CARPENTER’S
WORLD TRAVELS

Familiar Talks About Countries
and Peoples

WITH THE AUTHOR ON THE SPOT AND
THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED
ON THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND
MILES OF TRAVEL
OVER THE GLOBE

THE HOLY LAND
AND SYRIA

CHRISTIANS RULE THE LAND OF CHRIST

Seven hundred years of Moslem supremacy in the Holy Land ended with General Allenby’s modest entrance into Jerusalem. Then arose the cry. “The day of deliverance is come.”

CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS

THE HOLY LAND
AND SYRIA

BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER
LITT.D., F.R.G.S.

NINETY-SIX PAGES OF
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS
AND TWO MAPS IN COLOUR

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS. GARDEN CITY. N. Y.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the publication of this volume on the Holy Land and Syria, I wish to thank the Secretary of State for letters which have given me the assistance of our official representatives in the countries visited. I also thank our Secretary of Agriculture and our Secretary of Labour for appointing me an Honorary Commissioner of their Departments in foreign lands. Their credentials have been of the greatest value, making accessible to me sources of information seldom opened to the ordinary traveller.

I wish to acknowledge also the valuable assistance and coöperation rendered by Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and Miss Josephine Lehmann in the revision of the notes dictated or penned by me on the ground.

While most of the illustrations are from my own negatives, there are certain photographs which have been supplied by the Near East Relief, the Red Cross, the Publishers’ Photo Service, and the Zionist Organization of America, all of which are protected by copyright.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE HOLY LAND AND SYRIA

CHAPTER I
JUST A WORD BEFORE WE START

By the World War the Moslem was forced to the rear and Palestine has become more and more the possession of Christian and Jew. General Allenby and his troops have taken the part of Richard the Lion-hearted and the Crusaders, and Jerusalem is at last out of the hands of the followers of the Prophet Mohammed. Among the innovations that followed are the removal of the tax gatherers who robbed the poor and the rich in the name of the Sultan, the safeguarding of the roads from the wandering Bedouins, and the reclaiming of the soil, so that the country bids fair to become once more the land of milk and honey that it was when it gladdened the tired eyes of the Israelites after their long wanderings in the desert of Sinai. Railways now cross the desert, connecting Palestine with Egypt and Turkey, and one may go on the cars from Cairo to Jerusalem and from Paris, via Constantinople and Damascus, to Galilee.

At the same time the Holy Land of the Bible is the Holy Land of to-day. It has the same skies as those under which the Wise Men followed the Star to the birthplace of Jesus. It has the same flowers as those trodden by Joseph and Mary, and the water in Jacob’s Well is still sweet, notwithstanding it is now compared with that of the Nile which flows in pipes over the desert almost to the Pool of Siloam. The sheep still pasture on the hills as they did in the days of our Saviour, and boys and girls may be seen picking the tares from the wheat. Asses like Balaam’s still carry their masters over the road, although their brays are now and then drowned in the horns of the automobiles; and the strange people one constantly meets personify Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Rachel and Ruth, and the other Bible characters who lived and loved in the days of the Scriptures.

All these belong to the Palestine perennial, and to that Palestine belong the talks of this book. They are based on the notes dictated to my stenographer or written by me in the midst of the scenes they describe. I give them as they came hot from the pen, changing only a line here and there to accord with the changing conditions.

We start in the Land of Goshen which Joseph gave to his father and brothers after he was sold to the Ishmaelites and carried down into Egypt, and enter Palestine at Jaffa, the city of Jonah and Simon the Tanner. We cross the plains of Sharon by rail, and travel back and forth over the Holy Land from Beersheba to Dan. Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Jericho and the Jordan, Shechem and Nazareth are among the places where we linger longest, and it is on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum that we take the train for Damascus. In that city we go to the wall over which Saint Paul was let down in a basket, shop in the Street called Straight, and then, crossing the Abana, one of the rivers that Naaman the Leper would have preferred to the Jordan, ascend the mountains of Lebanon to the ruins of Baalbek. We next climb down to the Mediterranean Sea at Beirut and sail north to Smyrna to pay our respects to the ruined shrine of the Goddess Diana on the site of old Ephesus. After a peep at Asia Minor we take a ship for home. Throughout the journey, the old is ever tramping on the heels of the new, and the Palestine of the future is seen through the veil of the Palestine of the past.

CHAPTER II
IN THE LAND OF GOSHEN

Come with me this bright Sunday morning for a look at the old Land of Goshen, where the Israelites settled when they first came into Egypt. I am writing this at Zagazig not far from the road down which Joseph was carried by the caravan of Ishmaelites, or Bedouins, who had bought him of his brothers and were on their way to sell him to Potiphar. It was over that same road that the brothers of Joseph came to buy corn in the seven years of famine. It was probably near Zagazig that Joseph met them and had the cup hidden in Benjamin’s sack, and from Zagazig he came out in his chariot to meet his old father Jacob when by his advice the patriarch came into Egypt to live. Through him Goshen became a land of the Israelites, where they remained and prospered until he died, and those “who knew not Joseph” reigned in his stead.

The Land of Goshen is to-day one of the finest parts of the Nile Valley. My whole way from Cairo to Zagazig was through rich crops of cotton, sugar cane, and clover. There was green everywhere, and I could ride from here twenty miles more to the eastward before reaching the desert. The railroad from Cairo to the Suez Canal goes directly through Goshen. It strikes the canal at Ismailia and then branches off north and south, following the canal to Suez on the Red Sea, and to Port Said on the Mediterranean. The first section is over the road which led from Arabia to Memphis and Heliopolis, cities long since replaced by Cairo, the metropolis of Egypt. Zagazig, where I am stopping, is one of the chief cities in the Delta. It is on the freshwater canal and the big irrigation ditch which leads to the Nile. It is famous as a cotton port, and to-day camels are coming into the town with bales on their backs, and long trainloads are starting out for Alexandria and Port Said, whence the cotton will be shipped off to Europe and America.

The cotton scenes are features of the landscape unknown in the days of Joseph and Jacob. At that time the only clothes made in Egypt were of flax or wool. Nobody knew of the cotton plant, and it was not until the Middle Ages that Europe learned anything about it. The first knowledge of it was brought by the traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who said that the East Indians had a shrub or bush, half vegetable and half animal. It was called the vegetable lamb of Tartary. According to Sir John, it was a plant which blossomed out at the top in a living sheep that bent down and ate the grass growing luxuriantly about it. The sheep had a thick coat of wool, and from this came the cotton of India. Sir John wrote that this plant beast had flesh, bones, and blood, and that he had not only seen but eaten it. He closed with the statement that all thought it wonderful but that “God is marveyllous in his werkes.”

This was about 1350 A.D., and many years before the real nature of cotton became known in Egypt and cotton seeds were planted. Now the crop is grown everywhere in Goshen, and thrives on almost every spot where the feet of the Israelites trod. It covers the Delta and large plantations have been set out even in old Nubia and the Sudan. Cotton has supplanted grain as a money-making crop and is worth far more than the grain that Joseph had cornered when the years of famine began.

This Land of Goshen is a fine stock country. Camels, buffaloes, and donkeys are staked out in the fields, and flocks of sheep and goats feed there, watched by shepherds. There are also droves of camels grazing or lying on the ground, chewing their cuds. All have their herdsmen. There are no fences in Egypt; the fields are bounded by imaginary lines. Sometimes the limits are marked by water ditches, or little embankments made for irrigation.

It was as stock raisers that the Israelites came into Egypt. Perhaps it was because they were a pastoral people that Joseph had Pharaoh give them this Land of Goshen, the eastern part of which is fringed by the desert, with patches of scanty vegetation where the stock could graze. The Bible says that Joseph advised his brethren to say to Pharaoh, “Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle, from our youth even until now, both we and also our fathers”; for said he, “Every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.”

To-day the land is well cultivated. Most of the fields are kept like gardens, and I see half-naked men bending over and digging the soil with great mattocks. Here the farmers are ploughing, using the same one-handled plough of the days of the Scriptures. Some of them have donkeys and buffaloes hitched together, while now and then one sees a plough dragged along by a cow and a camel. There is much artificial irrigation. Sometimes the water is lifted from level to level by men with buckets and baskets to which ropes are slung. In other places it is raised by the sakieh, a rude wheel turned by the cogs of another wheel set at right angles to it. Clay jars are fastened on this perpendicular wheel, and as this moves through the water, the jars fill and empty themselves into the troughs which lead to the little canals. The motive power of the sakieh is a blindfolded camel, bullock, or donkey, the animal going around like a horse in an old-fashioned bark mill. Many of the fields are now under water and the silvery streams shine out through the emerald green of the crops.

When the Israelites first came to Goshen they probably lived in tents such as the Bedouins use to-day. These are made of sheep’s wool or goat’s hair rudely woven by hand. They are held up by ropes and poles and are so low that the people must crawl into them. We know that Abraham lived in a tent, and it is likely that this was the case with Isaac and Jacob.

