PART II

JERUSALEM AND THE WAY THITHER

From all points of view except that of geography Jerusalem was forming part of Europe; the spot where was localised what was recognised as the prime factor in their mental and spiritual ancestry, life, and future. What it is now to a convinced Zionist, it was then to the average Christian. But the idea of securing Jerusalem as an axiom, almost an incidental axiom, of practical politics requires, perhaps, a word or two of explanation, considering how far the modern habit of weeding out theology from all politics but party-politics has gone; and this the more so since little help is to be had from histories, written, as they naturally are, to defend, attack, or explain the present rather than the past, and dealing, consequently, with the past, only in so far as it throws light, not on itself, but on things current.

History having become specialised into accounts of the political events of the past in relation to to-day and to-morrow, the interest of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has come to be concentrated on the development of national and centralised governments. It is therefore left out of account that the ideas at the back of the average sixteenth century man's mind were such as assumed that the world, and Europe in particular, was under theocratic government; and consequently that what seem to us independent sovereigns developing national monarchies seemed to him so many deputies of the Almighty—"many," because of the sins of the world—ruling by permission until the appointed time should come for the unification of Europe under the one true head, the completion of whose work would be a final gigantic Crusade which would pulverise the Turk and secure Jerusalem for Christianity, world without end. In fact, the conquest of Jerusalem held much the same place in international politics as "disarmament" with us; just so far ideal as to make discussion of it interesting, and sufficiently impracticable to be common ground. If these ideas seem too mediæval to be attributed to the sixteenth century, it is because their more "modern" ideas have been disproportionately insisted on since; seven-eighths of their life was mediæval—and a large part of the remaining eighth the majority would have wished to disown.

Where the leaven of new ideas was showing itself was not in a cessation, but in a decrease, of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The state of transition is definitely marked by the diversity of the preoccupations which men carried thither; the change itself by the discontinuance of the pilgrim galleys. This took place between 1581 and 1586. It had been usual for two galleys to sail to Jaffa and back each year specially for pilgrims, from Venice, starting on different dates between Ascension Day and early in July; the latter date being dictated by the weather, the former doubtless by everybody's desire to wait to witness the Espousal of the Sea. In 1581 a boat[87] started on May 7 or 8 with fifty-six on board, all told; this was wrecked in the Adriatic, thirty persons only being saved. On July 14, another left, but the pilgrims by this had to change into a smaller vessel at Cyprus. In 1587, however, a guide-book writer,[88] advising on the basis of his experiences the previous year, tells the pilgrim to take the first boat to Tripoli in the spring, before Easter if possible, otherwise there may be none towards Palestine till August, since the pilgrim-galleys have ceased sailing, although the procession is still kept up at Venice in which every intending pilgrim had the honour of walking on the right hand of a noble, bearing a lighted wax candle. That this discontinuance was sudden and recent may be assumed from the fact that a priest who was visiting the shrines of Christendom as the deputy of Philip II, who had vowed such a pilgrimage when his son was ill, hurried[89] on his way to Italy in 1587, expecting to find a pilgrim-galley ready to start. But that this discontinuance was not merely temporary is clear enough from all subsequent writers.

The complement of a pilgrim-galley may be taken as about one hundred, although in 1561 one carried four hundred. After 1581 nobody mentions finding more than twenty-three "Franks" at Jerusalem together, not even at Easter, when "indulgences" were doubled. Possibly the attack on "indulgences" which prefaced the best-known schism of the century suggested, or testifies to, an incredulity concerning them which might be felt far outside the districts which persisted in schism. If felt, this would re-act on pilgrimages, the nominal object whereof was to secure "indulgences." On the other hand, there is no reason for assuming a decline in devotion; the non-Catholic point of view is well expressed by Moryson:—"I had no thought to expiate any least sin of mine; much less did I hope to merit any grace from God—yet I confess that through the grace of God the very places struck me with a religious horror and filled my mind with holy motions." One reason for the decrease is certain, however, and sufficient to account for it alone; the increase in the dangers and the cost of the journey through the stopping-places on the route falling into the hands of the Turks, and, still more, the changed attitude of the Turks towards Western Christians as a result of these victories.

