rill,” is an unattractive sink-hole of dirty water, surrounded by
modern masonry. The valley here is very stony. Just below we came to
Solomon's Garden, an arid spot, with patches of stonewalls, struggling
to be a vegetable-garden, and somewhat green with lettuce and Jerusalem
artichokes. I have no doubt it was quite another thing when Solomon and
some of his wives used to walk here in the cool of the day, and even
when Shallum, the son of Colhozeh, set up “the wall of the Pool of
Siloah by the king's garden.”
We continued on, down to Joab's Well, passing on the way Isaiah's
Tree, a decrepit sycamore propped up by a stone pillar, where that
prophet was sawn asunder. There is no end to the cheerful associations
of the valley. The Well of Joab, a hundred and twenty-five feet deep,
and walled and arched with fine masonry, has a great appearance of
antiquity. We plucked maidenhair from its crevices, and read the Old
Testament references. Near it is a square pool fed by its water. Some
little distance below this, the waters of all these wells, pools,
drains, sinks, or whatever they are, reappear bursting up through a
basin of sand and pebbles, as clear as crystal, and run brawling off
down the valley under a grove of large olive-trees,—a scene rural and
inviting.
I suppose it would be possible to trace the whole system of underground
water ways and cisterns, from Solomon's Pool, which send? its water
into town by an aqueduct near the Jaffa Gate, to Hezekiah's Pool, to
the cisterns under the Harem, and so out to the Virgin's Well, the
Pool of Siloam, and the final gush of sweet water below. This valley
drains, probably artificially as well as naturally, the whole city, for
no sewers exist in the latter.
We turned back from this sparkling brook, which speedily sinks into the
ground again, absorbed by the thirsty part of the valley called Tophet,
and went up the Valley of Hinnom, passing under the dark and frowning
ledges of Aceldama, honey-combed with tombs. In this “field of
blood” a grim stone structure forms the front of a natural cave, which
is the charnel-house where the dead were cast pell-mell, in the belief
that the salts in the earth would speedily consume them. The path we
travel is rugged, steep, and incredibly stony. The whole of this region
is inexpressibly desolate, worn-out, pale, uncanny. The height above
this rocky terrace, stuffed with the dead, is the Hill of Evil Counsel,
where the Jews took counsel against Jesus; and to add the last touch
of an harmonious picture, just above this Potter's Field stands
the accursed tree upon which Judas hanged himself, raising its
gaunt branches against the twilight sky, a very gallows-tree to the
imagination. It has borne no fruit since Iscariot. Towards dusk,
sometimes, as you stand on the wall by Zion Gate, you almost fancy you
can see him dangling there. It is of no use to tell me that the seed
that raised this tree could not have sprouted till a thousand years
after Judas was crumbled into dust; one must have faith in something.
This savage gorge, for the Valley of Hinnom is little more than that
in its narrowest part, has few associations that are not horrible. Here
Solomon set up the images (“the groves,” or the graven images),
and the temples for the lascivious rites of Ashta-roth or the human
sacrifices to Moloch. Here the Jews, the kings and successors of
Solomon, with a few exceptions, and save an occasional spasmodic
sacrifice to Jehovah when calamity made them fear him, practised all the
abominations of idolatry in use in that age. The Jews had always been
more or less addicted to the worship of the god of Ammon, but Solomon
first formally established it in Hinnom. Jeremiah writes of it
historically, “They have built the high places of Tophet, which is in
the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters
in the fire.” This Moloch was as ingenious a piece of cruelty as ever
tried the faith of heretics in later times, and, since it was purely
a means of human sacrifice, and not a means of grace (as Inquisitorial
tortures were supposed to be), its use is conclusive proof of the savage
barbarity of the people who delighted in it. Moloch was the monstrous
brass image of a man with the head of an ox. It was hollow, and the
interior contained a furnace by which the statue was made red-hot.
Children—the offerings to the god—were then placed in its glowing
arms, and drums were beaten to drown their cries. It is painful to
recall these things, but the traveller should always endeavor to obtain
the historical flavor of the place he visits.