After coming to Goshen the Israelites probably copied the houses of the Egyptians, building villages of mud huts not unlike those I now see. These homes are rude to an extreme. Many of them are less than twenty feet square; they have flat roofs and are often so low that I can see over them as I ride by on a camel. They have no gardens or lawns. Facing the street, they are huddled together without regard to beauty or comfort.

The roofs form the woodyards of the people below. The only fuel they have is cornstalks, straw, or the bushes from which the cotton has been picked. This stuff is tied up in bundles and laid away on the roofs until used.

There are but few trees to be seen. Now and then an acacia grows along the roadway, and here and there are clumps of date palms. There are occasional fruit gardens, and I have seen many green orchards loaded with oranges.

The roads are usually high above the rest of the country. They run along the canals, and consist of the dirt banked up to hold back the waters. The side roads are chiefly camel paths or foot paths, and one sees everywhere the traffic moving along through the fields. Even on the main roads there are few wagons. Most of the freight is carried on donkeys and camels, which are the common riding animals as well. Long-legged Egyptians in turbans and gowns sit on the rumps of little donkeys, their feet almost dragging; and fierce-looking Bedouins, their headdresses tied on with ropes, bob up and down as they ride on their camels, their heads bowing at every step of the beasts. There are camels loaded with alfalfa, the grass so covering them that they look like haystacks on legs. There are donkeys laden with boxes and bags, and mules and bullocks carrying freight of one kind or another. Out in the fields one now and then sees a buffalo with a half-naked boy perched on it, and at nightfall the paths are lined with men coming from the fields riding these ungainly beasts and balancing their one-handled ploughs in front of them.

It was in Goshen that the Israelites worked after they were enslaved by the Egyptians. Here they built for Pharaoh the treasure cities of Pithom and Rameses, referred to in Exodus, from which they were sent out to build other cities and towns in various parts of the Nile Valley.

The Land of Goshen still gets much of its water by the primitive wheel turned by a blindfolded and resentful camel. This is the land which fed Jacob and his family through the years of famine in Canaan

It was through rocky wastes such as this that Moses climbed to the top of Mount Sinai and there received the Ten Commandments, and there the Lord spoke with Moses “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend”

The archæologists now excavating in Egypt tell me that they frequently find bricks which were undoubtedly made by them, and assert that the sun-dried bricks of to-day are practically the same as those the children of Israel moulded under the lash of their taskmasters.

This is true of the ruins of Bubastis, or the city of the worship of the cat. The remains of this town, which was situated within a stone’s throw of the Zagazig of to-day, are still to be seen. Its many buildings of mud brick have crumbled almost to dust, but here and there the walls are plainly visible. There are several hundred acres of such ruins and I spent an hour or so to-day driving through them.

Bubastis dates back to the times when the Pyramids were young. It is supposed to have been built by the Israelites, and was a great city until it was captured by the Persians about 352 B.C. It was noted for its temples devoted to the cat-headed goddess. This lady had the form of a lioness with the head of a cat and held in one hand a lotus leaf as a sceptre. Herodotus tells of her and of this city, saying that the temples were gorgeous and that the stone road leading to them was one thousand eight hundred feet long. He says that as many as seven hundred thousand worshippers came to the annual festivities. He relates that many of the worshippers were women who often danced and acted “in an unseemly manner.”

Driving out to the Bubastis, I found there a brickyard in full swing. It was situated right on the edge of the ruins, and the fellaheen of to-day were moulding the clay used by the Israelites of the past into building material for the present. As I looked at them my mind went back to the days of the Pharaohs when Moses saw his people toiling under the lash. These men and women I watched were working under taskmasters or overseers. Their half-clad bodies were burnt black by the tropical sun and they looked not unlike slaves. Here they were grinding the mud, there they were moulding it into bricks, while farther over they were piling up those which had been dried in the sun. The bricks were carried by young girls, bossed by a burly negro with a stick in his hand. At his direction the girls took the bricks on their heads and carried them off on the trot. By bribing the negro overseer I got a photograph of this scene, and I doubt not my picture gives a fair idea of what went on in those long-ago days, when Pharaoh drove the Israelites to similar work.

Down through Goshen came Joseph and Mary fleeing with the infant Saviour from the wrath of Herod, the baby killer. This was then on the main highway from Palestine into Egypt, and there is no doubt that they stopped at Bubastis as they went on to Heliopolis. Not far from the obelisk of Heliopolis there is a tree under which Mary and Joseph and the young Jesus are said to have rested. It is about five miles from Cairo and guide books speak of it as one of the chief sights of Egypt. I doubt the reliability of their statements. The tree may be the descendant of one which stood there in the time of Christ. It is an old sycamore gnarled with many years and scarred with the names of tourists. It is on one of the estates of the Khedive, and may be seen through the bars of a fence which has been built around it to keep off the relic hunters. During my visit there I tried to climb the fence in order to get a photograph of it, but some of the Khedive’s servants came up and warned me not to go in. The tree is surrounded by orange orchards which are irrigated by sakiehs worked by water buffaloes with blankets over their eyes.

As I went by I stopped at one of these sakiehs and the men brought me some oranges from the Khedive’s orchard, selling them at the rate of eight for ten cents. They were wonderfully refreshing, and as I sat eating them in the shade of the trees outside the fence I wondered whether Mary and Joseph had not perhaps thus quenched their thirst in the same place nearly two thousand years ago. Any resting place must have been welcome after the long ride through the country to the edge of the great city of the sun.

There are other stories told of the stay of the Holy Family in Egypt. One is that Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus out to the Pyramids, and from there to the Sphinx. It is said that Mary laid Him in the lap of the Sphinx, and that He slept for a night on the paws of that mighty stone beast, half lion, half woman.

As I travel through Egypt, these stories seem more vivid. I went down the other day to the banks of the Nile where the little baby Moses is said to have lain in the bulrushes in his boat of papyrus, and as I stood by the obelisk at Heliopolis I was reminded of the Virgin and the Saviour by a young girl who had a baby in her arms. She must have been about the same age that Mary was then, and the little one laughed and crowed as she rested there under the tropical sun. At the same time a score of other children ranging in age from two to twelve years gathered around me and posed for my camera in front of the obelisk. This great monolith was undoubtedly standing when our Saviour was carried through Egypt, and it was erected long before the baby Moses was rescued from the waters of the Nile. The great stone shaft seemed to tie the past and the present together, and the children of to-day brought to my mind those of the times of the Saviour.

The children were glad to pose for me, but as I snapped the camera they rushed to the front with hands outstretched, begging for baksheesh. I was at a loss how to fee so many, and finally gave twenty-five cents to my coachman and left him, to fight it out with the babies. The little ones mobbed him and he had to threaten them with his carriage whip to keep them away. He finally ended the trouble by giving each two children one half a piastre, so that each received little more than one cent. This made them quite happy.

As I was about to leave the obelisk a party of American tourists drove up. Among them was a smart twelve-year-old boy who put his hands in his pockets and gazed up at the stone as though he were ready to buy it. As he did so I said to him:

“Hello, my little man, aren’t you an American?”

“You bet I am,” he promptly replied. “I came from Chicago in the state of Illinois. You are English, aren’t you?”

“No, I am an American, and my home is in Washington.”

“Oh, yes,” said the urchin. “I know all about that place. The President lives there. Say, what is the name of your ball team?”

That was the interesting thing to him. Out here under the shadow of an obelisk four thousand years old, on the spot where Joseph was married to Asenath; where Plato philosophized and where Moses played; within plain sight of the Pyramids and near enough almost to hear the whisper of the Sphinx, he cared nothing for them. He was a live boy, and he wanted live things. Therefore the pitchers, catchers, and shortstops of the great American diamond were worth more to him than all the stories of history and all the mummies of the museums.

CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF JONAH

I have come up out of the land of Egypt, out of the Israelitish “house of bondage,” and am to-day on the edge of the Promised Land. I am at Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, and the port for the Holy City. When Jacob went down from the highlands of Samaria to the Land of Goshen to meet Joseph, his journey took several weeks. I made the trip in the opposite direction by land and sea in less than a day.

I took the express train at Cairo and in four hours was landed at Port Said, at the mouth of the Suez Canal, where I got a steamer which brought me to Jaffa. The whole way was through the lands of the Bible. We struck the canal at Ismailia, about midway of the Isthmus of Suez, and thence rode northward along its banks to Port Said.

Our steamer was crowded with pilgrims from Russia, Egypt, and north Africa. There were many Americans, French, and Germans travelling first class, and hundreds of Syrians and Egyptians going steerage. The Russian pilgrims were particularly interesting to me. Old men and old women, with honest faces full of intelligence and goodness, they held their religious services all over the third-class portion of the ship, and I spent two hours watching them as one after another they turned their faces toward the Holy City and prayed, crossing themselves, and now and then getting down upon their knees and bumping their heads against the deck in their worship. They were curiously dressed and many of them wore long fur coats. Some had high fur hats and looked as if they had just stepped out of one of Tolstoi’s novels. I was especially impressed with the strength of character shown in their faces and with their magnificent physique. If all of Russia’s millions are of the same mould as those who make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, they will some day prove to the world that there is in them as good stuff as ever made history or built up a civilization. The women, with their strong, motherly faces made heroic by toil and privation, were equally as striking as the men. They were better looking than any other peasant women I have ever seen, and the old saying of the Greeks came to me as I looked at them: “If strong be the frame of the mother, her sons shall make laws for the people.”