Yet this abolition of the direct and speedy route was not all loss to him who was as much tourist as pilgrim. He saw the more. There was a pleasant choice of routes, too; for, of course, thenceforth each one had to make his own arrangements. The main routes numbered three; on each of them further choice was possible. The three were viâ (1) Jaffa, (2) Damascus, (3) Cairo.

The starting-point was sometimes Marseilles, but rarely; almost invariably it would be Venice. Here, too, information was obtainable better than elsewhere. At the Franciscan monastery "Della Vigna" was a travel-bureau in charge of the "Padre Provisore di Gierusalemme" who survived the galleys: in 1609 he was a Venetian noble. The post had a semi-official character, since its holder was charged to view the permit to visit Jerusalem, the "Placet" as it was called, lacking which a Roman Catholic would incur excommunication; and also to assure himself that the pilgrim had one hundred zecchini to spend, in the absence of which the permit was cancelled. The respect in which this "Placet," which required eleven signatures, was held was immense; one soldier, even, who had touched at Tripoli and Jaffa in the course of serving Ferdinand de' Medici, came back to Leghorn to get leave before visiting Jerusalem. But the warden of the friars at Jerusalem had authority to absolve from the excommunication such as did not pass through Italy. No "Placets" were granted to women.

These preliminaries over, a start for Jaffa would be made by taking ship for one of the islands in the Levant on the chance of finding another ship thence to Jaffa itself, which extended the four-five weeks' voyage of earlier days into one of unknown duration. Arriving at Jaffa, past the rock from which St. Peter had his fishing-lesson, no city was to be seen; little but two towers.

In times gone by when the pilgrims arrived in bulk, word was sent to the warden of the monastery of San Salvatore at Jerusalem, and they did not start the land journey till he came to supervise it. But now the traveller had to arrange as best he could with Turk or Arab and reach Rama somehow or other; probably on an ass without saddle, bridle, or stirrups. At Rama he would find Sion House, built by Philip the Good on the site of the house of Nicodemus, and nominally a monastery; all the monks had gone, but it remained a lodging for pilgrims. At Rama dwelt the official Christian guide to Jerusalem, into whose charge you had no choice but to commit yourself; if any one tried to evade his control and charges, the dragoman could send word to the Arabs, and life passed the limit of barely endurable, which was the pilgrim's ordinary lot. The dragoman dwelt at Rama for the reason that the routes to Jerusalem, west, north, and south, converged there; and for that same reason we will go on to consider route No. 2, viâ Damascus.

There was at times the chance of approaching by the Damascus road, and yet going mainly by sea; that was when there was a ship bound for Acre or some port on the coast of the Holy Land other than Jaffa. But in practically all cases the Damascus route meant getting to Constantinople first, and this is equally true of route No. 3.

From Europe to Constantinople there were several main routes. Two tourists took the trade route from Danzig through Lemberg to Kamenetz, the frontier town of Poland, then down the river Pruth to Reni, a centre of the caviare trade, and so down the Danube to its mouth and by sea to Constantinople, which last part coincided with the route of the Russian pilgrims who sailed down the Dnieper or the Don and coasted along the Black Sea shore. A weird crew on a weird journey, in boats which, big or little, were used to being mounted on wheels, through country where nothing living was to be seen but wild beasts and nothing to mark distances save the mouths of tributary streams. Then there was Busbecq's way, who used the Danube, but not to the mouth; leaving it soon after Belgrade had been passed and travelling by the great road through Sofia and Adrianople along which the Grand Signor marched to bring war and Christian ambassadors came to buy peace. From this road, going westward, diverged the roads to Spalato and to Ragusa, the two most direct ways to Venice. Yet but few tourists travelled by these two roads. It was not that they were little used. Besides the ambassadors to Constantinople from Ragusa itself, which meant at least two journeys each year on account of the tribute, Della Valle speaks of the ordinary post taking that direction and the Venetian representative at Constantinople keeping forty Schiavonians for post work, who travelled on foot. The mountain passes were terrible, and the danger from wolves and dogs in Servia considerable; also from robbers. At certain points on Mount Rhodope, for instance, men were stationed to beat drums when the road was supposed to be clear of them, and a feature of the district was the "Palangha," a roughly fortified enclosure large enough for sixty or seventy Turks to live within and to serve as a temporary shelter to those who lived roundabout; for the robber bands sometimes numbered three hundred. Except at the regular stopping places few people were seen, for the Christians established their villages off the main road for fear of the Turks, who were so far uncertain of their control over them as to use continual severities. A French ambassador, whose guide led him astray near one of these villages, saw all the inhabitants making off to the mountains, mistaking him for a Turkish official. And their houses he says were no better than "gabions couverts." But with these, as with all people who live under a despotism, especially a foreign military one, their chief protection consisted in appearing more miserable than they were; there was no part of Europe where food was better or cheaper; neither did the people treat strangers with the ferocity produced by extreme wretchedness, and at Sofia, in fact, Blount found the opposite extreme—"nor hath it yet lost the old Grecian civility, for of all the cities I ever passed, either in Christendom or without, I never saw anywhere where a stranger is less troubled either with affronts or with gaping."

