THE METROPOLITAN.

No. CI.

SEPTEMBER, 1889.

66

crowd around the sacred shrines of the holy We made the circuit of the present walls city, and no longer make the circuit of the of Jerusalem, and, guided by the descripvia dolorosa barefooted, and clad in sackcloth. tion of Josephus, we satisfactorily determinThe enterprising spirit of modern times, and ed in our own minds the boundaries of the the increased facilities of travelling, have ancient city. On all sides, except the north, caused the holy land to be extensively visit- its circuit is defined by natural landmarks, ed by a crowd of passengers who have ex- which cannot be mistaken or removed. The amined and criticised the monkish tales and "impassable valleys" of Josephus, and the the priestly delusions with an unusual degree deep ravines" of Strabo, described as enof freedom, and have treated them in a very compassing the city on the south-east and different light from the simple-minded, ignor- west, still render the modern town "strong ant, and superstitious devotees, who wildly by nature" on all sides excepting on Mount imagine themselves secure of salvation if Zion, where the modern wall is not pushed they have only made "the holy pilgrimage." out to the edge of the precipice, but leaves The Europeans have become more enlight- a considerable part of the ancient mount ened, and have adopted wiser and better outside it. It is only on the north, where the notions upon the subject of religion, and are ancient city was not fortified by nature, that unwilling to undergo the expense and fatigue any doubt can exist as to the extent of ground of so long and painful a journey without an which it covered. On this side, however, adequate compensation. But among the it is evident that the ancient Jerusalem exChristians scattered throughout the East the tended a full mile beyond the limits of the strange notions and wild delusions engender- present northern wall, the ground being ed by superstition and ignorance still prevail, everywhere covered with innumerable and are encouraged by the zeal oravarice of square pieces of mosaic pavement, remains the priests and monks, who receive presents of the domestic habitations of the ancient and offerings from the deluded worshippers. The pilgrims of the Greek church still crowd to Jerusalem chiefly under the fond idea that if they can obtain candles lighted from "the holy Greek fire," they will, at whatsoever person's funeral they may afterwards be burned, assuredly save his soul from punish. ment in an after state of existence! Others crowd to the Jordan, bathe themselves in the sacred stream, and dip their garments in the water; these garments are then carried home with them, and carefully preserved for their winding-sheets!

The Armenian Catholics are very careful to have a proper certificate of their having visited every one of the holy places, and of their having diligently repeated all the prayers prepared for the occasion. They then get their arms indelibly marked with holy devices, and go home under the idea that they are a great many steps nearer heaven than when they originally set out on their journey!

November 24th.-We passed out of the gate in the northern wall of the city, called Ephraim's Gate, and traversed the Moslem cemetery, which closely adjoins it. The small marble monuments of the Mussulmen are scattered over some bare and naked eminences, and a humble place of prayer, with a low whitewashed dome, skirts the edge of the solitary burying-ground. The tall and majestic forests of cypresses, which cluster thick around the Moslem cemeteries in the north, here no longer overshadow the earth, and extend not that deep and solemn gloom over the graves of the dead, which creates so awe-inspiring and thrilling an effect in the solemn, solitary burying-grounds of Anatolia, and European Turkey, where on the green turf

"Roses rear

Their leaves, the earliest of the year;

And the wild cypress waves in tender gloom."

Jews.

On all the other sides of Jerusalem, where the city was fortified by nature, one wall only sufficed for the protection of the town, but on this northern side, all the resources of art were applied to strengthen its defences. Three enormous and almost impregnable walls were built, one behind the other. Each wall was thirty-seven feet in height, and fifteen feet in breadth, and was constructed of enormous stones thirty feet long, and fifteen broad; but so complete was the destruction of the ancient city by Titus, that not a vestige of these stupendous artificial defences has ever since been discovered, and their exact position cannot now be accurately determined. It seems, however, from Josephus, that they passed near to the sepulchre of the kings, and ran parallel with the present northern wall, but at the distance of about a mile from it. By following, therefore, this line, until we come to the ravines at either end, and then skirting along the edge of the eastern and western declivities, until we reach the modern fortifications, we have a tolerably exact idea of the extent of ground covered by the ancient Jerusalem.

The eminence to the northward beyond the sepulchres of the kings is the Hill Scopus, on which the main body of the Roman army under Titus encamped. They cut down all the trees which once covered all the sloping ground between the base of the hill and the northern walls. The tenth legion, which came from Jericho, after joining a strong division of the Roman forces, encamped along the declivities of the Mount of Olives, fronting the temple.