As the ship approached the Holy Land the people broke out into prayers, and in some cases into tears. It is a religious pilgrimage for them and they think, I doubt not, that in making it they are coming nearer to heaven.

We had our first view of the shores of Palestine at seven o’clock in the morning, after a night on the steamer. We had been awakened at six with the cry that we were nearing shore, but this was a ruse of the captain to get breakfast out of the way before landing.

When I came up on deck nothing but the sea was in sight. The sun was about two hours high and the sky, a light blue with long streaks of fleecy white drawn like a half-veil over it, curved down into the ocean at the eastern horizon. As I looked I saw two lines of hazy gray rise up out of the water, which rippled in sapphire wavelets, caught by the sun. The first line was the sandy beach that edges the rich plains of Sharon and the second the wall of smoky gray which marks the hills of Judea or the highlands of Palestine. As we came nearer, these lines increased in size, until the first turned to dazzling white sand, out of which a little later the wooded green strip marking the port of Jaffa came into view. Nearer still we could see the shipping in the harbour, and above and behind it the walls of this, one of the oldest towns of the world.

We get some idea of the age of Jaffa from the story of Jonah; for the Bible says that it was from here Jonah took passage upon the ship from which he was thrown into the sea into the mouth of the whale. He remained in the whale’s belly for three days, during which time he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord spake to the whale, whereupon he was vomited out upon dry land. Jonah was born about eight hundred and fifty years before Christ. He was a baby when, according to some authorities, Homer was telling the story of the Iliad, and a hundred years had yet to elapse before the founding of Rome. I am not sure as to the exact spot where Jonah was taken up by the sailors and thrown into the sea, but he is said to have been buried not far from Jerusalem, and there are dragomans who will show you his tomb. Ever since Jonah’s time sailors have been superstitious about having preachers along, thinking that such passengers bring bad luck to a ship.

These brickmakers work under a taskmaster to-day just as the Israelites toiled under the lash in this spot nearly four thousand years ago. Here was built Bubastis, the ancient Egyptian city sacred to the worship of the Cat

We go ashore in small boats at the city of Jonah, which rises almost straight out of the water—but we see no whales

The best view of Jaffa is had from the roof of the House of Simon the tanner where St. Peter had the vision which led to the preaching of Christ to the Gentiles

The harbour of Jaffa is one of the worst in the world. It is almost always rough and often so much so that it is impossible to land. Upon our arrival there was such a swell that the boats which took us ashore bobbed up and down and the waves soaked our baggage.

As to Jonah himself and his narrow escape, one of our preachers on board has quoted a new version of why he and the whale parted company:

“I threw up Jonah,” said the whale,

Who’d lately come to town;

“I threw up Jonah,

For I could not keep a good man down.”

In coming in I looked for whales. There were none in sight, although I am told they are still to be seen in the Mediterranean. In their place, however, were many jellyfish of an opalescent blue. These fish were as big as a football and of the shape of a mushroom. There were hundreds of them floating about and bumping against the hull of our ship as we lay at anchor.

Besides the story of Jonah there are many well-authenticated facts about Jaffa which make it interesting. It has always been the chief port for the Holy Land. It was at one time owned by the Phœnicians, and later, when Solomon built the temple, it was here that the timber used in its construction was landed. Most of this was cedar which came from the forests of Lebanon several hundred miles up the coast. The logs were dragged down the mountains and thrown into the sea at Tyre and Sidon. They were there made into rafts and towed down to Jaffa, whence they were carried up to Jerusalem by camels and men.

Jaffa was an important port in the days of the Crusades, and was fought for again and again. At one time its walls were overthrown by Saladin, but a little later they were rebuilt by Richard the Lion-hearted, the King of England, who came here in a vain attempt to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Turks. In addition to all this there is a tradition that Andromeda, the beautiful daughter of the mythical king of this country, was here chained to the rocks in order that she might appease a huge sea serpent which threatened to eat up the people. While so imperilled she was rescued by Perseus, who killed the monster and married her. In Pliny’s time the historians state that the chains by which Andromeda was bound to the rocks were still to be seen, and that the bones of the sea serpent were carried to Rome and placed upon exhibition there.

The Jaffa of to-day stands upon a bluff washed by the Mediterranean Sea. The city is built right on the rocks, with its yellow, white, and blue houses coming down to the cliff edge. They rise up the steep sides of the bluff which makes a wall cutting off the view of the country behind. At the south of the bluff, as far as one can see, are white sands. At the north are orange groves and then more sand.

As we left the ship we came down a gangway and were lifted into the boats. The third-class and steerage passengers were hung over the sides of the deck of the steamer by the arms, and dropped down into the boats, twelve or more feet below. Some of the women screamed as they fell, making the rocks reëcho with their cries as though the beautiful Andromeda were still chained there. We had no trouble with the customs, largely, I believe, because our dragomans had given the officers a liberal amount of baksheesh. The examination was short, and within half an hour after landing we were comfortably housed at the Jerusalem Hotel. I mention this hotel because I found it was kept by a character who was for a long time our American consular agent. His name is Hardegg, and he spices his food with a religious doctrine of his own kind. The hotel rooms are not numbered 1, 2, 3, etc., but are named after the sons of Israel and the various Old Testament prophets. Each of them contains a book which Hardegg has compiled entitled “Bible Pills.” It is composed of texts from the Scriptures fitted to one’s daily life.

The city of Jaffa has normally about fifty thousand inhabitants of whom the majority are Mohammedans and the rest Christians and Jews. It has considerable trade and is rapidly growing. The rich plains of Sharon at the back furnish sesame, grain, and olive oil, while the highlands of Judea and Samaria produce wool, just as they did in the times of our Saviour. All about the town are orange groves the fruit of which is shipped to all parts of the Mediterranean. The oranges are almost the shape of a lemon, but they are of a great size and sweet as honey. They are packed up in boxes at the groves and carried down to the harbour on the backs of camels. I met the caravans of these huge beasts swaying along as they made their way to the steamers.

I was taken through the native quarters of Jaffa by a young Syrian named Moses. We went together through streets so narrow and winding that carriages could not enter them, and at times we were altogether shaded by the houses, the roofs of which almost touched overhead. We entered several of the dwellings. Each consisted of but one room facing a court where the men, women, and children were herded together.

The house of Simon the Tanner was destroyed some centuries ago, but another house, which is probably of the same character, stands on its site, and tanning is still done in the neighbourhood. At least, it seems so by the smells. This house is now used as a second-class inn. It is a rocky structure, built high up over the sea, with steps outside which lead to the second story and roof. I climbed to the top, and there saw about the same view as did St. Peter. In front of me the blue Mediterranean stretched out toward the west. At the north were the glistening sands reaching toward the ruins of Cæsarea and the foothills of Mount Carmel, while at the south were the hills near which stood Askalon. It was here that St. Peter had that wonderful dream, in which he beheld all the beasts of the world let down from heaven in a sheet, in order that he might eat of them. You remember that he refused, saying: “Not so, Lord! for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”

And then came a voice which said: “What God hath cleansed that call not thou common.”

It was these words that first led to the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, bringing about the conversion of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and later on the preaching of Christ to all the world.

As my guide refreshed my biblical memory with this story, he told me of an American who had visited this place with him last week. Said Moses:

“This American was a funny man, and it seemed to me a foolish one. He was not satisfied with seeing this house, but he asked me to show him the vision that St. Peter saw, and demanded to know what had become of the sheet. He said he did not think he ought to pay me unless I could show him the vision, but I told him that I could not do that unless he had St. Peter’s heart, and I was sure that he had not.”

The men of Palestine are very strong and carry amazing loads on their backs. Both men and women think little of walking twenty miles a day. Many are too poor to keep even a donkey

Impenetrable hedges of giant cactus bushes intermingled with thorn are often used as fences to separate land holdings. One seldom sees a man carrying a water jar, for that is “women’s work” in the Holy Land

This American was probably facetious, but his questions are not unlike those of many of the tourists whose ignorance and superstition surpass belief. Many of them credit the most extravagant stories of every guide, and go about kissing spots which they imagine to be hallowed by their connection with the Bible, but of whose authenticity no one knows.

There is one thing I must not forget about Jaffa, and that is that here was born the modern sewing bee, I might almost say the Woman’s Missionary Society. You have all heard of Dorcas, the queen of the needle, who was raised from the dead by St. Peter. She was noted for the garments she had made for the poor, and at her funeral the people gathered round and showed specimens of the needlework she had sewed and hemmed and stitched for them.

