city, with its many towers and gates. Within those bulwarks, which are
thirty-eight feet high and two and a half miles in circumference,
"Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together," covering with
her huddled houses and crooked, narrow streets, the two or three rounded
hills and shallow depressions in which the northern plateau terminates.
South and east and west, the valley of the Brook Kidron and the Valley
of Himmon surround the city wall with a dry moat three or four hundred
feet deep.
Imagine the knuckles of a clenched fist, extended toward the south: that
is the site of Jerusalem, impregnable, (at least in ancient warfare),
from all sides except the north, where the wrist joins it to the higher
tableland. This northern approach, open to Assyria, and Babylon, and
Damascus, and Persia, and Greece, and Rome, has always been the weak
point of Jerusalem. She was no unassailable fortress of natural
strength, but a city lifted up, a lofty shrine, whose refuge and
salvation were in Jehovah,--in the faith, the loyalty, the courage which
flowed into the heart of her people from their religion. When these
failed, she fell.
Jerusalem is no longer, and never again will be, the capital of an
earthly kingdom. But she is still one of the high places of the world,
exalted in the imagination and the memory of Jews and Christians and
Mohammedans, a metropolis of infinite human hopes and longings and
devotions. Hither come the innumerable companies of foot-weary pilgrims,
climbing the steep roads from the sea-coast, from the Jordan, from
Bethlehem,--pilgrims who seek the place of the Crucifixion, pilgrims who
would weep beside the walls of their vanished Temple, pilgrims who
desire to pray where Mohammed prayed. Century after century these human
throngs have assembled from far countries and toiled upward to this
open, lofty plateau, where the ancient city rests upon the top of the
closed hand, and where the ever-changing winds from the desert and the
sea sweep and shift over the rocky hilltops, the mute, gray battlements,
and the domes crowned with the cross, the crescent, and the star.
"The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but
knowest not whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth; so is every one that
is born of the Spirit."
The mystery of the heart of mankind, the spiritual airs that breathe
through it, the desires and aspirations that impel men in their
journeyings, the common hopes that bind them together in companies, the
fears and hatreds that array them in warring hosts,--there is no place
in the world to-day where you can feel all this so deeply, so
inevitably, so overwhelmingly, as at the Gates of Zion.
It is a feeling of confusion, at first: a bewildering sense of something
vast and old and secret, speaking many tongues, taking many forms, yet
never fully revealing its source and its meaning. The Jews, Mohammedans,
and Christians who flock to those gates are alike in their sincerity, in
their devotion, in the spirit of sacrifice that leads them on their
pilgrimage. Among them all there are hypocrites and bigots, doubtless,
but there are also earnest and devout souls, seeking something that is
higher than themselves, "a city set upon a hill." Why do they not
understand one another? Why do they fight and curse one another? Do they
not all come to humble themselves, to pray, to seek the light?
Dark walls that embrace so many tear-stained, blood-stained, holy and
dishonoured shrines! And you, narrow and gloomy gates, through whose
portals so many myriads of mankind have passed with their swords, their
staves, their burdens and their palm-branches! What songs of triumph you
have heard, what yells of battle-rage, what moanings of despair, what
murmurs of hopes and gratitude, what cries of anguish, what bursts of
careless, happy laughter,--all borne upon the wind that bloweth where it
will across these bare and rugged heights. We will not seek to enter yet
into the mysteries that you hide. We will tarry here for a while in the
open sunlight, where the cool breeze of April stirs the olive-groves
outside the Damascus Gate. We will tranquillize our thoughts,--perhaps
we may even find them growing clearer and surer,--among the simple cares
and pleasures that belong to the life of every day; the life which must
have food when it is hungry, and rest when it is weary, and a shelter
from the storm and the night; the life of those who are all strangers
and sojourners upon the earth, and whose richest houses and strongest
cities are, after all, but a little longer-lasting tents and camps.