Continuing our walks among the antiquities of Jerusalem, we went out of
the Damascus Gate, a noble battlemented structure, through which runs
the great northern highway to Samaria and Damascus. The road, however,
is a mere path over ledges and through loose stones, fit only for
donkeys. If Rehoboam went this way in his chariot to visit Jeroboam in
Samaria, there must have existed then a better road, or else the king
endured hard pounding for the sake of the dignity of his conveyance. As
soon as we left the gate we encountered hills of stones and paths of the
roughest description. There are several rock tombs on this side of the
city, but we entered only one, that called by some the Tombs of the
Kings, and by others, with more reason, the Tomb of Helena, a heathen
convert to Judaism, who built this sepulchre for herself early in the
first century. The tomb, excavated entirely in the solid rock, is a
spacious affair, having a large court and ornamented vestibule and many
chambers, extending far into the rock, and a singular network of narrow
passages and recesses for the deposit of the dead. It had one device
that is worthy of the ancient Egyptians. The entrance was closed by
a heavy square stone, so hung that it would yield to pressure from
without, but would swing to its place by its own weight, and fitted so
closely that it could not be moved from the inside. If any thief entered
the tomb and left this slab unsecured, he would be instantly caught
in the trap and become a permanent occupant. Large as the tomb is,
its execution is mean compared with the rock tombs of Egypt; but the
exterior stone of the court, from its exposure in this damp and variable
climate, appears older than Egyptian work which has been uncovered three
times as long.
At the tomb we encountered a dozen students from the Latin convent,
fine-looking fellows in long blue-black gowns, red caps, and red sashes.
They sat upon the grass, on the brink of the excavation, stringing
rosaries and singing student songs, with evident enjoyment of the
hour's freedom from the school; they not only made a picturesque
appearance, but they impressed us also as a Jerusalem group which was
neither sinful nor dirty. Beyond this tomb we noticed a handsome modern
dwelling-house; you see others on various eminences outside the city,
and we noted them as the most encouraging sign of prosperity about
Jerusalem.
We returned over the hill and by the city wall, passing the Cave of
Jeremiah and the door in the wall that opens into the stone quarries of
Solomon. These quarries underlie a considerable portion of the city, and
furnished the stone for its ancient buildings. I will not impose upon
you a description of them; for it would be unfair to send you into
disagreeable places that I did not explore myself.
The so-called Grotto of Jeremiah is a natural cavern in the rocky hill,
vast in extent, I think thirty feet high and a hundred feet long by
seventy broad,—as big as a church. The tradition is that Jeremiah
lived and lamented here. In front of the cave are cut stones and pieces
of polished columns built into walls and seats; these fragments seem
to indicate the former existence here of a Roman temple. The cave is
occupied by an old dervish, who has a house in a rock near by, and uses
the cavern as a cool retreat and a stable for his donkey. His rocky home
is shared by his wife and family. He said that it was better to live
alone, apart from the world and its snares. He, however, finds the
reputation of Jeremiah profitable, selling admission to the cave at
a franc a head, and, judging by the women and children about him, he
seemed to have family enough not to be lonely.
The sojourner in Jerusalem who does not care for antiquities can always
entertain himself by a study of the pilgrims who throng the city at
this season. We hear more of the pilgrimage to Mecca than of that to
Jerusalem; but I think the latter is the more remarkable phenomenon
of our modern life; I believe it equals the former, which is usually
overrated, in numbers, and it certainly equals it in zeal and surpasses
it in the variety of nationalities represented. The pilgrims of the
cross increase yearly; to supply their wants, to minister to their
credulity, to traffic on their faith, is the great business of the Holy
City. Few, I imagine, who are not in Palestine in the spring, have any
idea of the extent of this vast yearly movement of Christian people upon
the Holy Land, or of the simple zeal which characterizes it. If it were
in any way obstructed or hindered, we should have a repetition of the
Crusades, on a vaster scale and gathered from a broader area than the
wildest pilgrimage of the holy war. The driblets of travel from America
and from Western Europe are as nothing in the crowds thronging to
Jerusalem from Ethiopia to Siberia, from the Baltic to the Ural
Mountains. Already for a year before the Easter season have they been on
foot, slowly pushing their way across great steppes, through snows and
over rivers, crossing deserts and traversing unfriendly countries;
the old, the infirm, women as well as men, their faces set towards
Jerusalem. No common curiosity moves this mass, from Ethiopia, from
Egypt, from Russia, from European Turkey, from Asia Minor, from the
banks of the Tagus and the Araxes; it is a true pilgrimage of faith, the
one event in a life of dull monotony and sordid cares, the one ecstasy
of poetry in an existence of poverty and ignorance.
