CHAPTER XXX--THE LIONS OF JERUSALEM.--THE TEMPLE, THE SEPULCHRE, AND THE HOLY OF HOLIES.

_First Sights in Jerusalem--Appearance of the streets--What the “Doubter” thought--A change of opinion--The Tower of David--The Street of David--Church of the Holy Sepulchre--Scenes around it--Palace of the Knights of St. John--Via Dolorosa--Damascus’ Gate--Walls of the Holy City--Visiting the Temple--The Haram and Mosque of Omar--Visaing the Substructions--A triple veneration--Place of Wailing--The Quarries--Remains of an Ancient Bridge._

AS soon as we were fairly in Jerusalem and had brushed up a little, we started out to see some of the many sights that the city contains.

Apart from its historical interest and the picturesque appearance of its walls, towers, and domes, Jerusalem is the reverse of pleasing. Its streets are narrow and badly paved, and no effort is made to keep them clean. Some of the narrow ones are particularly filthy, and one must have good boots and be careful about his steps to walk safely along these ways. I laughed inwardly as {382}the “Doubter” hesitated at some of the corners and showed a determination to turn back, or rather an uncertainty about going forward.

When we descended the Danube, we stopped a short time at Belgrade, the capital of Servia, and standing on the frontier between the Occident and the Orient. The pavement there was rougher than that of European cities, and the “Doubter” doubted if there was anything worse in the world.

“Let us hurry up,” said he, “and get to Constantinople or Jerusalem where the streets are better.”

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{385} “Why, my dear “Doubter,” said I, “these are far better than the streets in those cities. They have worse pavements and deeper mud.”

“I know better,” was his rejoinder, and that closed the argument. I said nothing till I had him climbing the wide street that leads from Top-Hané to the Hotel de Byzance in Constantinople, and there I gave him a little prod about Belgrade. He got out of it by saying that he knew Jerusalem was much better.

Naturally, I was pleased when I managed to get him between two mountains of mud, or something of the sort, in a narrow street in Jerusalem, and just as he was extricating himself, I asked about Belgrade.

He made no reply that I heard, but I saw his lips moving and his mental agitation was so great that he slipped and fell where the mud was worst. He was not presentable in polite society after that, but rather looked as though he had been hired out by the day as a friction roller for smoothing a freshly flowed swamp.

From the front of the hotel, one can see the Tower of David, the structure which King David erected upon Mount Zion, according to Biblical history.

From the Jaffa gate, also called the Hebron, and the Mediterranean gate, runs the street of David, descending the hill and subsequently ascending another to Mount Moriah Our first walk was down the street of David to the first turning to the left.

This took us into Christ street, and a walk of three or four minutes there brought us, by a single turning, into the space in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This space was full of beggars, and of people selling various sorts of ornaments and relics. Some had rosaries made of various kinds of wood, generally of the olive tree or the seeds of the olive; some had crosses and holy pictures cut in mother of pearl; and others had old coins or stone ornaments made of pieces of the Temple of Jerusalem. The traders and beggars were very persistent, and one could not stand a minute in contemplation of the building without being annoyed by the one class or the other. More than one of us wished that a scourge could be set in motion to drive away these pests from the exterior of a building, which is regarded with special interest by all Christian people. {386}We could not enter the church at that hour, and so we contented ourselves with a visit to the hospital of the Knights of St. John, or rather to its ruins. We walked along the Via Dolorosa and were shown the supposed spot where Christ rested his cross, then we went along the street of the Gate of the Column and the street of the Palace, to the Damascus Gate.

Then, as it was approaching sunset, we returned to the hotel and had a pleasant conversation with Dr. De Hass, our newly appointed Consul to Jerusalem.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped in two or three of the many shops where olive wood is wrought into various interesting forms for strangers to buy and carry away. It seemed as if about one-fifth of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were engaged in the manufacture of objects of olive wood. Canes, boxes, portfolios, candle-sticks, and a hundred other things were made of olive wood, and some of them were very pretty. {387}Jerusalem is the same towered city as of old, and her walls have a massive appearance. Sultan Suleiman erected them, as they now stand, in the year 1542; but portions of them were standing before that time, and some of the towers have undergone very little change in the various calamities which the city has suffered.