II
THE CAMP IN THE OLIVE-GROVE
The place of our encampment is peaceful and friendly, without being
remote or secluded. The grove is large and free from all undergrowth:
the trunks of the ancient olive-trees are gnarled and massive, the
foliage soft and tremulous. The corner that George has chosen for us is
raised above the road by a kind of terrace, so that it is not too easily
accessible to the curious passer-by. Across the road we see a gray stone
wall, and above it the roof of the Anglican Bishop's house, and the
schools, from which a sound of shrill young voices shouting in play or
chanting in unison rises at intervals through the day. The ground on
which we stand is slightly furrowed with the little ridges of last
year's ploughing: but it has not yet been broken this spring, and it is
covered with millions of infinitesimal flowers, blue and purple and
yellow and white, like tiny pansies run wild.
The four tents, each circular and about fifteen feet in diameter, are
arranged in a crescent. The one nearest to the road is for the kitchen
and service; there Shukari, our Maronite _chef_, in his white cap and
apron, turns out an admirable six-course dinner on a portable charcoal
range not three feet square. Around the door of this tent there is much
coming and going: edibles of all kinds are brought for sale; visitors
squat in sociable conversation; curious children hang about, watching
the proceedings, or waiting for the favours which a good cook can
bestow.
The next tent is the dining-room; the huge wooden chests of the canteen,
full of glass and china and table-linen and new Britannia-ware, which
shines like silver, are placed one on each side of the entrance; behind
the central tent-pole stands the dining-table, with two chairs at the
back and one at each end, so that we can all enjoy the view through the
open door. The tent is lofty and lined with many-coloured cotton cloth,
arranged in elaborate patterns, scarlet and green and yellow and blue.
When the four candles are lighted on the well-spread table, and Youssouf
the Greek, in his embroidered jacket and baggy blue breeches, comes in
to serve the dinner, it is quite an Oriental scene. His assistant,
Little Youssouf, the Copt, squats outside of the tent, at one side of
the door, to wash up the dishes and polish the Britannia-ware.
The two other tents are of the same pattern and the same gaudy colours
within: each of them contains two little iron bedsteads, two Turkish
rugs, two washstands, one dressing-table, and such baggage as we had
imagined necessary for our comfort, piled around the tent-pole,--this by
way of precaution, lest some misguided hand should be tempted to slip
under the canvas at night and abstract an unconsidered trifle lying near
the edge of the tent.
Of our own men I must say that we never had a suspicion, either of their
honesty or of their good-humour. Not only the four who had most
immediately to do with us, but also the two chief muleteers, Mohammed
'Ali and Mousa, and the songful boy, Mohammed el Nasan, who warbled an
interminable Arabian ditty all day long, and Faris and the two other
assistants, were models of fidelity and willing service. They did not
quarrel (except once, over the division of the mule-loads, in the
mountains of Gilead); they got us into no difficulties and subjected us
to no blackmail from humbugging Bedouin chiefs. They are of a
picturesque motley in costume and of a bewildering variety in
creed--Anglican, Catholic, Coptic, Maronite, Greek, Mohammedan, and one
of whom the others say that "he belongs to no religion, but sings
beautiful Persian songs." Yet, so far as we are concerned, they all do
the things they ought to do and leave undone the things they ought not
to do, and their way with us is peace. Much of this, no doubt, is due to
the wisdom, tact, and firmness of George the Bethlehemite, the best of
dragomans.
We have many visitors at the camp, but none unwelcome. The American
Consul, a genial scholar who knows Palestine by heart and has made
valuable contributions to the archaeology of Jerusalem, comes with his
wife to dine with us in the open air. George's gentle wife and his two
bright little boys, Howard and Robert, are with us often. Missionaries
come to tell us of their labours and trials. An Arab hunter, with his
long flintlock musket, brings us beautiful gray partridges which he has
shot among the near-by hills. The stable-master comes day after day
with strings of horses galloping through the grove; for our first mounts
were not to our liking, and we are determined not to start on our longer
ride until we have found steeds that suit us. Peasants from the country
round about bring all sorts of things to sell--vegetables, and lambs,
and pigeons, and old coins, and embroidered caps.
There are two men ploughing in a vineyard behind the camp, beyond the
edge of the grove. The plough is a crooked stick of wood which scratches
the surface of the earth. The vines are lying flat on the ground, still
leafless, closely pruned: they look like big black snakes.
Women of the city, dressed in black and blue silks, with black mantles
over their heads, come out in the afternoon to picnic among the trees.