We spent a morning in the Russian Hospice, which occupies the hill to
the northwest of the city. It is a fine pile of buildings, the most
conspicuous of which, on account of its dome, is the church, a large
edifice with a showy exterior, but of no great merit or interest. We
were shown some holy pictures which are set in frames incrusted with
diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other precious gems, the offerings of
rich devotees, and displaying their wealth rather than their taste.
The establishment has one building for the accommodation of rich
pilgrims, and a larger one set apart for peasants. The hospice lodges,
free of charge, all the Russian pilgrims. The exterior court was full of
them. They were sunning themselves, but not inclined to lay aside their
hot furs and heavy woollens. We passed into the interior, entering room
after room occupied by the pilgrims, who regarded our intrusion with
good-natured indifference, or frankly returned our curiosity. Some of
the rooms were large, furnished with broad divans about the sides, which
served for beds and lounging-places, and were occupied by both sexes.
The women, rosy-cheeked, light-haired, broad, honest-looking creatures,
were mending their clothes; the men were snoozing on the divans, flat on
their backs, presenting to the spectator the bottoms of their monstrous
shoes, which had soles eight inches broad; a side of leather would be
needed for a pair. In these not very savory rooms they cook, eat, and
sleep. Here stood their stoves; here hung their pilgrim knapsacks; here
were their kits of shoemaker's tools, for mending their foot-gear,
which they had tugged thousands of miles; here were household effects
that made their march appear more like an emigration than a pilgrimage;
here were the staring pictures of St. George and the Dragon, and of
other saints, the beads and the other relics, which they had bought in
Jerusalem.
Although all these pilgrims owed allegiance to the Czar, they
represented a considerable variety of races. They came from Archangel,
from Tobolsk, from the banks of the Ural, from Kurland; they had found
their way along the Danube, the Dnieper, the Don. I spoke with a group
of men and women who had walked over two thousand miles before they
reached Odessa and took ship for Jaffa. There were among them Cossacks,
wild and untidy, light-haired barbarians from the Caucasus, dark-skinned
men and women from Moscow, representatives from the remotest provinces
of great Russia; for the most part simple, rude, clumsy, honest
boors. In an interior court we found men and women seated on the sunny
flagging, busily occupied in arranging and packing the souvenirs of
their visit. There was rosemary spread out to dry; there were little
round cakes of blessed bread stamped with the image of the Saviour;
there were branches of palm, crowns of thorns, and stalks of cane cut at
the Jordan; there were tin cases of Jordan water; there were long strips
of cotton cloth stamped in black with various insignia of death, to
serve at home for coffin-covers; there were skull-caps in red, yellow,
and white, also stamped with holy images, to be put on the heads of
the dead. I could not but in mind follow these people to their distant
homes, and think of the pride with which they would show these trophies
of their pilgrimage; how the rude neighbors would handle with awe a
stick cut on the banks of the Jordan, or eat with faith a bit of the
holy bread. How sacred, in those homes of frost and snow, will not these
mementos of a land of sun, of a land so sacred, become! I can see the
wooden chest in the cabin where the rosemary will be treasured, keeping
sweet, against the day of need, the caps and the shrouds.
These people will need to make a good many more pilgrimages, and perhaps
to quit their morose land altogether, before they can fairly rank
among the civilized of the earth. They were thickset, padded-legged,
short-bodied, unintelligent. The faces of many of them were worn, as if
storm-beaten, and some kept their eyes half closed, as if they were long
used to face the sleet and blasts of winter; and I noticed that it gave
their faces a very different expression from that produced by the habit
the Egyptians have of drawing the eyelids close together on account of
the glare of the sun.