The latter portions were built from the ruins of the older walls and generally on the sites of their predecessors, so that the city has preserved its form with but little alteration.

The distance around the walls is about two and a half miles, and in this distance there are five gates; the most important of these are the Jaffa gate and the Damascus gate, the others being but little used There are two gates wholly or partially walled up; one of them being the Golden Gate on Mount Moriah, and the other, the gate of Herod. The principal streets of the city run at right angles, and by them Jerusalem is divided into the Moslem, the Christian, the Jewish, and the American quarters.

So much for the general description of Jerusalem.

To those familiar with Bible history, the enumeration of the holy places of Jerusalem would be to repeat many names with which they are already familiar; to those who are not Biblical students, the list would be tediously long; I shall therefore confine my account of Jerusalem to the story cf what we saw and did during our brief stay. Any one wishing to know more of the city has doubtless within his reach one or more books, that will give the required information. A perusal of the Bible, especially of those portions describing Jerusalem, would not prove at all injurious.

We entered by a gate in the wall, and the transition was quite sudden from the confused mass of houses where we had been wandering to the open space of the Haram. We ascended a flight of steps to a broad platform, and stood in front of Kubbet-es-Sukrah, or Dome of the Rock, as the central mosque is called.

It is generally known as the Mosque of Omar, for the reason that the Kalif Omar is credited with its construction. There {388}Accompanied by a guide and by a janizary of the consulate, we started out of the hotel in the morning and descended the street of David to the entrance of the Haram or Sacred Enclosure, the name given by the Arabs to the portion of Mount Moriah that contains the Mosques of Omar and El-Aska, and formerly contained the great temple built by King Solomon.

The Haram occupies a large space, almost equal to a fourth of the city; it is surrounded by strong walls and is dotted with platforms, niches for prayer, cupolas and olive trees in addition to {389}are two or three stories about its origin, but, whatever that may have been, the architect deserves great credit for erecting a building beautiful in itself and quite in keeping with the surroundings.

It stands on the very summit of Mount Moriah on the sacred rock, supposed to have been the site of the threshing floor of Or-nan, the Jebusite, which King David bought for fifty shekels of silver. The building is octagonal, and each of the sides measure sixty-seven feet. The octagonal form is preserved in the interior, where the rock is inclosed in a railing and rises above the level of the floor.

Unfortunately, the mosque was undergoing repairs at the time of our visit, and the interior was full of scaffolding, while the floor was covered with rubbish.

But we could see enough to show that the mosque is a structure of great beauty. The lower part of the wall is composed of colored marbles in complex patterns, and the upper part contains no less than fifty-six windows of stained glass, equalling in beauty anything that can be found in Westminster Abbey or the cathedrals of Europe.

The dome presents an imposing appearance, whether seen from the outside or from within. Externally it is a prominent feature of Jerusalem, and no picture of the holy city would be complete without it.

Antiquarians are in doubt as to the extent of the great temple, but there is likely to be a complete solution of the difficult questions when the work of the Palestine Exploration Society is finished. The English and American sections are working in perfect harmony, and have portioned out their territories so that they shall not come in contact or perform the same work twice over. Part of their efforts are directed to settling the discussions about the extent of Solomon’s Temple, and they have already made some important discoveries. {390}We were shown the localities of the excavations, and after visiting the two mosques in the Haram we went below ground to look at the substruction of the great temple. We descended a flight of steps into a subterranean apartment where there is a sculptured niche, which bears the name of “The Cradle of Jesus”.

Our guide lighted some candles, and we kept on down another flight of steps that brought us into some vaults, containing numerous pillars about five feet square and constructed of huge stones. The t arches supported by these pillars were generally semi-circ ul ar, and the whole work had an appearance of great durability. Only a portion of this subterranean space has been explored, and the extent of the arched space is unknown. These were for the purpose of making the ground level and thus prepare it for the foundation of the great temple.