Dorcas lived two or three miles outside Jaffa on a hill which has a commanding view of the country for miles around. It overlooks the sea and land, including thousands of acres of orange groves and gardens containing all kinds of fruits. The site of her house is now occupied by a Russian Greek Catholic Church and a tomb has been erected over her grave hard by.

I drove out to the place in a carriage, winding my way in and out through orange groves and up the hill to the church. Here I met a Russian priest, who was acquiring merit by guarding the bones of the saint in whose honour prayers are said daily. It was with him that I visited the tomb. It is of stone and is roofed by a dome, the whole being covered with plaster. There is a door at the front, and by descending several steps one can see the piece of mosaic which covers the spot where Dorcas lies. There are catacombs to the right and left containing the bones of saints, and over the whole rise magnificent trees.

CHAPTER IV
BY RAILWAY TO THE LAND OF JUDEA

Take a seat with me this morning in the railroad car which is just about leaving the seaport of Jaffa to go to Jerusalem. The distance by rail is only fifty-four miles, but it will take us more than four hours. Crossing the rich plains of Sharon, the road winds its way up the hills of Judea until it brings us to the Holy City, about twenty-five hundred feet above the sea.

The cars are comfortable, but we have had to fight with the tourists and pilgrims for our seats near the windows. A German and a Greek on the opposite side of the coach are still quarrelling for places, using language not that of brotherly love. The German has just called the Greek a swine, while the Greek has retaliated by simply calling the German a dog. But now they are quiet and we can enjoy the scenery as we go on.

Leaving Jaffa we ride for some miles through orchards. There are orange groves loaded with blossoms and fruit. There are orchards of olives, pomegranates, and figs, and many gardens surrounded by cactus hedges twice as high as our heads. Next we enter the rich plain where the Philistines lived. The soil is brown and so fat that you have only to tickle it with the plough and it laughs with the harvest. You do not wonder that the Philistines fought for this fertile land.

Here is a green field of wheat. The stalks stand as thick as grass, and rise and fall with the winds from the sea. There a native is ploughing with a bullock and donkey harnessed together. The plough is the rude implement of the Scriptures, and the dark-skinned farmer steadies it with one hand, while he carries a goad in the other. Farther on are camels dragging the ploughs. In places we see flocks of fat sheep, herded by boys, and now and then pass a village of flat, white-walled houses with thick roofs of thatch on which the grass grows. Nearly every house has a roof of sod about a foot deep, and as we near the hills, the towns on their sides rise up in green terraces.

Here some shepherds in sheep-skin coats, with the wool inside, are watching their flocks, and there, pulling up bunches of grass for her cattle, is a maiden who makes us think of Ruth gathering wheat in the harvest-fields of Boaz. Here and there throughout the plains of Sharon we see the watch-towers built for soldiers posted to ensure the Turkish Sultan’s share of the farmers’ crops.

The landscape here is far different from that of the United States. There are no houses or barns standing alone in the fields. There are no outbuildings of any description, and no haystacks or strawstacks. The people live in villages and go out to work in the fields. The only fences are cactus hedges, but most of the holdings are not fenced in at all.

THE HOLY LAND

The land is fertile clear to the mountains, a distance of perhaps twenty miles. In the foothills there are patches of green, while higher up fields are here and there cut out of the rocks, which are built up to hold in the earth. I have never seen a country more rocky. The rough lands of the Blue Ridge are Nile farms compared to the hills through which our train climbs up to Jerusalem. In many places there is nothing but rocks. The limestone strata are piled stone upon stone, looking like mighty monuments rising on the hills. In some places mountains rise in steps forming pyramids of white limestone, sparsely sprinkled with patches of grass and red poppies.

As we begin to ascend the hills of Judea, we come into the real land of the Israelites. Our railroad winds in and out among little mountains and we can see that in the past the whole country was terraced and that not a bit of land went to waste. What is now the grazing ground for sheep and cattle was once a garden.

Palestine reminds us of other parts of the world. The rich fruit of the orange groves of Jaffa makes us think of Florida. Were it not for the lack of fences and barns, the plains of Sharon might be a slice out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or the rich fields of the Scioto Valley in Ohio. These hills are very like Italy near Genoa, or south France about Nice and Monte Carlo. The terraces are planted with olive trees and we see gray-green olive orchards everywhere.

As we rise the air becomes purer and fresher. We pass the spot on which David is said to have killed Goliath, and see in the distance the town of Mizpah, where the Prophet anointed Saul king when the latter was out hunting his father’s asses. When we see an old bearded and turbaned Syrian riding along on his donkey, we wonder if he may not be a second Balaam, and we almost expect his donkey to open its mouth and speak to its master.

But let me tell you something about the railroad up to Jerusalem. The track is narrow gauge, and the coaches are much like street cars, with little racks for baggage along each side under the roof. Each carriage is divided into compartments the sides of which are walled with windows. The road has no tunnels, and it winds its way in and out as it climbs the hills. There are five stations between Jaffa and Jerusalem.

The total cost of the railroad was two million dollars, or a little less than forty thousand dollars per mile. The idea of the road was originated by an American, a civil engineer named Zimpel, who came to Palestine as a pedlar of a patent medicine which he called “Sunlight Pills.” He brought the scheme before the Sultan at Constantinople, but failed to get the concession to build it. After his death the matter was taken up by the French, who put the line through.

This was the first railroad built in Syria, and it is the father of a system which is now opening up a great part of the country. One section is the road building from Damascus toward Mecca, and connected with it are others which will eventually join the Holy Land to the valley of the Euphrates, as well as to Asia Minor and Turkey. The rates for both passengers and freight are much higher than in the United States.

As it goes up the mountains, the railway twists this way and that. It crawls along the sides of the hills with horseshoe curves here and there. The whole journey is over historic ground. We cross the plains where Samson fought with the Philistines, slaying a thousand of them with the jawbone of an ass. We see the place where he tied the firebrands to the tails of three hundred foxes and let them loose to burn up the harvest. A little farther on we enter the valley of Sorek, where the wicked Delilah cut off the hair of the strong man as he lay asleep in her lap, and away up on the side of the hill we can see the town of Zorah, where Samson was born. At the station of Deir Aban, where Samuel raised his Ebenezer, a crowd of children comes to the trains with bouquets of wild flowers. The boys whine for baksheesh. We wonder whether there may not be an infant Samson among them.

It was in Zorah that Samson was buried, and the guides will show you his tomb. Farther along the road we pass through a great gorge in the cliffs, on the north side of which, near the top, is a cave, where Samson lived, and I verily believe if we should offer the guides sufficient reward they would find us his bones or some pieces of brass from the gates of the city of Gaza, which, you remember, he carried away on his shoulders.

In our ride up to Jerusalem we go by the ancient city of Gezer. It is marked by a mound which has several buildings upon it, including the dome of a Mohammedan mosque. The ground about it has been dug over and over, and the ruins discovered have excited the religious and scientific world.

The excavations made by the Palestine Exploration Fund show it to be one of the oldest of cities. The scientists have gone down into the earth at this point, finding one city built upon the ruins of another, down to the seventh city, which seems to have been occupied by the cave dwellers of the Flint or Stone Age, a period before recorded history began. In these cave dwellings pottery and flint instruments were discovered. A burial place of that ancient race was opened up and remains were found which show that the cave dwellers practised cremation. In one of the six other cities, higher up, bronze tools were discovered, and higher still the relics of an ancient Egyptian civilization. In one of the caves were found large jars containing the skeletons of infants that had been sacrificed to some pagan idol, probably during the Canaanite period. In another was a cistern, the mouth of which was guarded by the skulls of two young girls, and inside which were fourteen skeletons, one that of a girl of sixteen who had been sawn asunder.

The King of Gezer was defeated by Joshua, and later the city was captured by a king of Egypt, who was one of Solomon’s three hundred-odd fathers-in-law. The story is that Pharaoh gave Gezer to Solomon as a dowry with his daughter, and that Solomon rebuilt the city. At the time of the Crusades Richard Cœur de Lion and Saladin fought over it, and it was an important fortress at the time of the Maccabees.

The archæologists of the Palestine Exploration Fund have discovered bronze pots, ivory tablets, statues, and jewels and other treasures of a half-dozen different periods of history. In one of the cities a complete olive press made of stone was unearthed, and in another an Egyptian statuette about four thousand years old. The figure was that of a man with a beard and a wig. Bronze tweezers were found as well as many articles of Greek and Roman times. One of the most interesting discoveries was a reservoir with a capacity of four million gallons. Another was a place supposed to belong to one of the Maccabees.

Camels and donkeys, as well as bullocks, are hitched to the low, one-handled wooden ploughs of Palestine, the same to-day as centuries ago

The children are what we like best in the Holy Land, even though they have generally learned from their elders the habit of begging for backsheesh

The ass of this sheeted Balaam opens his mouth but only a bray comes forth. The roads are so fearful that many places may not be reached by wheeled vehicles and the sure-footed donkey is usually the best mount

The Palestine Exploration Fund is not a religious body, but rather a scientific and historical society. It has spent about fourteen thousand dollars a year on such work, most of the sums being collected in amounts of five dollars or less from English and Americans all over the world. The Fund has made great discoveries in Jerusalem. It has surveyed and mapped a great part of Palestine and has added many Bible sites to those already known.