Still, it was borderland, and mainly Mohammedan; the sea route was common ground and frequented by Christians. But there was a compromise which was often in use—to travel by sea to Zante and thence through Greece, finishing the journey either by sea or land. It might seem that this direction would appeal to a considerable proportion of tourists during the period that is called "Renascence," but the extent to which the acquaintance with, and interest in, Greek thought, first-hand, at this time has been exaggerated may be accurately estimated by the fact that not a single one of these travellers visited Athens except by accident. It must be admitted, however, that things were not made easy for them; one of those who traversed Greece was Dallam, in company with seven others; part of the journey they were stalked by natives trying to arrange with their guide to cut their throats: and every time they slept but once it was in their clothes, either on the ground or on the floor. One of the most interesting places that might be visited on this route was Salonica, a Jew republic under the suzerainty of the Grand Signor, with a training-school for priests; here and Safed near Galilee were the only places where Hebrew was supposed to be spoken.

All these ways to Constantinople have been mentioned in the order into which they fall according to the extent to which they were used by European tourists, the least frequented first. Last comes the most usual, by sea all the way from Venice. And here, however different might be the experiences of this one and that one, two points of interest were invariable. First, they passed Abydos and Sestos, where out must come the note-book, and Leander must be dragged into it. Secondly, Troy. The learned say that these tourists located Troy on the south, instead of on the north, bank of the river, but the more important point is that what they did see stirred their feelings: it was no mere mild interest. The Trojan heroes were as real to them as Barbarossa and Don Juan, not only because no doubts had blurred their individuality, much less darkened their existence, but because there was less competition for the position of hero owing to the narrower range of their knowledge. Another characteristic of theirs, was that Virgil was clearer in their association of ideas, Homer dimmer, at the moment of seeing Troy's ruins, than would be the case with a modern tourist: the quotation that arises most naturally in the mind of the finest scholar of them all was

Hic Dolopum manus, hic sævus tendebat Achilles; Classibus hic locus; hic acies certare solebant.

And so to Constantinople. But not the pilgrims' Constantinople of former days, as marvellous a centre, perhaps, of ecclesiastical civilisation and dignity, and of relics, as has been seen. St. Sophia was still there and its doors still of the wood of Noah's ark, but it was a mosque where the inquisitive Christian was allowed to look round on sufferance. Only two churches in the city were allowed to remain in Western Christian hands, St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Constantinople, the latter still a place of pilgrimage though served by one solitary Dominican friar. Gone was Moses' rod; gone from the neighbouring village of Is Pigas was the fresco of St. John from whose head, in the first week of each Lent, had blossomed a milk-white rose; gone was the trumpet that sounded at the fall of Jericho and the horn of Abraham's ram. But the last two must be safe somewhere, for they are to be used by the summoning angel on Judgment Day.