In the afternoon we passed along el harat bab hotta, "the street of the gate of the temple," to el harat el Yaoud, "the street of the Jews," a confined and dirty quarter, close by the public shambles, where the small band of Jews still existing in Jerusalem have their

habitations and their synagogue. It is curi- Christians and the Jews there still exist great ous and interesting to observe the different antipathy and dislike, although the days of races, which here keep themselves entirely the persecution by the Christians, and the distinct and separate - isolated classes of time when they excluded the Jews from the people, who intermarry not with each other, holy city, have long since passed away. follow not the same rites and customs, and scarcely condescend to a friendly inter

course.

In exploring the Jewish quarter, we traversed several narrow, gloomy, and ruinous streets, and constantly ascended and deWe have first the petty tribe of Jews band- scended declivities, covered with stones, rubed together in the filthiest and most miser- bish, and offal, cast out from the doorways able part of the town, cut off from the rest of the mean and dilapidated dwellings. The of the city, and living as slaves and strangers Jews of Jerusalem seem to be poorer and far in their own rightful country. They are the worse off in respect of comfort, than their genuine descendants of that chosen race, brethren at Tiberias; but although their who near three thousand years back conquer- dwellings have a dirty and very forbidding ed and colonised the land under the guid- external aspect, yet they often very much ance and command of Joshua. During all improve on getting inside. I made acquaintthe successive conquests and colonisations ance with a Jew who spoke a little English, of the Holy Land, they have obstinately ad- and also Italian; I was introduced to his hered to their own peculiar rites and unsocial house, the rooms of which were comfortably manners, have intermarried only with each carpeted and matted, and two handsome other, and have consequently wonderfully dark-eyed girls, his daughters, with long rapreserved the distinguishing peculiarities ven tresses, and naked feet, wandered about and characteristics of their race and nation. the dwelling, and did the honours with great Neither the successive destructions of Jeru- grace and courtesy. All the Jewesses here, salem, and dispersion of the Jews, neither as at Tiberias, go without veils, and in their the violence of the Romans, the Persians, dress, manner, and appearance, they are far the Turcoman hordes, nor the sword of the more European than Asiatic. Coffee and Saracens, has sufficed utterly to extinguish sweetmeats were handed round, and large the Jewish race in Palestine, nor to break goblets of cold water. down those peculiar and exclusive institutions and manners which mark out the Jews as a distinct and isolated people amongst the great family of the world. Most of the great nations who successively conquered Palestine, and established their dominion at Jerusalem, exist no more; but the Jews still linger on in the land of their fathers, a despised and abject tribe, the victims of insult and degradation. Their miserable habitations still cluster among mounds of stone and rubbish, between the site of the temple and Mount Zion, and amid all their calamities they still fondly cherish the expectation of "the promised Messiah.”

We passed along a most miserable deserted street, bordered by mounds of rubbish, heaps of stone, and crumbling and dilapidated dwellings, to the synagogue, which is small, mean, and miserable. It was empty and silent, except when the wind shook the crazy lattices, and whistled shrilly through the chinks of the doors and the shutters. On leaving the synagogue, we observed various lean-visaged old men and women, with withered and hungry aspects, crouched under the crumbling porches of the doors, or sheltering themselves from the wind behind some of the tottering walls and crumbling mounds of rubbish which here encumber and choke up all the vacant spaces of ground.

The Jews, I am told, still resort, on certain feast days, privately and in small groups, to the large stones forming the foundation of the eastern wall of the town, which have been supposed to be remains of the platform raised by Herod as the foundation for his temple. Here they mourn over the fallen fortunes of their country, and pray for the redemption of "the captive daughter of Zion."

The next curious and interesting class of people at Jerusalem are the Greek Christians, the descendants of those subjects of the Roman empire who conquered or colonised the Holy Land, passing over from Italy and the eastern provinces to occupy the waste lands and deserted dwellings of the slaughtered Jews. When Jerusalem was delivered up into the hands of the Moslems, the Greek Christians were compelled to congregate together in the same quarter of the town, which they have ever since continued to oc- In the afternoon we crossed the brook Cecupy. An impassable line of division was dron, and visited the small village of Siloa, drawn between them and their conquerors which is seated on the steep eminences that by the difference of religion; and, despised rise above the southern end of the valley of and shunned by their new masters, they were Jehoshaphat. Several mud huts and miserdriven to associate exclusively with each able habitations without roofs are scattered other, and to intermarry among themselves. over the bare surface of the rocks, and The language, customs, and distinguishing among them are numerous sepulchral grotpeculiarities of this people have consequent- tos, which are here thickly inhabited. All ly been strictly preserved, and in feature, the rocks around Jerusalem, as has been beappearance, dress, and manner, as well as fore observed, are excavated into caverns language, they are at once distinguishable and chambers, forming one vast ancient from the Jews, and from their Arab masters, cemetery. These chambers, which have among whom they dwell. Between these been long despoiled of the bones of their for

mer occupants, and left open and neglected, proudly upon the site of the ancient Temple are now considered fit and comfortable habi- of Solomon, and when within view, and tations for the living, being tenanted by va- within hearing, of the place of the crucifixion rious poor families, who, having no other of Jesus Christ, "the eternal truth and the place of residence, "remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments."*