We took donkeys one lovely morning, and rode from the Jaffa Gate around
the walls on our way to the Mount of Olives. The Jerusalem donkey is a
good enough donkey, but he won't go. He is ridden with a halter, and
never so elegantly caparisoned as his more genteel brother in Cairo. In
order to get him along at all, it needs one man to pull the halter
and another to follow behind with a stick; the donkey then moves by
inches,—if he is in the humor. The animal that I rode stopped at once,
when he perceived that his driver was absent. No persuasions of mine,
such as kicks and whacks of a heavy stick, could move him on; he would
turn out of the road, put his head against the wall, and pretend to go
to sleep. You would not suppose it possible for a beast to exhibit so
much contempt for a man.
On the high ground outside the wall were pitched the tents of
travellers, making a very pretty effect amid the olive-trees and the
gray rocks. Now and then an Arab horseman came charging down the road,
or a Turkish official cantered by; women, veiled, clad in white
balloon robes that covered them from head to foot, flitted along in the
sunshine, mere white appearances of women, to whom it was impossible to
attribute any such errand as going to market; they seemed always to be
going to or returning from the cemetery.
Our way lay down the rough path and the winding road to the bottom
of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Leaving the Garden of Gethsemane on our
right, we climbed up the rugged, stony, steep path to the summit of the
hill. There are a few olive-trees on the way, enough to hinder the
view where the stone-walls would permit us to see anything; importunate
begging Moslems beset us; all along the route we encountered shabbiness
and squalor. The rural sweetness and peace that we associate with this
dear mount appear to have been worn away centuries ago. We did not
expect too much, but we were not prepared for such a shabby show-place.
If we could sweep away all the filthy habitations and hideous buildings
on the hill, and leave it to nature, or, indeed, convert the surface
into a well-ordered garden, the spot would be one of the most attractive
in the world.
We hoped that when we reached the summit we should come into an open,
green, and shady place, free from the disagreeable presence of human
greed and all the artificiality that interposed itself between us and
the sentiment of the place. But the traveller need not expect that in
Palestine. Everything is staked out and made a show of. Arrived at
the summit, we could see little or nothing; it is crowned with the
dilapidated Chapel of the Ascension. We entered a dirty court, where
the custodian and his family and his animals live, and from thence were
admitted to the church. In the pavement is shown the footprint of our
ascending Lord, although the Ascension was made at Bethany. We paid
the custodian for permission to see this manufactured scene of the
Ascension. The best point of view to be had here is the old tower of the
deserted convent, or the narrow passage to it on the wall, or the top
of the minaret near the church. There is no place on wall or tower where
one can sit; there is no place anywhere here to sit down, and in peace
and quiet enjoy the magnificent prospect, and meditate on the most
momentous event in human history. We snatched the view in the midst of
annoyances. The most minute features of it are known to every one who
reads. The portion of it I did not seem to have been long familiar with
is that to the east, comprising the Jordan valley, the mountains of
Moab, and the Dead Sea.
Although this mount is consecrated by the frequent presence of Christ,
who so often crossed it in going to and from Bethany, and retired here
to meditate and to commune with his loved followers, everything that the
traveller at present encounters on its summit is out of sympathy with
his memory. We escaped from the beggars and the showmen, climbed some
stone-walls, and in a rough field near the brow of the hill, in a
position neither comfortable nor private, but the best that we found,
read the chief events in the life of Christ connected with this mount,
the triumphal entry, and the last scenes transacted on yonder hill. And
we endeavored to make the divine man live again, who so often and so
sorrowfully regarded the then shining city of Zion from this height.
To the south of the church and a little down the hill is the so-called
site of the giving of the Lord's Prayer. I do not know on what
authority it is thus named. A chapel is built to mark the spot, and a
considerable space is enclosed before it, in which are other objects of
interest, and these were shown to us by a pleasant-spoken lady, who is
connected with the convent, and has faith equal to the demands of her
position. We first entered a subterranean vaulted room, with twelve
rough half-pillars on each side, called the room where the Apostles
composed the creed. We then passed into the chapel. Upon the four walls
of its arcade is written, in great characters, the Lord's Prayer in
thirty-two languages; among them the “Canadian.”