CHAPTER V
FROM DAN TO BEERSHEBA

The size of Palestine is surprising to every visitor. You know it is small, but you cannot appreciate how small it is until you have travelled over it.

Then you see why it has been called “the least of all lands.” The whole country does not average more than fifty miles wide, and it is only about a hundred and forty miles long. You could lose it in many of the counties of Texas, and on some of its mountains you can look from one side of it to the other. Standing on the Mount of Olives, just outside of Jerusalem, I could see the Mediterranean on the west and on the east the Dead Sea and the River Jordan. From Dan to Beersheba is not as far as from New York to Washington, and the “stormy banks” of the Jordan inclose a stream across many parts of which you can easily throw a stone, and which though it winds in and out like a corkscrew, is not over two hundred miles long. The Mount of Olives, upon which Jesus was taken by the Devil, is described as “an exceeding high mountain,” but it is only about twenty-seven hundred feet high and would be no more than a hill in the Rockies. “All the kingdoms of the world” which Satan showed him consisted of a few half-barren hills and some fertile plains, which together would not make more than a good-sized Western county. With an aeroplane we could fly across the whole of Palestine in less than an hour. Including Syria, which takes in the mountains of Lebanon and much other country in addition to Palestine proper, it is not as long as from New York to Pittsburgh. It begins at the boundary of the French Mandate of Syria on the north, and extends from there southward along the line of the Mediterranean Sea until it is lost in the sands of Arabia.

Though it has bulked so large in history and religion, the Holy Land itself is not as big as Rhode Island, while all Palestine is only about the size of Vermont. If you could take it up and stretch it over the United States it would hardly make a patch of court plaster on Uncle Sam’s body. Dropped down upon New England, with one end at Boston, the other would be at Mount Washington, and most of the country would not be wider than from Boston to Springfield. If spread out upon northern Illinois the whole might be included inside a line drawn from Chicago to Aurora and thence to Decatur and back to Chicago.

The Bible has called this little territory a land of milk and honey. The expression must have been used by contrast to the dreary sand of the Sinai desert, through which the Israelites travelled on their way hither. As I know from former travels, it is more rocky than any part of the Alleghanies; and the Blue Ridge of Virginia, which is covered with stones, is the Mississippi Valley compared with it. The country has a backbone of mountains comprising the hills of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, with a low coastal plain, where the Philistines lived, extending to the Mediterranean Sea. On the other side of the backbone is the great ditch in which lie the Sea of Tiberias, or Galilee, and the Dead Sea, with the winding Jordan running from one to the other. This ditch is below the level of the sea and parts of it have the hottest and most oppressive climate on earth. On the opposite side of the Jordan toward the east is a country much richer than Palestine. It is composed of highlands from two thousand to three thousand feet above sea level, giving excellent pasture and, in the north, large crops of wheat. This was the Bashan, Gilead, and Moab of the Bible, and it is now inhabited chiefly by Mohammedan Bedouins, who live in tents, driving their camels, cattle, and sheep from place to place. In the past it was thickly populated, and archæologists have uncovered the ruined cities of the people who used to live there. Palestine, on the other hand, could never have had a very large population, and the “hosts” spoken of in the Scriptures would dwindle by comparison with the numbers of people we are used to nowadays.

The trip from Jaffa to Jerusalem gives us a fair idea of the character of the country. The coastal plain is typical of the richest part. Its soil is a chocolate brown, the grass is as green as that of Egypt, and there are great orchards of olives and fruits of all kinds. The roads are lined with rich red poppies and there are wild flowers on all sides.

Climbing the hills is like jumping from the Nile Valley into the desert. There is nothing but rocks with a sparse vegetation scattered here and there through them. The limestone crops out everywhere, and in places heaps of stones have been thrown up to make little fields. Such fields are fenced with stone walls. There are also corrals for the sheep made in this way.

Fuel is so scarce in this land of no woods that even roots and twigs bring good prices. Two years of poor olive crops often drive the peasants to cutting down their precious olive trees and selling them

The Pool of Hezekiah, opened by an ancient Hebrew king in the city of Jerusalem, is fed by a fountain in the hills. Not until the British came did the city have an adequate water-supply. One old Arab said, “For four hundred years, the Turks did not give us so much as a cup of cold water”

Palestine has no woods. There are no groves or bushes. Almost the only trees are fruit trees, with now and then a funereal cypress in a garden. Our consul tells me that the country has two groves which the people call forests. One of these contains forty scrub oaks and the other is not quite so large. He says that a few years ago there was some brush on the hillside, but that the people have even dug up the roots and sold them for fuel.

Indeed, fuel is one of the most costly things in this country. It is so expensive that it is seldom used except for cooking, and that notwithstanding the fact that the climate is cold. Wood is so valuable that the older olive trees are being cut down, and it is feared that the olive orchards will gradually disappear. These old trees are often of considerable thickness, but they are only twenty or thirty feet tall so that one will supply but a small amount of firewood. The olive tree is as hard as the apple and far more knotted and gnarly. Its wood is heavy and is sold by the ton. It is brought in on the backs of donkeys and camels and every stick has to pay a tax before it gets inside the gates of Jerusalem.

A common fuel is charcoal, made mostly of olive wood. It is made chiefly at Hebron, about twenty-three miles south of Jerusalem, near the cave where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried and where tradition says Adam died. Hebron, which is about five hundred feet higher than Jerusalem, has big orchards of olives, almonds, and apples, the brush and the dead wood of which are used to make charcoal.

The use of coal is almost out of the question on account of the high rates over the railroads. The same charge is made for carrying coal as for carrying silk. Such coal as comes here is in the shape of briquettes and sells for high prices.

Another lack from which the Holy Land suffers is water. The rainfall in the southern sections is something like six inches and upward a year, the amount gradually increasing as one goes northward toward Galilee. The country has always been one of pools and wells, and every house in Jerusalem has its roofs so made that they drain into cisterns placed in the courts. In dry seasons water is sold, and the man who has a spare cistern gets a big price for his surplus.

Nearly all the wells of the olden times remain, and are pointed out by the dragomans. One can drink from the well where Christ met the Samaritan woman, and from many cisterns scattered over the country. Most of them are shaped like great pears.

When the pools of Solomon were connected with Jerusalem it was thought that they would supply the city with water. These pools are on the highlands between Bethlehem and Hebron. They are cut out of the solid rock, and it is said that they originally held about forty million gallons. There are three of them, ranging in height from three hundred and eighty to five hundred and eighty feet. They lie in terraces one above the other, being of varying widths. The depths are from twenty-five to fifty feet. If they were in good condition they could supply a vast deal of water, but as it is, the aqueducts which Solomon built to Jerusalem have gone to ruin, and there is now only a four-inch iron pipe running from them to the city. The pipe comes in near the Dung Gate and goes from there to the temple platform. I stumbled over it the other day. I am told that the water is used almost altogether for the Mosque of Omar, although it is connected with the fountains of the city, which are only occasionally allowed to play.

In addition to these pools there are many others in and about Jerusalem. The Pool of Hezekiah is in the heart of the city, not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and the Pool of Siloam, where Our Lord sent the blind man to wash, is in the valley of Jehoshaphat, outside the walls.

Just now the Holy Land is suffering from drought and the people are praying for rain. We have had one or two showers in the last few days, but more is needed or the crops will fail. Most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem are great believers in prayer, and Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews are all holding services at which they ask the Lord to send water.

We had a slight rain yesterday and more is expected. The people evidently think their prayers will be answered. As I walked through David Street I heard two Mohammedans talking. Their language was Arabic, but my dragomans told me that one had just said to the other:

“How good God is, after all. We have prayed for the rain and, lo, it has come.”

When the first shower began to fall I was standing in a doorway. A little girl, perhaps eight years old, passed by with a platter of bread on her head. The rain was pouring down upon it and she was wet to the skin, but nevertheless she was singing. I asked my guide the words of her song. He replied: “She cries: ‘Praise God for the rain! Praise God for the rain! Praise God for the rain!’”

CHAPTER VI
JERUSALEM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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

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

Jerusalem lies in a nest of hills which seem flattened out when viewed from an airplane. It is on a plateau twenty-five hundred feet above sea-level, and the city is divided into four quarters, each on its own hill

The walls of the Holy City were breached at the Jaffa gate to provide a special entrance for the German Kaiser when he visited Jerusalem. He was arrayed as a crusading knight and rode a prancing snow-white steed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE HOLY LAND AND SYRIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII
AROUND THE WALLS OF THE HOLY CITY

I have tramped about the walls of Jerusalem on foot and have ridden round them upon donkeys. Let us make the trip on foot.

Some of the walls which still stand were laid up by Solomon, others were erected by Herod the Great, who built David’s Tower, and others by Agrippa only a few years after Christ’s death.