We were shown some roots of trees that have made their way through the platform and run a long distance through the underground debris. The crusaders used these vaults as stables, and some of the holes in the pillars where they fastened their horses can still be seen. None of the horses are there.

Jerusalem is emphatically the Holy City. It is a little singular that it should be venerated by the disciples of three great teachers, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed, and that while Christians

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{393}call it the Sacred City, the Arabs should have almost a similar title for it. Its Arabic name _El-Kuds_ signifies “The Holy,” and the rock beneath the dome of the Mosque of Omar is the locality of the triple veneration.

At the south-east corner of the rock, we were conducted into a chamber or excavation, called the Noble Cave. It is asserted to be the praying place of Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus, and in its center there is a slab of marble covering a cavity, which is called the well of spirits by the Moslems. Some call it the gate of Paradise and others say it leads to a place whose character is quite the reverse. The guide stamped upon it, and the sound that resulted showed that the place was hollow.

It is generally claimed that this rock, now covered by the dome of the mosque, was the site of the altar of Solomon’s Temple. The Jews used to come to this rock as far back as the fourth century to wail over the departed glories of Jerusalem; but when the Moslems took the city, and appropriated the spot, a new wailing place was selected On one corner of the rock the guide showed the footprints of Mohammed, where his foot last touched the earth when he went up to heaven; and near it is the hand {394}print of the Angel, who seized the rock and held it down to prevent its going to heaven along with the Prophet.

Thus the Jews revere the spot as the site of the altar of their temple; the Christians revere it as the praying place of Jesus, and the Moslems revere it for the reason above given. Strange indeed that it should thus be the sacred spot of three distinct religions. No other place of the globe compares with it in holiness.

We looked from the walls of the temple over into the Valley of Jehoshaphat and saw Absalom’s pillar and other objects of interest. The garden of Gethsemane was pointed out, and over against us was the Mount of Olives with its triple summit and the crown of the Church of the Ascension, and the building erected by the _Princesse de la tour l’Auvergne_. The olive trees had lost their leaves and were bleak and bare, and the sides of the hill had an uninviting appearance.

Down to the Brook Kedron our gaze extended, or rather to its bed, as the valley was dry and dusty as if no brook had ever flowed there. Other places of historical or traditional note were pointed out, but we were too far away to discern them clearly.

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{397}We left the temple and proceeded to the wailing place of the the Jews. Here are the foundations or a small portion of the lower walls of the great temple where, every Friday, the Jews come to wail and weep over their downfall. Half a dozen Jews were there are the time of our visit; with their faces to the stone, they read from their prayer books in a low wailing tone that was exceedingly impressive.

At the wailing place there were visible five courses of beveled stones in a fine state of preservation; in some places they have been worn considerably by the kisses of the devotees, that for many centuries have pressed around them and wept for the downfall of Jerusalem. Both sexes and all ages are represented here, and they have come from all quarters of the globe.

“Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel’s stream,

Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;

Weep for the harp of Judah’s broken spell;

Mourn--where their God hath dwelt, the godless dwell.”

From the Place of Wailing we returned to the hotel, and, as soon as we had taken lunch proceeded to The Quarries, an excavation which is entered just outside of the Damascus gate.

This is supposed to be the locality whence came the stone for the Great Temple, and it was only a few years ago that it was discovered. The quarries extend beneath the city, and one can walk more than half a mile from the entrance directly under Jerusalem.

We wandered around here for about an hour, lighted by candles that saved us many a disagreeable fall. The slope of the interior is very steep, and how the stones were managed there, is a mystery. The Judge had several slips, but none of them were serious, as they all happened among the sand and smaller chips of limestone. On our return to the hotel, he took a respectful position in the rear of the party, and for an hour or more was locked in the recesses of his own room. What he did while thus secluded, I cannot say, but I know that he summoned a servant to bring him a needle and some thread.

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