I entered several of these subterranean retreats, and found a quantity of dirty squalid children, rolling like a litter of young pigs upon some loose straw. The receptacles and niches for coffins are used for the domestic purposes of the inmates, and on a ledge, whereon once rested a dead body, was now quietly cradled a sleeping infant!

necessary fiction" are loudly proclaimed La i-lah i-lah Allah, Mohammed re sul Allah, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is God's apostle !"

Such is the cry that at noon and midnight, at sunrise and sunset, echoed and re-echoed from mosque and minaret, now strikes upon the ear of the stranger as he directs his footsteps in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

As I sat upon the mount of Olives, watchFrom this village I ascended the southern ing the departure of the last rays of the sun acclivities of the Mount of Olives, and tra- from the summit of the neighbouring eminen. versed a succession of bare rugged ledges of ces, a long train of reflections connected with rock, on whose arid surface not even a blade the past history and present condition of this of grass, or a clump of moss, vegetated. We interesting country, naturally forced them. then crossed a wide district, covered with selves upon my mind. In the valley of Jesmall stones, by searching among which I hoshaphat, which lay extended in deep shade picked up at almost every step numerous below, the Jews erected those "sacred groves" small fragments of ancient Mosaic pave- and "high places," where human sacrifices ments, exactly similar to the common pave- were offered to Moloch, where Baalphegor ments in the houses at Pompeii, and in an- was worshipped, and also "the sun, the moon, cient Roman villas. It is evident that all the planets, and all the host of heaven." The this stony and barren district was in times Jews, we are told, “built them high places, and past covered with buildings and domestic images, and groves, on every high hill, and habitations. under every green tree, and provoked the Lord to jealousy with their sins which they committed."

We had enjoyed a brilliant and unclouded day, and the sun was just sinking behind the lofty eminences of "the hill country of Ju- From a recollection of the disobedience of dea," when we passed onward to the summit the Jews, and their refusal "to walk in the of the Mount of Olives. It was the hour of ways of the Lord, and keep his commandprayer the hour when the Caliph Omar ments," the mind is naturally led to a constood with the patriarch of Jerusalem in the sideration of the fate and fortunes of the church of the holy sepulchre on the day of country since the Jews have been plucked the surrender of the city to the Moslems," from off the land," and also of its present when the voice of the muezzin was first heard, calling the “true believers" to prayer within the walls, and announcing the triumph of the crescent over the cross.

miserable condition under the iron yoke of the Moslems.

The bare and desolate aspect of the surrounding landscape from the summit of the Mount of Olives, the rugged rocks, and bar

present a strange and striking contrast to the hasty and glowing descriptions we meet with in sacred and profane history, of the environs of Jerusalem in ancient times, when

Sunset is always the most heavenly and delicious period of the whole day in south-ren shingle, without trees and without water, ern climates, and I had ascended the mount for the purpose of taking a farewell look at "the city sitting solitary," "the virgin daughter of Zion." We seated ourselves upon some naked rocks, and casting our rivers and streams of water made glad the eyes over the tops of some olive trees, which city of the Lord," and "the waters of Shiwere thinly scattered along the sides of the loah flowed softly," rejoicing, as we are told, declivities below, we gazed on the minarets in their tributary streams, and when gardens of the mosque of Omar, and listened atten- and groves of trees caused the city to be celtively to catch, amid the silence and tran- ebrated as "beautiful for situation." quillity of the evening, the customary chant What a remarkable and striking contrast of the muezzins calling the faithful Moslems does all the country now present to its an. to the solemn, and by them almost never-cient state, when the spice merchants fre neglected, duty of prayer. The musical and quented the markets of Palestine, and the long-drawn chant summoning the population to withdraw their thoughts for a space from the busy and absorbing occupations of the world, heard at early morning, in the dead of night, or at the hour of sunset, ever produces a powerful impression upon the mind of the European wanderer in eastern climes; but how much is the effect heightened when the same notes are heard loudly chanted from the towers that now rear themselves so

* Isaiah.

fleets of Tyre ministered to the wants and luxuries of the people; when the city of Jerusalem possessed its mighty men of valour, "three hundred thousand, with the captains of thousands, and Adnan the chief;" and when the king thereof had "four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen !" In those times the land was covered with "fenced cities, castles, and cities of store, and chariot cities," which sent forth an army of men that bare targets and spears, out of Judah three hun