They sit in little circles on the grass, smoking cigarettes and eating
sweetmeats. If they see us looking at them they draw the corners of
their mantles across the lower part of their faces; but when they think
themselves unobserved they drop their veils and regard us curiously with
lustrous brown eyes.
One morning a procession of rustic women and girls, singing with shrill
voices, pass the camp on their way to the city to buy the bride's
clothes for a wedding. At nightfall they return singing yet more loudly,
and accompanied by men and boys firing guns into the air and shouting.
Another day a crowd of villagers go by. Their old Sheikh rides in the
midst of them, with his white-and-gold turban, his long gray beard, his
flowing robes of rich silk. He is mounted on a splendid white Arab
horse, with arched neck and flaunting tail; and a beautiful, gaily
dressed little boy rides behind him with both arms clasped around the
old man's waist. They are going up to the city for the Mohammedan rite
of circumcision.
Later in the day a Jewish funeral comes hurrying through the grove: some
twenty or thirty men in flat caps trimmed with fur and gabardines of
cotton velvet, purple, or yellow, or pink, chanting psalms as they
march, with the body of the dead man wrapped in linen cloth and carried
on a rude bier on their shoulders. They seem in haste, (because the hour
is late and the burial must be made before sunset), perhaps a little
indifferent, or almost joyful. Certainly there is no sign of grief in
their looks or their voices; for among them it is counted a fortunate
thing to die in the Holy City and to be buried on the southern slope of
the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where Gabriel is to blow his trumpet for the
resurrection.
III
IN THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM
Outside the gates we ride, for the roads which encircle the city wall
and lead off to the north and south and east and west, are fairly broad
and smooth. But within the gates we walk, for the streets are narrow,
steep and slippery, and to attempt them on horseback is to travel with
an anxious mind.
Through the Jaffa Gate, indeed, you may easily ride, or even drive in
your carriage: not through the gateway itself, which is a close and
crooked alley, but through the great gap in the wall beside it, made for
the German Emperor to pass through at the time of his famous imperial
scouting-expedition in Syria in 1898. Thus following the track of the
great William you come to the entrance of the Grand New Hotel, among
curiosity-shops and tourist-agencies, where a multitude of bootblacks
assure you that you need "a shine," and _valets de place_ press their
services upon you, and ingratiating young merchants try to allure you
into their establishments to purchase photographs or embroidered scarves
or olive-wood souvenirs of the Holy Land.
[Illustration: A Street in Jerusalem.]
Come over to Cook's office, where we get our letters, and stand for a
while on the little terrace with the iron railing, looking at the motley
crowd which fills the place in front of the citadel. Groups of
blue-robed peasant women sit on the curbstone, selling firewood and
grass and vegetables. Their faces are bare and brown, wrinkled with the
sun and the wind. Turkish soldiers in dark-green uniform, Greek priests
in black robes and stove-pipe hats, Bedouins in flowing cloaks of brown
and white, pale-faced Jews with velvet gabardines and curly ear-locks,
Moslem women in many-coloured silken garments and half-transparent
veils, British tourists with cork helmets and white umbrellas, camels,
donkeys, goats, and sheep, jostle together in picturesque confusion.
There is a water-carrier with his shiny, dripping, bulbous goat-skin
on his shoulders. There is an Arab of the wilderness with a young
gazelle in his arms.
Now let us go down the greasy, gliddery steps of David Street, between
the diminutive dusky shops with open fronts where all kinds of queer
things to eat and to wear are sold, and all sorts of craftsmen are at
work making shoes, and tin pans, and copper pots, and wooden seats, and
little tables, and clothes of strange pattern. A turn to the left brings
us into Christian Street and the New Bazaar of the Greeks, with its
modern stores.
A turn to the right and a long descent under dark archways and through
dirty, shadowy alleys brings us to the Place of Lamentations, beside the
ancient foundation wall of the Temple, where the Jews come in the
afternoon of Fridays and festival-days to lean their heads against the
huge stones and murmur forth their wailings over the downfall of
Jerusalem. "For the majesty that is departed," cries the leader, and the
others answer: "We sit in solitude and mourn." "We pray Thee have mercy
on Zion," cries the leader, and the others answer: "Gather the children
of Jerusalem." With most of them it seems a perfunctory mourning; but
there are two or three old men with the tears running down their faces
as they kiss the smooth-worn stones.