As a pilgrim, then, the tourist reached Constantinople only by the way. And setting out thence for Jerusalem, viâ Damascus, he might go by land in one of three ways, either by trading caravan, in which case he should contract with some one in it for all expenses and necessaries by the way, besides engaging a Janizary, necessary under every possible condition, who is to report his passenger's safe arrival to an ambassador or some merchant residing at the point of departure; or he might accompany a governor on his way to take up his duties (and changes were very frequent), in which case the governor had better be required to swear by his head to see the pilgrim safely through; or for the third, and quickest way, on the return journey, accompany the carriers of revenue to Constantinople. But it was far commoner to make a sea-journey of it, which meant taking ship to "Scanderoon" and thence by land, viâ Aleppo, to Damascus. Nobody ever went to Scanderoon except to get to Aleppo; sometimes not even then, for during this period the port of Aleppo was as often as not Tripoli. The objection to Scanderoon was its unhealthiness, lying, as it did, as Peter Mundy says, "in a great marsh full of boggs, foggs, and froggs"; of the English who went there as apprentices scarcely five per cent lived to go into business for themselves. Aleppo was worth seeing: a pleasant town with its approaches all gardens, like Damascus, and the medley of nations must have been marvellous to watch; a sign of its cosmopolitanism was that Christians were allowed to ride horses there, an unusual privilege in Mohammedan dominion; probably nowhere outside Venice were so many sects represented, whose churches were in what was called the new suburb; two Armenian, a Greek, and a Catholic Maronite were actually side by side, with a Syrian Jacobite church just near. It is not out of place to add that at the Jews' synagogue there was not the usual division of sexes, but that the only separation was that one side was reserved for the families who had been long resident there, the other for strangers: because although the repulsion felt for the Jews was greater at this time than at present, the interest in them was likewise greater, and any information concerning their customs was regarded by the tourist as matter for his readers—a surprising number of these tourists give eye-witness accounts of circumcisions of Jewish babies.

To return to Aleppo; it was equally remarkable for its trade. Dealings to the extent of 40,000 to 100,000 crowns were ordinary, and this implied frequency of caravans to take the pilgrim on to Damascus. On the way he would pass the district in which Job was supposed to have lived, which may well have been so, says Moryson, for no spot possessed such conveniences for getting robbed, even of 100,000 head of cattle, nor any better suited to develop patience.

It was here the pilgrim became acquainted with the Arabs. How far the latter were independent of the Turks was left an unsettled question, but it is fairly certain that on many, perhaps most, of the occasions when a European traveller of the time relates an encounter with the Arabs, the latter were not the robbers he thought them but keepers of the roads demanding not more than treble what they were entitled to. But it is equally clear that hostilities were perpetual. In 1601 a caravan guide told an Englishman at one defile that he had never passed by there without seeing bodies of murdered men; and from Damascus to Jacob's bridge—so called because just by was the spot where Jacob wrestled with the Angel—the caravan travelled by night for fear of the Arabs and no talking was allowed without the captain's special permission. But there was much to divert the attention of the faithful from their trials. At Damascus was Ananias' house, and soon after starting an ill-informed tourist would be surprised to see all his fellow travellers fall on their knees for prayers: it would be the spot where the conversion of St. Paul took place. Before reaching the Sea of Galilee they came upon a field with a little well in it, at which all dismounted for worship as well as for a drink; there had Joseph been hidden by his brethren. Between Cana and Mt. Tabor was a little chapel to call at, built on the spot where Christ had multiplied the loaves and fishes, and after this the road turned westwards to Nazareth and the church on the site where the Virgin Mary's house had stood before it had been spirited away to Loreto; two porphyry columns were standing on the places occupied respectively by the Archangel and by the Virgin at the moment of the Annunciation. For those who were not Roman Catholics there was the actual house there to be identified on its original site, so far as it had been left intact by previous pilgrims; Lithgow, the only Western Christian in the caravan he travelled with, asserts that his companies carried away above five thousand pounds' weight of the house in remembrance. Then southward, joining the road from Tripoli, more frequented, but not by pilgrims, who chose this Damascus road as passing through Galilee. And so to Rama, where they may await such as journey by route 3 from Constantinople viâ Cairo.

Reaching Alexandria it was found to be about the size of Paris; besides the ruins, the greatness of which was attested by the intolerable dust which was all that remained of much of the building materials of the past.

Leaving Alexandria for Cairo, it was a matter of course to go by river, passing an attractive town every four miles or so, a very pleasant journey except when the Nile was low, which made it more practicable for the Arabs to attack. On landing at Bulak, the port, there would be asses ready, the wonderful asses of the East celebrated of old in Western Europe, as the canticle witnesses which used to be sung at Beauvais cathedral at the feast of the Circumcision when the ass enters in the procession.[90]

Orientis partibus Adventavit asinus Pulcher et fortissimus Sarcinis aptissimus Hez, Hez, sire asne, Hez!!

