and social economy. According to Tchao-yang, a distinguished writer of the Celestial Empire,the purpose wasto prevent the value of land from increasing, and that of money from diminish. ing, by the mediocrity of interest. In fixing it at a very high rate, it has endeavoured to render the distribution of land proportionate with the number of families, and the circulation of money more active and uniform. Tient-scheh, an economical writer, goes further into this subject, in a manner of which the late Mr. Wilson might not have been ashamed, as follows :— "How is it that the high rate of interest fixed by the law affords advantage to commerce ? Because it opens a career to those who have the talent, and favours its division among a greater number. The genius for commerce is a peculiar one, like that for letters, for government, for the arts; possibly, even one might say that, in some respects, it embraces them all. Now this genius for commerce is lost to the empire in all those whc follow a different career; it remains, therefore, to develope it in those who have no other resource. Although commerce is indisputably necessary to the State, yet the administration which goes to so much expense to facilitate study, and to form by that means men capable of political business, does nothing for those who have a genius for commerce to assist them in its development. Now the high interest of money makes amends for this kind of neglect. However poor a young man may be, if he is well-conducted and clever he will be able to borrow enough to make an attempt, and as soon as this succeeds all purses will be open to him;--and this interest now will have given to the empire a useful citizen, who would have been lost if a helping hand had not been held out to him. Now when men can enter into business without having any money of their own, commerce must necessarily be divided among a great number, and .that is what the present state of the population render desirable. " A man, whatever be may be, has but a certain amount of time and strength to employ : if his business demands more be must call in help, that is to say, he must buy the services of others ; they coat him little, for the most part, and he endeavours to obtain the utmost advantage from them. What he gains by these assistants, by degrees releases him from the necessity of working himself, and the public ie charged with his idleness. It ALL ROUND THE WORLD. 87 Behind the city rise odd-shaped, jagged, green mountains and hills, with forts upon them—forts that resemble gigantic frames or hot-houses in a suburban garden ; down to the water-side are shed-houses, built on piles, and just behind are the walls. All about are from 50,000 to 60,000 boatmen, who live on the river ; and there is no end of yellings and jabberings, pulling and hauling, pushing, punting, rowing, and sculling, screeching and gesticulating ; the tide running a perfect sluice. Some of the women are comely, and in their peculiar Bloomer style of costume and strikingly original style of head-dress, are attractive. The fare for a boat load to the shore is a shilling, and that is a trifle to give a pretty girl after a hard pull. Once landed, you have plenty to do ; with excursions up to the Hills, and to the Pagoda, and the Parsee Gardens, and the Curiosity Shops. After you have been through the hongs and gardens, scanned the tea prepared for shipment, and talked with some of the Chinese merchants, whom you find flying kites' and who insist on your taking with them a cup of tea without milk or sugar, the grounds in the cup, each made expressly for each person ; after you have chin-chinned several of these Hong merchants, and heard them expound commercial affairs ; after you have been over the Dutch Folly, the pavilion of the Fire Genii, the large Pagoda at .Whampoa (see p. 80), the wonderful Gardens—wonderful, because so singular and so novel,—after you have seen the duck-hatching (in the cupboard of an old fisherman) up the river, where the young ducks are nursed in all their stages ; after you have had a ride on a Chinese pony up the Chinese hills, and looked down upon Canton and its 124 temples and halls and pavilions, all on the ground-floor, and gazed with never-ending pleasure on the flower-boats (see p. 96), and the fantastically-dressed women, whom you must not mistake for respectable ladies,—for they are scarcely ever visible,—you will have seen almost all that there is to see of the thousand-yearold Canton. On every side pigeon English,—that horrible jargon of mutilated baby-talk,—meets your ear, You hear nothing else. An American tells of a translation of Hamlet's soliloquy into pigeon English (which, by the by, means business English), in which " To be, or not to be," reads " Can, no can." Send for your hat, and this would be the style : " Go top-side, sabe, that hat, bring my." A noise is heard in the adjoining street, the cause, says the servant, is, " Chiney woman have catchee one piece cow chilo," in other words, "Mrs. Pigtail, of a girl." You call upon some ladies," boy returns, " No man can see," intima- was asked of Se-linc, why he had lent 20,000 ounces of silver from the public treasury to twelve small traders. It was,' he replied, ' in order that the public might no longer have to pay for the lacquered work, the shows, the festivals, concubines, and slaves of him who has monopolised the silk-factories. Rivalry in trade obliges traders to emulate each other in labour and industry, that is to say, to be leas extortionate towards the public.' " The Chinese, as everybody knows, are great in kites. It is strange to see sober and sedate merchants tugging away at a long string, guiding a kite very effectually in the air. Some are made in the shape of birds; and the hovering of the kestrel, or the quick dive of the sparrow-hawk, are beautifully imitated by expert guidance of the string. The Chinese beat us hollow in these things, especially in the "messenger" that they send spinning up the string. They send up pretty painted gigantic butterflies, with outspread wings, at the back of which, is a simple contrivance to make them collapse when the butterfly reaches the kite, and, as soon as they collapse, down comes the butterfly, sliding along the string, ready to be adjusted for another flight. ting probably they were not at home. For " yes " read "can do." "How many to dinner this evening ? " Your boy presently replies, "Some piece man—two piece missie." 