We walk across the road leading to Bethlehem, down which the Wise Men of the East rode on their way to the birthplace of the Saviour, and picking our steps through a caravan of camels lying there, climb up the slope of Mount Zion. There is a moat at the foot of the tower which is one hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep, and the wall rises perhaps one hundred feet above this. There are olive trees between the road and the walls, and as we go we see ragged donkeys feeding among them.

Now we have passed the moat and come close to the wall. Though its lower portions are about two thousand years old, the stones are as firm as when they were laid.

Going onward, we pass tower after tower running fifteen or twenty feet out from the wall and rising five or six feet above it. These towers were used for the archers and watchmen stationed there on the lookout for the enemy.

A little beyond David’s Tower, almost against the walls, is the great church built by the Germans. Its site commands a view over the whole of Jerusalem and was sold to the Kaiser of Germany by the Sultan of Turkey. A part of the churchyard is the American cemetery, which was sold by our consul. Its sale caused great excitement among the Americans at Jerusalem, and the American colony here protested against the removal of their dead, which they said was done after dark. The bodies were taken up and carried to the English cemetery.

Continuing our walk we hug the wall looking down into the Valley of Hinnom until we come to Zion Gate, and a little farther on to the Dung Gate. Below this in the Valley of Jehoshaphat lies the Pool of Siloam. At the Zion Gate a group of lepers are begging. They are ragged and filthy and hold out the stumps of their hands asking for alms. On the inside of this gate stood the house of Caiaphas, where Peter three times denied that he was one of the disciples of Christ, before the cock crowed.

As we go on we see chickens scratching in the earth outside the wall, and as we look at the gardens on the slopes of Kedron or Jehoshaphat observe that the land is still rich. There are cows away down in the valley and the bees are buzzing on the cacti and wild flowers on the slopes. In some favoured spots the Holy Land is still one of milk and honey. The villages near Jerusalem have dairies which supply excellent butter, and the honey, which is largely made of orange blossoms, is delicious. It is served every day at all the hotels, usually in the liquid form rather than in the comb.

The houses of Jerusalem are of limestone with flat roofs constructed to catch the rain water. The better houses have little domes on them

The Mount of Olives is climbed by walled and winding roads and marked with many churches and chapels. Here Jesus often walked with His disciples, and here He brooded over the city that rejected Him

The Holy City is a beautifully framed picture when viewed from a bell tower on the Mount of Olives. Across the foreground stretches the wall of the inclosure of the Mosque of Omar

The slopes of the Valley of Jehoshaphat are now spotted with red. Thousands of poppies and anemones grow upon the ridges between the gardens, and the peasants are working the crops. They use plenty of fertilizer and, strange to say, most of that which comes from the city is taken out through the Dung Gate. It may be from this that it got its name. It is a great square hole in the wall just large enough for men and beasts to pass in and out. It is not far from the temple platform and within a stone’s throw of the Jews’ wailing place.

The southeastern corner of the walls of Jerusalem, and, indeed, a large portion of the eastern walls, are a part of the plateau upon which Solomon’s Temple once stood. In almost the middle of the eastern side of the temple is what is known as the Golden Gate, through which Christ is said to have made his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It has been walled up and the Mohammedans say that it will not be opened until the Judgment Day. A little farther on, at the corner of the temple, is St. Stephen’s Gate, which some say was the place where St. Stephen was stoned. Another legend is that the place of the stoning was near the Grotto of Jeremiah, in Solomon’s quarries, farther along around the walls. The tradition is that Stephen was here brought to the brow of the hill and thrown over a precipice. His hands were tied, and after he had fallen heavy blocks of stone were rolled down upon him from the brow of the hill.

The walls near the Temple are among the first that were built. They are in fine condition to-day, parts of them having been recently repaired. The stones are of bright yellow limestone laid in white mortar. Those at the bottom, which were laid up by Solomon, are of enormous size, one being about fifty feet long and about fifteen feet high and evidently cut from the bed rock upon which the wall stands.

Right at the Temple the walls rise almost precipitously from the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and I judge they are one hundred feet high. They are in excellent condition throughout. The towers are almost perfect, and, although the vegetation is growing in the cracks, most of the masonry looks comparatively new.

A curious feature of the walls of Jerusalem is a stone block as big around as a flour barrel which juts out from that part above which stands the Mosque of Omar to a distance of perhaps fifteen feet. This block or pillar hangs right over the rocky Valley of Jehoshaphat. According to the belief of the Moslems, Mohammed will sit astride this pillar at the Day of Judgment, and Christ will have His seat on the Mount of Olives on the opposite side of the valley. There will be a fine wire stretched from the pillar across to the mountain, and upon this wire all mankind must walk on its way to eternity. As the people of the various religions go those who believe in Mohammedanism will be upheld by the angels and will reach safely the opposite side, whence they will ascend into Heaven. The others will drop down into the valley and perish.

There are cemeteries for both the Jews and the Mohammedans outside the walls and not far from the Mosque. The Mohammedan cemetery, which lies close to the walls, is just opposite the Garden of Gethsemane and includes the Place of the Skull where General Gordon located the site of Calvary. This site is now surrounded by a wall and fence, and Christians are not permitted to enter it. Within it is the grotto where Jeremiah is said to have written his Lamentations, and not far away, near the Damascus Gate, are Solomon’s quarries.

Our walk has brought us back once more to the Jaffa Gate, where we join a pilgrim-throng entering the Holy City.

CHAPTER VIII
“THE TRIBES OF GOD GO THITHER”

Jerusalem a city is

Compactly built together;

Unto this place the tribes go up

The tribes of God go thither.

The Holy Land is hallowed ground for three great religions of the world. Jews, Moslems, Christians—all of them worshippers of only one god—do reverence at its shrines. Jerusalem is the pilgrimage city of the world. Sacred to the Christians, the centre of Jewish religious devotion and national dreams, it is also a second Mecca to the Mohammedans. The Moslems locate the judgment seat upon the walls surrounding the Mosque of Omar, which stands on the site of Solomon’s great temple. They make their pilgrimages from all parts of the Mohammedan world to worship at this mosque, and prostrate themselves before the sacred rock within it as they do before the holy black stone of Mecca. The prophet Mohammed himself said that Jerusalem was the holiest place in the world, and that one prayer here was worth a thousand elsewhere.

Outside of the walls of Jerusalem one often sees flocks of sheep being driven in to market. Nearly every flock has its goats, which are usually black. Palestinian shepherds go before their sheep, inducing them to follow by calling to them

Lepers beg at the gates of Jerusalem, under the walls of great stone blocks finely joined together

Down the hill from under the walls of Jerusalem goes the road to Jaffa and the sea: to the right is the way to Bethlehem

The Christians of the Eastern churches are brought up in much the same faith. They believe that the prayers said within the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the foot of Mount Calvary have a wonderful efficacy, and they gather in Jerusalem every Easter by the tens of thousands. From the wilds of Abyssinia, from the flat plains of Egypt, from the mountain fastnesses of Greece, and from all over Russia, even to the borders of Siberia, they come to drop their tears upon the tomb, and to live over the terrible events of Passion Week. They come from all parts of Asia Minor, and the Syrians and the Armenians jostle the Copts and the Arabians on their way to prayers.

In recent years Latin pilgrimages from western Europe and America have been increasing. Bands of Christians come from Italy, France, Spain, and the United States. I was in Jerusalem when the first pilgrimage was made by a body of Christians from America to the Holy City. More than one hundred men and women from all sections of the United States, under the leadership of the Bishop of Tennessee, took part in the Latin celebrations in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Many of these pilgrims are extremely superstitious. Most of them believe that every spot pointed out by the monks is the actual locality of the event alleged to have occurred there. They walk over the Holy Land with staffs in their hands, and kneel down and kiss the places where they believe Jesus trod. They even kiss the stones of the streets of Jerusalem, forgetting or not knowing that there have been three or four Jerusalems buried below the site of the present one.

I have seen pilgrims crawling on their knees through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Creeping into the vestibule, they kiss the Stone of Unction upon which it is claimed the body of Christ was anointed for burial.

Near the Stone of Unction is the spot on which it is said the Virgin Mary stood while Christ was on the cross. It also is worn away by kissing. Going on into the great rotunda and turning to the right we reach a church belonging to the Greeks at the front of which stands a column as high as a chair and about as big around as a four-gallon crock. This is the centre of the world, and is honoured as such. I saw Russian peasant girls kissing it, and farther on observed them kissing holy place after holy place until it seemed to me that their lips must wear out. Kisses are pressed upon these spots by thousands of mouths every day, and if every lip leaves its microbes all the diseases of the world must be in the bacteria here.

It is hard to estimate the value of the offerings the pilgrims lay on these shrines. Those who come are of all classes, and some bring the savings of years. The poor lay their pennies in the hands of the priests and drop them in the slot boxes which may be seen at almost every corner. There is much gold, and there are treasures in precious stones. A life-sized image of the Virgin Mary which I saw in the Greek church was covered with diamonds. The image was made of wax, and was dressed in satins and silks. Its face was painted. An oval pearl as big as the end of my thumb hung on the forehead, while on the waxen fingers were a score or more rings. Some of the rings were set with diamonds, some with sapphires and rubies, and others with opals. Opals in Palestine are looked upon as the sign of good luck and not bad, as with us.