We enter convents and churches, mosques and tombs. We trace the course
of the traditional _Via Dolorosa_, and try to reconstruct in our
imagination the probable path of that grievous journey from the
judgment-hall of injustice to the Calvary of cruelty--a path which now
lies buried far below the present level of the city.
One impression deepens in my mind with every hour: this was never
Christ's city. The confusion, the shallow curiosity, the self-interest,
the clashing prejudices, the inaccessibility of the idle and busy
multitudes were the same in His day that they are now. It was not here
that Jesus found the men and women who believed in Him and loved Him,
but in the quiet villages, among the green fields, by the peaceful
lake-shores. And it is not here that we shall find the clearest traces,
the most intimate visions of Him, but away in the big out-of-doors,
where the sky opens free above us, and the landscapes roll away to far
horizons.
As we loiter about the city, now alone, now under the discreet and
unhampering escort of the Bethlehemite; watching the Mussulmans at their
dinner in some dingy little restaurant, where kitchen, store-room and
banquet-hall are all in the same apartment, level and open to the
street; pausing to bargain with an impassive Arab for a leather belt or
with an ingratiating Greek for a string of amber beads; looking in
through the unshuttered windows of the Jewish houses where the families
are gathered in festal array for the household rites of Passover week;
turning over the chaplets, and rosaries, and anklets, and bracelets of
coloured glass and mother-of-pearl, and variegated stones, and curious
beans and seed-pods in the baskets of the street-vendors around the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre; stepping back into an archway to avoid a
bag-footed camel, or a gaily caparisoned horse, or a heavy-laden donkey
passing through a narrow street; exchanging a smile and an
unintelligible friendly jest with a sweet-faced, careless child;
listening to long disputes between buyers and sellers in that
resounding Arab tongue which seems full of tragic indignation and wrath,
while the eyes of the handsome brown Bedouins who use it remain
unsearchable in their Oriental languor and pride; Jerusalem becomes to
us more and more a symbol and epitome of that which is changeless and
transient, capricious and inevitable, necessary and insignificant,
interesting and unsatisfying, in the unfinished tragi-comedy of human
life. There are times when it fascinates us with its whirling charm.
There are other times when we are glad to ride away from it, to seek
communion with the great spirit of some antique prophet, or to find the
consoling presence of Him who spake the words of the eternal life.
_A PSALM OF GREAT CITIES_
_How wonderful are the cities that man hath builded:
Their walls are compacted of heavy stones,
And their lofty towers rise above the tree-tops._
_Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus,--
Venice, Constantinople, Moscow, Pekin,--
London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Vienna,--_
_These are the names of mighty enchantments:
They have called to the ends of the earth,
They have secretly summoned an host of servants._
_They shine from far sitting beside great waters:
They are proudly enthroned upon high hills,
They spread out their splendour along the rivers._
_Yet are they all the work of small patient fingers:
Their strength is in the hand of man,
He hath woven his flesh and blood into their glory._
_The cities are scattered over the world like ant-hills:
Every one of them is full of trouble and toil,
And their makers run to and fro within them._
_Abundance of riches is laid up in their store-houses:
Yet they are tormented with the fear of want,
The cry of the poor in their streets is exceeding bitter._
_Their inhabitants are driven by blind perturbations:
They whirl sadly in the fever of haste,
Seeking they know not what, they pursue it fiercely._
_The air is heavy-laden with their breathing:
The sound of their coming and going is never still,
Even in the night I hear them whispering and crying._
_Beside every ant-hill I behold a monster crouching:
This is the ant-lion Death,
He thrusteth forth his tongue and the people perish._
_O God of wisdom thou hast made the country:
Why hast thou suffered man to make the town?_
_Then God answered, Surely I am the maker of man:
And in the heart of man I have set the city._
IV
MIZPAH AND THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
I
THE JUDGMENT-SEAT OF SAMUEL
Mizpah of Benjamin stands to the northwest: the sharpest peak in the
Judean range, crowned with a ragged, dusty village and a small mosque.