The asses of Bulak fortified tradition by carrying passengers into the city, unattended by any boy, and taking their way back as soon as the ride was over.

The characteristics of Cairo which impressed themselves most on the seventeenth-century traveller were its size, and, notwithstanding its size, its populousness, so great that it was difficult to move for the press of people. Allowances must be made, however, for their standard regarding streets; a large proportion of the ten thousand streets were in reality passages built over, dark and dangerous to an extent which probably exists in few European slums nowadays. The number ten thousand sounds suspicious as a statement of fact, but there was a certain check on it, inasmuch as each "street" was shut at each end by a gate at night and each gate had a guardian as well as a lantern burning; and the number of guardians was twenty thousand besides the four thousand soldiers who patrolled inside the city at night. For the antiquities, there were still to be seen many houses bearing a chalice and two lighted candles, witnesses of Louis IX's captivity in Egypt and the tale of his leaving the sacrament as security for the payment of his ransom on his release; for the rest, knowledge was not in a very advanced state; everything that was not credited to "Pharaoh" was put down to Joseph.

The interest to the tourist centred equally in the excursions. It was but a few miles to Matarea—to use the Italian spelling, preferable with many of the names that occur, especially in this chapter, as a sign of the times—and no Roman Catholic omitted it, seeing that there stood the house where Our Lady dwelt for some years after her flight from Palestine; at Cairo itself was preserved some of the water in which she washed her baby-clothes. Neither, naturally, was any one inclined to pass on without a visit to the Pyramids; no doubt Della Valle's name is still to be found cut on the top of the Great Pyramid on the facet that looks towards Italy. He entered the Great Pyramid, the only one into which entrance was effected at this date; but had no opportunity of saying anything regarding it out of the ordinary; it is when he moved on to what were known as the "Pyramids of the Mummies" that his account of his doings again becomes one of the most remarkable, as well as one of the best written, of research in Egypt. He made a halt at "Abusir," and then after entering one of these minor Pyramids, moved on to "Saccara," the centre for mummy-hunting, which formed the occupation of the boys of the village. On Della Valle's arrival they had a stand-up fight for the privilege of taking him home, and the next morning about fifty were at his door. A procession having been formed, all were set to work in different places probing for tombs, for Della Valle was bent on examining such as had never been opened hitherto. His trouble and expense were well rewarded, for the two mummies he brought away intact were pronounced at Cairo to be the most remarkable that any one there remembered seeing. They cost him three piastri—less than five pounds in our money at present values—each, and are now in Dresden Museum. It was rare for any to be seen intact, for hunting for mummies was not carried on for museums, but because of their supposed medicinal value, greatest, it was thought, in virgin-mummies; one of the rare qualities of Othello's handkerchief consisted in its having been

... dyed in mummy which the skilful Conserved of maiden's hearts ...

Mummies were therefore broken up as soon as found, and sold piecemeal; sometimes also to painters, who by means of them obtained certain shades of brown otherwise unattainable. There was, nevertheless, an Englishman, named John Sanderson, who brought one away intact, besides six hundred pounds of fragments to sell to London apothecaries, in spite of mummy being contraband export from Egypt.

A third, and the chief, excursion was to Sinai and the Red Sea. It is no exaggeration to say that for most it was a terrible experience; there were many who visited Mohammedan lands often and some who saw Jerusalem more than once, but not one went a second time to Sinai. No big caravans travelled that way, few were the merchants who traded to Suez; it meant, then, being subject to the pleasure of the Arabs. There privation was the best that could be looked for, they were dependent for their lives and the endurance of life on their own enforced liberality and the chance of forbearance from others; and very thankful must they have been when they caught sight of the two great towers, since pulled down, which stood in the suburbs of Cairo for landmarks to those coming from Suez, although they might expect to receive a welcome, as they had probably had a send-off, from the boys of Cairo in the shape of dirt, bricks, and bad lemons. Two Germans were reduced to such a state as to become subject to hallucinations.