2 Sometimes the stranger in Canton for the first day finds it impossible to believe in anything he sees. You feel just as if you had got by mistake on to the stage of a theatre instead of the boxes, and find yourself, uncomfortably, one of the dramatis personce in a Chinese ballet. Everything seems sham and unsubstantial; the houses look like so many painted sheds. The place is very intricate, and the alleys innumerable. There is the Tartar barrack, with its two colossal lions —anything but lions did the men show themselves when the fighting came.3 It has an exercise ground of sixteen acres, with a temple in the centre, and some fine trees scattered about in park-like ashion. The streets to the east and west—the streets of Love and Benevolence, as they are called—and the Curiosity street, are not for our pockets, which are reserved for Japan. Otherwise you may buy their lacquered ware and sandal-wood boxes, and carved ivory, enough to eat up a year's income, and leave you no better at the end than the experience of having found out how many things there are in the world that a man can do entirely without, and never feel the want of. Come with us, in the country, to the " Potter's Field," the execution ground where Yeh, the hideous pagan, cut 2 Mr. Wingrove Cooke gives an amusing illustration of this :—"The basis of this Canton English, which is a tongue and a literature, consists," as he tells us, " of turning the r into the 1, adding final vowels to every word, and a constant use of "savey " for "know," " talkee" for " speak," "piecey " for " piece," " number one " for " first class," but especially and above all the continued employment of the word "pigeon." " Pigeon " means " business " in the most extended sense of the word. " Heaven pigeons Lab got " means that "church service has commenced; " "jos pigeon" means the " Buddhist ceremonial; " " any pigeon Canton ? " means " have any operations taken place at Canton ? " " That no boy pigeon, that coolie pigeon," is the form of your servant's remonstrance if asked to take a letter. It also means profit, advantage, observation. " Him wrong too much foolo, him no savey, wely good pigeon have got," was the commentary of the Chinese pilot at the Fatsham Creek business. 3 A Chinese battle is as good as a farce. Mr. Scarth, a twelve years' resident in China, gives us a description. " Some of the little fights at Shanghai," he says, " were very amusing. One day, when a- great many soldiers were out, I saw more of the combat than was pleasant. Having got into the line of fire, I was forced to take shelter behind a grave, the bullets striking the grave from each side every second. Why they came my way it was difficult to discover, for they ought to have passed on the other side of a creek about twenty yards distant, to the people they were intended for; but to see the dodging of the soldiers (the Braves,' see p. 105), then of the rebels, each trying to evade the other, was almost amusing. One fellow, ready primed and loaded, would rush up the side of a grave hillock, drop his matchlock on the top, and without taking aim, blaze away. There is no ramrod required for the shot they use, the bullet or bar of iron being merely dropped in upcn the powder. There was a fine scene on one occasion when the Shanghai rebels made a sortie; one of the men was cut off by an Imperial skirmisher, who had his piece loaded. The rebel had no time to charge his, so he ran round and round a grave which was high enough to keep his enemy from shooting him when on the opposite side. Hare-hunting is nothing to it ; Red Cap described parts of circles, and the Royalist was fast getting blown, when by some unlucky chance the rebel tripped and fell ! The soldier was at him in a moment, and, to make sure of his prize, put the muzzle of his matchlock to Red Cap's head, fired, and took to his heels as fast as he could go! It is difficult to say who was most astonished when Mr. Red Cap did exactly the same. The bullet that dropped down readily upon the powder, fell out as easily when the barrel was depressed. The rebel got off with a good singing of his long hair." 88 ALL ROUND THE WORLD. A CHINESE MERCHANT. off 70,000 men's heads, several English being amongst them.1 1 "These crosses"—Mr. Wingrove Cooke is speaking of the same place,—" are the instruments to which those victims were tied who were condemned to the special torture of being sliced to death." Upon one of these the wife of a rebel general was stretched, and, by Yeh's orders, her flesh was cut from her body. After the battle at Whampoa the rebel leader escaped, but his wife fell into the hands of Yeh : this was how he treated his prisoners. Her breasts were first cut off, then her forehead was slashed, and the skin turned down over the face, then the fleshy parts of the body were sliced away. There are Englishmen yet alive who saw this done, but at what period of the butchery sensation ceased and death came to this poor innocent woman none can tell. The criminals were brought down in gapgs, if they could walk, or carried down in chains, and shot' out into the yard. The executioners then arranged them in rows, giving them a blow behind which forced out the head and neck, and laid them convenient for "the stroke. Then comes the warrant of death ; it is a banner. As soon as it is waved in sight, without verbal order given, the work began. There was a rapid succession of dull crunching sounds—chop, chop, chop, chop. No second blow is ever dealt, for the dexterous manslayers are educated to their work, until they can with their heavy swords slice a great bulbous vegetable as thin as we slice a cucumber. Three seconds, a head suffice. Ira one minute five executioners clear off a hundred lives. It • - — - - There is a street up to the north a mile long, with shops of every kind. On the left are streets leading up to private houses, which have no windows to the streets. It is all very quiet now ; to-morrow there is a holiday. Then the sam-shu houses (grog shops) are open, and the sing-song women come in all painted and brocaded ; and the gravest and the oldest hang strings of crackers outside their 'hOuses, and paint lanterns, and make noises. Then there is a screeching of song and a twanging of the stringed lutes, =dal' burning of paper, and occasional tipsiness, and a riot where you see an English or American sailor. Door is being got up in all directions in a wonderf temporaneous manner ;2 and occasionally you, takes rather longer for the assistants to cram -the. bodies into rough coffins, especially as you might see them erannnIng two into one shell, that they might embezzle the