Most of the rings were costly and each was presented to the Virgin as a love offering. On the silken lap of the image lay a great golden heart as thick as my fist and about six inches in width. It was studded with emeralds and diamonds. The heart was a present from Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria, who made many costly gifts to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the grotto of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem is a similar statue, even more gorgeously decorated, although some of the jewels are said to be paste.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a hotbed of superstition. It is supposed to stand on the spot where Christ was crucified. The Bible tells us that this was outside Jerusalem, but the Church of the Sepulchre is to-day far within the walls. This, however, is not a proof that the location is incorrect, for the walls of Jerusalem have been thrown down and rebuilt again and again, especially those on Mount Zion where the great church stands. The hill where Christ was crucified was made up of terraces of rock, and that is the nature of the foundation of this church. The place was located by St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, who came here about three hundred years after Christ died, and found what was said to be the true cross among the rubbish on the side of the hill. She had the cross dug out and carried to Constantinople, whence later on some pieces of it were sent to Rome. One section as long as your arm is said to be in Jerusalem, and there are so many other pieces scattered over the world that I venture you could build a house with them.

Shortly after this discovery, a church was erected on the spot, and since then others have been built, destroyed, and rebuilt, until we now have this great edifice which covers, I should say, an area of several acres. It is surmounted by a cross rising from a dome as big as that of our National Capitol.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not beautiful and its position in the heart of Jerusalem, surrounded by bazaars, convents, monasteries, and hotels, is by no means imposing. The front of it is covered with carvings, some of which are from ancient temples, and over the doors are bas-reliefs of scenes from the Bible. One of these represents the raising of Lazarus, with the Saviour standing at the front and Mary at His feet. At the command of Christ, Lazarus is seen rising from the dead, while in the background are spectators, some of whom are holding their noses as an evidence, perhaps, of the corruption which had begun to take place before Lazarus was brought to life.

Under the dome of the church lies the tomb of the Saviour. It is enclosed in a chapel of an ivory-white marble, which stands in the centre of the rotunda. This chapel is perhaps twenty feet high, twenty-six feet long, and seventeen feet wide. Entering through a door so low that you have to stoop to go in, you finally come into a chamber six feet square and lighted only by candles. This is the alleged tomb of the Saviour. Over it is a marble slab covered with glass to keep the kisses of the pilgrims from wearing the stone. There are always priests here, and all who come in are sprinkled with holy water. Every worshipper brings with him rosaries, beads, and holy pictures which are laid upon the tomb to be blessed. I saw one old woman totter in with a half bushel bag full of rosaries on her back; a frowsy-bearded man came with her, bearing all he could carry. Spreading these out on the slab, they knelt, while the priest sprinkled the beads and gave them his blessing. Before leaving they dropped some coins into his hand. They were Russians and will probably carry these rosaries back home to their friends.

The modern American oil can competes with the ancient water bottle. The small boy scorns, like his father, to be seen carrying a little water at a time, though he may proudly stagger along with a heavy skin holding several gallons

“GOING UP TO JERUSALEM”

These Russian pilgrims carry their food and cooking utensils with them. Undismayed by poverty and difficulties they press on upheld by their unquestioning faith

A donkey ambulance is provided in case a pilgrim falls ill on the march

For years more Russians have made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land than almost any other people on the globe. Fifty or sixty thousand of them come here every season. They are brought in by the shipload at Easter time and during the whole spring bodies of pilgrims can be seen going on foot from shrine to shrine throughout Palestine.

Many of the pilgrims land at Haifa, the most northern port of the country. From there they walk over the mountains of Galilee, stopping at Nazareth and then going on to Tiberius. They stop and pray at every holy spot and often kiss the ground where they think Jesus or the saints have trod. From the Sea of Galilee they make their way back to Nazareth, and thence go across the plain of Esdraelon and through Samaria to Jerusalem. I have seen thousands of them at Bethlehem and have met them tramping the weary road to the Dead Sea and the Jordan.

These Russians belong to the Greek Church, which owns most of the monasteries and convents of this country, and which has, all told, property amounting to millions, including some of the best real estate in Jerusalem. It has a great hospice outside the walls of Jerusalem as well as a magnificent church on top of the Mount of Olives. It has other similar institutions elsewhere, and is a great factor in the religious life of the Holy Land.

The Russians have here what is perhaps the largest hotel of the world. Ten thousand people can sleep there in a single night, and it has, besides, separate buildings for families. It is known as the Russian Hospice and lies at the west outside the city wall. It covers a space of ten acres or more and has a high wall about it.

Entering the gates of this hospice, one finds himself surrounded by Russians and Russian scenes. It is a slice of the land of the White Bear dropped down in Judea. There is nothing Syrian in sight. The men dress in caps, long coats, and trousers tucked into high boots. They are long-bearded, long-haired, and fair-faced. There are many red heads among them and none seems to know of the razor. The women are clad in coarse gowns ending at six inches or more from the ankle. Most of them wear boots, but some wear straw shoes, and wrap cloths around their legs in place of stockings. They have handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and their features are usually as hard and rough as those of the men.

But suppose we go into the women’s quarters of this mighty hotel. The building is cut up into stalls which run from one side of it to the other. These tunnel-like rooms are lighted at the end, and standing in a central hall it seems as though the windows were at least two hundred feet distant. Each vault, which is eight feet wide and fifteen feet high, is filled from end to end with rough bunks of pine boards. Upon the boards is straw matting, and a space six feet square forms the bed and home of each woman. At the back of this she piles up the bread, tea, and other belongings she has brought with her from Russia. She sleeps stretched out on the board in the clothing she wears in the daytime. The quarters devoted to the men are of similar nature while those for the families differ only in that the spaces are larger.

These pilgrims bring their bread and tea with them from Russia. In addition to this they have a few vegetables which they buy of the natives. They cook with oil stoves. When on the march each carries some bread along with her and a pan out of which to drink and in which to make tea.

In some parts of the inclosure we can see families at their meals. The men, women, and children sit on the ground around a pot of soup. Each has his own piece of bread and a spoon. They wash their own clothes, using dishpans as tubs. The pans are as big as a bicycle wheel and four inches deep. The washing is done with cold water, which is free in the hospice, but which outside would cost two cents a gallon.

These Russian pilgrims are very religious. They are mostly poor, and many have been saving a lifetime in order that they might make this tour to the Holy Land. They undergo all sorts of hardships and spend their time in fasting and prayer. They have a church inside the hospice where services are held twice a day. I have attended the church several times. It is always full of people standing or kneeling. They cross themselves again and again as the service goes on, and now and then get down and bow their heads to the floor. There are similar services in the other Greek churches. I attended one on the Mount of Olives where the reading of the Scriptures and the singing were done by Russian nuns dressed in black with stove-pipe hats without brims crowning their heads. The hats ended in a cape or veil which fell down the back. The faces of the nuns were uncovered and spiritual looking. Their singing was exceedingly sweet, and the service was impressive. The pilgrims who listened knelt and now and then kissed the bare floor.

At Easter time the water of the River Jordan is blessed by the high priest of the Church, and there are many priests to baptize the Faithful in the sacred river. The women and men dress in white garments and go into the water together. They change their clothes on the shore. The garments they wear in the water are usually shrouds, which they have brought from home with them for this purpose, and which they intend to take back to be used at their burials.

The scenes of these baptisms make one think of a picnic. The men, women, and children rush about, some laughing and screaming, and others quietly talking. The priests dip each three times in the Jordan, giving their blessing as they do so. After baptism some soak other shrouds in the river to consecrate them that they may carry them home to their friends. They also drink of the dirty water and bottle it up to take home. Some of the pilgrims are old and have to be lifted in and out of the river. The current is swift, and frequently men are drowned.

CHAPTER IX
ON THE SITE OF SOLOMON’S TEMPLE

I want to take you this morning to the summit of Mount Moriah and show you the site of Solomon’s Temple. It is on the same spot where Abraham, at the command of the Lord, was about to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, when he was told to desist and shown the ram with its horns caught in the thicket behind him. It is the place where the wisdom of the boy Christ astonished the wise men; where David, Solomon, and Elijah used to pray, and where, according to the Mohammedans, the blast of the trumpet will sound forth at the Day of Judgment. The spot is sacred to both Christians and Moslems. Indeed, it may be called the holiest on the face of the globe.

The geologists say that Mount Moriah is one of the two oldest parts of the world, the other being Mount Sinai, upon which Moses received the Ten Commandments. They prove this by the rocks, saying that when the world was thrown off by the sun and floated about in its nebulous state through the air the parts which first solidified were the summit of Sinai and the rock which now stands inside the mosque on the top of Moriah. There is also a Jewish tradition that as the Lord saw the solid earth rising out of chaos He blessed these two spots and said:

“They shall be great in the history of the human race, which I shall create, and upon one of them shall my holy city be built.”