We rode to it one morning over the steepest, stoniest bridle-paths that
we had ever seen. The country was bleak and rocky, a skeleton of
landscape; but between the stones and down the precipitous hillsides and
along the hot gorges, the incredible multitude of spring flowers were
abloom.
It was a stiff scramble up the conical hill to the little hamlet at the
top, built out of and among ruins. The mosque, evidently an old
Christian church remodelled, was bare, but fairly clean, cool, and
tranquil. We peered through a grated window, tied with many-coloured
scraps of rags by the Mohammedan pilgrims, into a whitewashed room
containing a huge sarcophagus said to be the tomb of Samuel. Then we
climbed the minaret and lingered on the tiny railed balcony, feeding on
the view.
The peak on which we stood was isolated by deep ravines from the other
hills of desolate gray and scanty green. Beyond the western range lay
the Valley of Aijalon, and beyond that the rich Plain of Sharon with
iridescent hues of green and blue and silver, and beyond that the yellow
line of the sand-dunes broken by the white spot of Jaffa, and beyond
that the azure breadth of the Mediterranean. Northward, at our feet, on
the summit of a lower conical hill, ringed with gray rock, lay the
village of El-Jib, the ancient Geba of Benjamin, one of the cities which
Joshua gave to the Levites.
This was the place from which Jonathan and his armour-bearer set out,
without Saul's knowledge, on their daring, perilous scouting expedition
against the Philistines. What fighting there was in olden days over that
tumbled country of hills and gorges, stretching away north to the blue
mountains of Samaria and the summits of Ebal and Gerizim on the horizon!
There on the rocky backbone of Benjamin and Ephraim, was Ramallah
(where we had spent Sunday in the sweet orderliness of the Friends'
Mission School), and Beeroth, and Bethel, and Gilgal, and Shiloh.
Eastward, behind the hills, we could trace the long, vast trench of the
Jordan valley running due north and south, filled with thin violet haze
and terminating in a glint of the Dead Sea. Beyond that deep line of
division rose the mountains of Gilead and Moab, a lofty, unbroken
barrier. To the south-east we could see the red roofs of the new
Jerusalem, and a few domes and minarets of the ancient city. Beyond
them, in the south, was the truncated cone of the Frank Mountain, where
the crusaders made their last stand against the Saracens; and the hills
around Bethlehem; and a glimpse, nearer at hand, of the tall cypresses
and peaceful gardens of 'Ain Karim.
This terrestrial paradise of vision encircled us with jewel-hues and
clear, exquisite outlines. Below us were the flat roofs of Nebi Samwil,
with a dog barking on every roof; the filthy courtyards and dark
doorways, with a woman in one of them making bread; the ruined archways
and broken cisterns with a pool of green water stagnating in one
corner; peasants ploughing their stony little fields, and a string of
donkeys winding up the steep path to the hill.
Here, centuries ago, Samuel called all Israel to Mizpah, and offered
sacrifice before Jehovah, and judged the people. Here he inspired them
with new courage and sent them down to discomfit the Philistines. Hither
he came as judge and ruler of Israel, making his annual circuit between
Gilgal and Bethel and Mizpah. Here he assembled the tribes again, when
they were tired of his rule, and gave them a King according to their
desire, even the tall warrior Saul, the son of Kish.
Do the bones of the prophet rest here or at Ramah? I do not know. But
here, on this commanding peak, he began and ended his judgeship; from
this aerie he looked forth upon the inheritance of the turbulent sons of
Jacob; and here, if you like, today, a pale, clever young Mohammedan
will show you what he calls the coffin of Samuel.
II
THE HILL THAT JESUS LOVED
We had seen from Mizpah the sharp ridge of the Mount of Olives, rising
beyond Jerusalem. Our road thither from the camp led us around the city,
past the Damascus Gate, and the royal grottoes, and Herod's Gate, and
the Tower of the Storks, and St. Stephen's Gate, down into the Valley of
the Brook Kidron. Here, on the west, rises the precipitous Temple Hill
crowned with the wall of the city, and on the east the long ridge of
Olivet.