Especially strange did the journey seem to a Russian who passed by the Cairo route to Jerusalem. So totally different a desert from those he knew,—neither forests nor vegetation, no people, no water; nothing but sand and stones, except for the Red Sea. And it happens that here, in particular, does he show how far more second-hand was his knowledge of the Bible stories than was that of other Europeans. The function of the cloud which is said to have accompanied the Israelites by day on their flight was, to him, to hide them from pursuers, and at the Red Sea there were still visible to him the twelve ways that Moses had opened up for his people, one for each tribe, marked on the surface of the water by a deeper tint, and the prints of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels were as indelible as ever for him, whereas Christians from farther west ceased to see them soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century. Some facts were even more exclusively his own, as that Pharaoh's soldiers were changed into fish after their drowning; and were to be known when caught by having human heads, men's teeth and noses, though their ears had grown to fins; nobody eats them. Pharaoh's horses were likewise fishified; hairy fish with skins as thick as your finger.

It goes without saying that every scene from Hebrew history was localised to a square foot; but there was, besides, a rock to be seen written over in characters that none could decipher, yet identified by tradition as the writing of Jeremiah the prophet done with his finger. This rock was near the monastery. Hither came the pilgrim, to find the gate barred, whether he had sent word of his approach or not; the monastery was surrounded as a rule by two or three hundred Arabs, howling day and night, and sometimes threatening, for food; let down every now and then from a window high up. Once inside, there was the monks' well to see, the very same one at which Moses watered Jethro's sheep, and a chapel behind the choir built over the spot where had stood the burning bush that Moses saw; with Our Lady and her Baby standing in the middle thereof unharmed, say the Russian pilgrims. Then to bed; and in the morning, after being wakened, maybe, by a monk calling his brethren to "offices" by striking spears of wood and iron with a stick, for bell they had none, a start would be made up what was assumed to be Mt. Horeb, at the foot of which, on the side nearest Cairo, lay the monastery. Not far from the top were four chapels, one dedicated to St. Elijah, at the back of which was the grotto where he hid from Jezebel, forty days, fasting. At the top was the rock behind which Moses lay while God passed, and, hard by, the church of the Holy Summit and a mosque—it was a pilgrimage place for Mohammedans, too. Then down again the farther side to the valley between Mts. Horeb and Sinai, to the hospice where pilgrims stayed the night.

Before reaching Sinai, and after leaving it, these travellers are in the habit of making assertions so flatly contradictory that some of them will be hardly put to it on Judgment Day; but when at Sinai, there is only one opinion—to get to the top thereof was the most terrific struggle they had ever gone through. Only one account has the least suggestion of enjoyment in it, Della Valle's; and yet his ascent was made under worse conditions than any other's.

It was one Christmas. In the night snow had fallen; the morning promised more snow. Only one monk was found to act as guide; but Della Valle was ready, and his servants would go wherever he chose to lead them; two Arabs were bribed into carrying food. So a start was made; Della Valle in the pilgrim's tunic which he always wore in holy places, but tucked up high this time; and all with sticks cut from the tree whence Moses cut his rod. First went the monk, taking the rocks like a young deer; and he must have known his way well, for the stones which marked the way could not have been visible for snow. At first it was just wet; then they met the snow; higher up it came to mid-thigh; still higher, still deeper. Farther still, where in the best of weathers it was a place for hands and knees, it was all frozen; more snow was falling and the wind terrific. The interpreter gave himself up for dead, cursed the monk who encouraged the ascent, commended himself to God and St. Catherine, remembered his sins, and forswore meat on every Monday that he might live to see. However, they did reach the top, where, once upon a time, the angels laid St. Catherine's body for a while; and saw the hard stone which retained the imprint of her body where she had lain and of the angels' posteriors where they sat, one at each side of her head, and one at her feet. They prayed, eat, and forthwith started to descend, to reach the hospice that night. What with snow and mist they could often see but a foot or two before them, and their idea of descending under the conditions was to toboggan on their backs; the only risk being, he says, that of getting buried in snowdrifts, which was no real risk, because they never all got buried at the same time. However, once he found himself sitting on the edge of a precipice with his legs dangling; and yet, in the end, no casualties occurred except to one of Della Valle's shoes, and he and his servants, after buying some of the little rings the monks provided by way of souvenirs, made of gold, of silver, and of bone, went back to Cairo to prepare for the other journey across the desert, to Gaza and Rama.