Mount Moriah is on the eastern edge of Jerusalem proper. It is just opposite the Mount of Olives and above the Garden of Gethsemane across the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Its top is a plateau containing thirty-five acres, or about one seventh of the whole of Jerusalem, inside the walls. The walls partially bound this plateau, and in them at the northeast corner of the city is the gate through which St. Stephen is said to have passed when he was stoned to death by the Jews. Across from the plateau and far down below it is the Jews’ wailing place. Hugging it on the west, south, and north are the box-shaped limestone houses which form the greater part of Jerusalem.

In going to it we leave our hotel on Mount Zion and make our way down David Street through a horde of pilgrims of all colours and races. We pass the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, go through a bazaar where men and women, sitting on the ground, are selling glass bracelets and beads from Hebron, past shops selling candles to be burnt at the tomb of our Saviour, and on through a vaulted tunnel-like street which was once the cotton bazaar, but which now sells everything else. Ascending a stairway at the end of this tunnel, we find ourselves on the plateau now occupied by the Mosque of Omar, but formerly the site of the Temple of Solomon.

This plateau rises in terraces. We come first on to the level, which was known as the Court of the Gentiles, and was open to Jew and Gentile alike. From this we go up to the Court of the Israelites and then to the Court of the Priests, which is now under the great Mosque of Omar. In the latter court stood the open-air altar for burnt offerings, the very rock upon which Abraham tied Isaac when he was about to sacrifice him in obedience to the Lord’s command.

The great flat rock on the summit of Mount Moriah over which the dome of the Mosque of Omar now rises was the ancient threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. In many parts of Palestine to-day a flat rock or a hard piece of ground is selected as a threshing-floor upon which the ripe grain is laid down to be trodden out by cattle or mules. David purchased this particular floor from Ornan as an offering to the Lord so that the people might be freed from a terrible pestilence then raging in Jerusalem. The Bible account continues: “Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.” And right away he began preparations for the temple which was actually built on this spot by his son Solomon.

The Moslems have their own tradition regarding this rock. Since ancient times it has been the custom in the Holy Land to bring the harvested grain to the community threshing-floor, which is soon walled with toppling piles of sheaves, each pile belonging to a different farmer. The owners of the wheat sleep on the threshing-floor at night so as to keep watch over their property. According to the Mohammedan story, two brothers, one married, the other a bachelor, lay down to sleep beside their respective piles. The married brother, waking in the night, began to think how much grain he had and then of his brother’s lot compared with his own.

“Poor fellow,” said the married man, “he has no wife and children to comfort him and make his life happy. To even things up a little I will slip over and add some of my sheaves to his and he will never know I have given them to him.”

This he did, and then fell fast asleep again.

A little later the bachelor brother woke and thought of his great stacks of grain and how he, being unmarried, needed so much less than his brother.

“Poor fellow,” thought he, “I who am free have much more than I need, I will give him some of my grain while he sleeps, for he would never take it from me if he knew I was giving it.”

So he transferred a generous portion of wheat from his heap to his brother’s.

In the morning both were astonished to find their piles exactly the same size as they had been the night before. Then a prophet appeared to them and told them what had passed in the night. He said that God, who had seen and approved the evidences of their brotherly kindness, had decided to make this threshing-floor the place of prayer for the whole world.

Priests of the Greek Church bless the waters of the Jordan at Easter, when hundreds of pilgrims bathe in the river, many of them clad in their burial shrouds. Across the Jordan Joshua led his hosts dry-shod to the assault on Jericho

Sturdy character shows in the faces of these Russian women, who patiently trudge from shrine to shrine. The Russians are perhaps the most devout of all the thousands of pilgrims who come to the Land of Christ

Directly under the plateau on which Solomon’s Temple stood is a great catacomb, which once formed a part of one of the Jerusalems of the past. Let us first visit these underground caves before going into the mosque. Descending the steps, we come into a wilderness of vaults with roofs upheld by pillars and arches of stone. Some of the stone blocks are of enormous size. I have measured one which is eight feet wide and fifteen feet high. These stones are beautifully laid. They are closely joined and show mechanical ingenuity in their construction. The pillars are about four feet square, and some of them have holes bored through the corners. It is claimed that the vaults were constructed by Solomon for his stables, and that the holes in the columns were the tying places for the horses. In some of them are stone mangers, which the guides say were used long ago. Others claim that this stable story is a fiction, and that the excavations were made in erecting the Temple and the great columns put up to sustain its platform. However that may be, the architecture is wonderful for that time, or, indeed, for our own. There are altogether a hundred or more vaults, and the mighty stones which wall them are so heavy that it would be impossible to handle them nowadays without the use of machinery.

Since the site of Solomon’s Temple is now a Mohammedan shrine, and under their control, Christians cannot visit this place unless they first obtain an official permit. This I obtained through our American consul, who not only arranged for a soldier to escort us, but sent along his chief kavass, so that we have two guards with us as we walk about. The kavass is a sort of majordomo of the consul. He has two of them, tall, straight Syrians attired more gorgeously than Solomon in all his glory. They wear vests covered with bands of gold embroidery, with long, flowing sleeves like those of the ladies of the Middle Ages. They wear big, baggy trousers, each pair of which would make two full suits for a fat man. They have enormous scimitar-like swords at their sides and carry ebony staffs as thick as the handle of a baseball bat topped with great knobs of silver as big as your fist. The United States Government furnishes the outfits, except for the swords. Formerly, whenever our consul came out of the cavernous region of his hotel or walked down the narrow stone stairs of his office, these two gaudy officials preceded him, making the pavements ring with their staffs as they cleared his path. When he stepped across the way to church, though the streets were deserted and a baby might go about without danger, a kavass always went with him and waited outside the building until His Excellency was ready to return. Such extreme pomp as this has, however, begun to go out of style, though the consul still has his strikingly garbed kavasses to lend the dignity expected of Uncle Sam’s representatives.

The Mosque of Omar was supposed by the Crusaders to be Solomon’s Temple. This is not so, of course, as the original building was destroyed long before their time. It is now believed to have been built by a Moslem governor in the seventh century. But before that, and soon after Jerusalem was destroyed in the first century after Christ, the Roman Emperor Hadrian is known to have built on this site a temple to Jupiter. It is believed that some of the pillars in the present mosque came from a church erected on Mount Zion by the Christian Emperor Justinian. The mosque is one of the finest specimens of Byzantine architecture.

Imagine a mighty dome of greenish copper on the top of which is a golden crescent. Let this be as large as or larger than that of the Capitol at Washington, and let it rest upon a vast octagonal temple walled with tiles so fine that any one of them would be prized as a piece of rare china. Let there be a dado of marble below the tiles and a wide frieze above them inlaid with texts from the Koran in Arabic characters, and let the whole be entered by mighty doors over which are beautifully carved arches, and you have a faint idea of the Dome of the Rock, another name by which this mosque is known.

Here may be seen striking evidences of the belief of the Mohammedans as to Christ and the prophets. They believe in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and class Jesus as one of the prophets, although not so high as Mohammed. Among the verses of the Koran on the front of the mosque is one reading:

The Messiah, Jesus, is only the son of Mary, the Ambassador of God, and His word which He deposited in Mary. Believe, then, in God and His Ambassador, and do not maintain that in one there are three.

Another reads:

Blessings be on me in the day of my birth and my death. He is Jesus, the Son of Mary, the word of truth, concerning whom some are in doubt.

There are other passages of the Koran which tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Mohammedans reverence this spot in connection with them.

Let us take off our shoes and go in. The floor of the mosque is holy ground, so none is permitted to enter except in his stockings or bare feet. The inside is even more beautiful than the outside. The walls and roofs are a mass of carvings and mosaics. The mosaic is made up of bits of gold and glass, the latter of many colours, all so delicately put together that they form beautiful pictures. Each bit is only as big as the head of a nail, or smaller, and thousands of them are required to make a single picture. The columns upholding the roof are of marble, and the floor is of marble carpeted with old rugs from Turkey and Persia.

Right in the centre of the mosque is the huge rock upon which Abraham built his altar for Isaac, and upon which Ornan’s cattle threshed his grain, and where, the Mohammedans say, the Angel Gabriel will stand when he blows the last trump calling the people to judgment. At that time, according to Moslem belief, the souls of the human race will rush to this spot and present themselves before Mohammed and Christ, who will pass on their virtues and sins. After that all must go to the Pillar of Judgment and cross on the wire rope to the Mount of Olives. According to another Mohammedan story, the Moslems will be turned into fleas, and Mohammed himself into a sheep, in which form he will ascend to heaven with the faithful fleas in his wool.

The rock is esteemed sacred by every Mohammedan. It is surrounded by an iron stockade which none is allowed to enter. It is about forty feet long and sixty feet wide, and rises some six feet out of the floor. It fills the whole inclosure and comes so close to the fence that one can touch it, or, if he is devout, as are most of the worshippers we see in the mosque, he can put his mouth through the bars and impress a kiss upon it.