In a little side chapel is the tomb of Aurelia de Bossa, Princesse de
la Tour d'.uvergne, Duchesse de Bouillon, the lady whose munificence
established this chapel and executed the prayer in so many tongues. Upon
the side of the tomb this fact of her benevolence is announced, and the
expectation is also expressed, in French, that “God will overwhelm her
with blessing for ever and ever for her good deed.” Stretched upon the
sarcophagus is a beautiful marble effigy of the princess; the figure is
lovely, the face is sweet and seraphic, and it is a perfect likeness of
her ladyship.
I do not speak at random. I happen to know that it is a perfect
likeness, for a few minutes after I saw it, I met her in the corridor,
in a semi-nunlike costume, with a heavy cross hanging by a long gold
chain at her side. About her forehead was bound a barbarous frontlet
composed of some two hundred gold coins, and ornaments not unlike those
worn by the ladies of the ancient Egyptians. This incongruity of
costume made me hesitate whether to recognize in this dazzling vision
of womanhood a priestess of Astarte or of Christ. At the farther
door, Aurelia de Bossa, Princesse de la Tour d'.uvergne, Duchesse de
Bouillon, stopped and blew shrilly a silver whistle which hung at her
girdle, to call her straying poodle, or to summon a servant. In the rear
of the chapel this lady lives in a very pretty house, and near it she
was building a convent for Carmelite nuns. I cannot but regard her as
the most fortunate of her sex. She enjoys not only this life, but, at
the same time, all the posthumous reputation that a lovely tomb and a
record of her munificence engraved thereon can give. We sometimes hear
of, but we seldom see, a person, in these degenerate days, living in
this world as if already in the other.
We went on over the hill to Bethany; we had climbed up by the path on
which David fled from Absalom, and we were to return by the road of the
Triumphal Entry. All along the ridge we enjoyed a magnificent panorama:
a blue piece of the Dead Sea, the Jordan plain extending far up towards
Herraon with the green ribbon of the river winding through it, and the
long, even range of the Moab hills, blue in the distance. The prospect
was almost Swiss in its character, but it is a mass of bare hills, with
scarcely a tree except in the immediate foreground, and so naked and
desolate as to make the heart ache; it would be entirely desolate but
for the deep blue of the sky and an atmosphere that bathes all the great
sweep of peaks and plains in color.
Bethany is a squalid hamlet clinging to the rocky hillside, with only
one redeeming feature about it,—the prospect. A few wretched one-story
huts of stone, and a miserable handful of Moslems, occupy this favorite
home and resting-place of our Lord. Close at hand, by the roadside, cut
in the rock and reached by a steep descent of twenty-six steps, is the
damp and doubtful tomb of Lazarus, down into which any one may go for
half a franc paid to the Moslem guardian. The house of Mary and Martha
is exhibited among the big rocks and fragments of walls; upon older
foundations loose walls are laid, rudely and recently patched up with
cut stones in fragments, and pieces of Roman columns. The house of Simon
the leper, overlooking the whole, is a mere heap of ruins. It does not
matter, however, that all these dwellings are modern; this is Bethany,
and when we get away from its present wretchedness we remember only that
we have seen the very place that Christ loved.
We returned along the highway of the Entry slowly, pausing to identify
the points of that memorable progress, up to the crest where Jerusalem
broke upon the sight of the Lord, and whence the procession, coming
round the curve of the hill, would have the full view of the city. He
who rides that way to-day has a grand prospect. One finds Jerusalem most
poetic when seen from Olivet, and Olivet most lovely when seen from the
distance of the city walls.
At the foot of the descent we turned and entered the enclosure of the
Garden of Gethsemane. Three stone-wall enclosures here claim to be the
real garden; one is owned by the Greeks, another by the Armenians,
the third by the Latins. We chose the last, as it is the largest and
pleasantest; perhaps the garden, which was certainly in this vicinity,
once included them all. After some delay we were admitted by a small
door in the wall, and taken charge of by a Latin monk, whose young and
sweet face was not out of sympathy with the place. The garden contains
a few aged olive-trees, and some small plots of earth, fenced about and
secured by locked gates, in which flowers grow. The guardian gave us
some falling roses, and did what he could to relieve the scene of its
artificial appearance; around the wall, inside, are the twelve stations
of the Passion, in the usual tawdry style.