Cairo to Gaza was twelve days' journey by caravan, but an Arab could do it in four days. A merchant-pilgrim who had to rejoin his ship at Alexandria by a certain date in 1601 could find no way of return except under the escort of the Arabs to whom a friendly Moor introduced him. They travelled on dromedaries at first, but he changed to horseback towards the end to save his life from death by jolting. One evening his dromedary ran away, and the two Arabs pursued it out of sight, and there were the Moor and the merchant alone in the desert with night descending on them, not to mention other Arabs who had taken no oaths to respect their lives and pockets, but who eventually postponed beheading them till their guides returned.

An Arab guide meant safety from the chief danger of the desert, that of the Arab bands who laid in wait for every caravan and attacked small ones; in 1611 a caravan of three hundred camels was carried off bodily. The average number of persons in a caravan seems to have been about one thousand and the number of camels three for every four persons, besides the extra ones that would be required for merchandise; a camel carried two persons, and one camel luggage for four,—no small load, for each one had to provide for himself as if he was about to set up housekeeping. The camel had this advantage over the horse, that the latter and his fodder were more coveted by the Arab than the former; and it was all one whether the Arab took horse and fodder or fodder only, for there was none to be bought and the horse would starve if left with the owner. The camels used for caravan purposes were not the small ones the Arabs were accustomed to, but the large ones, on which alone, at that time, at any rate, was it customary to travel in cradles, one cradle slung each side of the camel. They were comfortable, these cradles; comfortable enough to sleep in, hooded and lined to defend the traveller from sun and weather, with a secret pocket in the seat for valuables. The camels themselves were protected against the evil eye by charms written by dervishes slung round their necks in leathern bags; and on special occasions they were painted orange from head to foot, like the Polish horses.

Three of the halts were beside castles maintained by the Turks; elsewhere there was always the chance of an Arab chief enquiring if there were Franks in the caravan and then inviting himself to dinner; after dinner he would want a present, would probably name his needs, and lucky was one particular tourist whose guest only asked for some sugar and a pair of shoes. That the Arab was born to command and the Frank to obey, was an axiom with Franks and caravan-leaders, except to Della Valle, who always showed fight and always won; it is to be hoped that none of the other tourist-pilgrims came to know later how much money they would have saved had they known the effect of gunpowder, even minus the bullet, on an Arab.

At Gaza the caravan would split. The tourist would accompany those who were for Damascus, whose way lay through Rama, where, as already mentioned, all pilgrim ways met. Then to Jerusalem. At the gate the pilgrim's weapons were taken from him and his name registered in a book, to assure that his tribute should not be overlooked. Then the resident representative of his sect took charge of him; if he was a Frank he went to the Roman Catholic monastery of San Salvatore, whether Protestant or not. There was one Calvinist at this time who preferred to deal direct with the Turks rather than endanger his soul; but this meant money to the monks and he found himself in prison, from which he was only released by influence. The fact was that none of the Protestant rulers contributed to the upkeep of any foundation at Jerusalem and all Western Europeans were consequently classed together as in days gone by. At the monastery he would be fairly certain to make the acquaintance of Giovanni Battista, the monastery guide, for by 1612 he had filled that post for twenty-five years; and he it was from whom pilgrims derived most of their information during their stay—in Italian; if their knowledge of Italian was hazy, it probably added one or two marvels to those he meant to tell them. And, indeed, this may be said of most of these tourists on most of their journeys; much of the information they retail, in their own books and in this, they acquired by word of mouth in a language they only half understood.

Of Jerusalem as a town they say that the walls were the best part of the building; that there were three Christians living there to every Turk; that the Christians dwelled there for devotion and the Turks for the income derived from the Christians, and that otherwise it would have been wholly deserted. Partially deserted it actually was, since for the scarcity of human beings in its streets it is compared to Padua, the emptiest city in Europe, by one Englishman. All the trades driven there were elementary ones, shoemakers, cooks, smiths, tailors; and Moryson, on being seen walking about with gloves and a shirt, was taken for a prince in spite of his being poorly dressed otherwise; although that did not prevent the natives egging on their children to leap on to his back from upper stories and snatch things from him.

But just consider the sights in these streets! Passing over the localisations of New Testament incidents (such as where the Apostles composed the Creed and Christ the Lord's prayer) so exact and frequent that one must have had to walk slowly to avoid missing them when the guide pointed them out, there were besides the houses of Annas, Zebedee, Caiaphas, Veronica, Dives, Mary Magdalen, Uriah the Hittite, Pilate, where nightly were heard noises and whippings and sighs, and of the school which Our Lady attended; the orchard where Bathsheba bathed and the terrace from which David beheld her; the fountain where Our Lady used to wash her baby-clothes; the stone on which the cock stood to crow at St. Peter's downfall, and another which had been the seat of the angel who told the Marys of Christ's resurrection, etc., etc.

These were every-day matters. To see Jerusalem at its best one had to go at Easter, when the concourse of pilgrims was greatest for two reasons: first, the only excursion to Jordan took place; secondly, the descent of the Holy Fire from heaven into the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The incidents of the season are described in detail by George Sandys, Lithgow, Coryat and Della Valle, who were there at Easter in the years 1611, 1612, 1614, and 1616 respectively. On Palm Sunday the warden of the monastery set out for Bethphage in the afternoon and returned riding on an ass, the people shouting "Hosanna, etc.," and strewing the way with boughs and garments. When Lithgow was there they made too much noise to please the Turks and therefore returned black with bruises and somewhat bloody, the warden not excepted. In the evening the warden had recovered far enough to give an address to the Frank pilgrims, entreating the Protestants to refrain from reviling what they did not agree with, and concluding with the advice that three things were preëminently needful for a Jerusalem pilgrim; Faith (to believe what was told him), Patience (with the Turks), and Money.

On Maundy Thursday came the ceremony of washing the pilgrims' feet by the warden, and great was his disgust if he found that he had washed and kissed the feet of a Protestant. Some spent the next three nights in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, some only Easter Eve; a survival of the pre-Christian idea of the healing influence of passing a night in a temple.[91] Those who could not afford, or borrow, the heavy entrance-fee, never entered but stood outside and wept, or looked through the round hole in the door through which food was passed. Inside, it made all the difference whether or no the Oriental Palm Sunday or Easter Day fell on the Frank Easter. If so, the Frank would find the number in the church of the Holy Sepulchre anything between one and two thousand, many belonging to nations he had never heard of, all frantic with excitement, dancing, leaping, and lamenting by torchlight, in garments that he had never dreamt of, to the sound of kettle-drums and horns and other instruments as strange to him as their languages and manner of singing; all combining, with their flags and banners, in a general cumulative effect of inexpressible weirdness, without a single touch to bring it into relation with ordinary life, except the Turks bringing to reason with sticks those who were really too outrageous even for the occasion. And so the pilgrims spent the three nights, on the floor, in as utter disregard of decency and sanitation, and sometimes of morality, as of silence.

The descent of the Holy Fire was no more than an interesting sight to the European tourist; Roman Catholic and Protestant alike expressed disbelief in its actuality as openly as the Turk.

On Easter Monday the monks journeyed to Emmaus, passing the house of Simeon and the spot where David slew Goliath, returning by another road past the valley where Joshua commanded the staying still of the sun, and the house of Samuel. It was on the Tuesday preceding the Oriental Easter that the great excursion of the year took place, to Jordan; the only one in the year because the danger from the Arabs was considered prohibitive unless an escort of Turkish soldiers accompanied the pilgrims, so strong that only the Easter concourse could pay them. It was more than a day's journey, so Tuesday night was spent in the open, starting again however before dawn at the pace set by the escort's horses; of the poorer pilgrims who could not afford a mount, many died either from exhaustion or from fear. So says Della Valle, and it is confirmed by Lithgow; the latter, who walked, sometimes was up to his middle in sand, and "true it is, in all my travels, I was never so sore fatigued, nor more fearfully endangered than that night." At dawn they arrived where Christ had been baptised, to see the medley of nationalities, all distinct from each other in some striking detail or other, once more in the highest state of excitement; some drinking, some being baptised by friends, some dipping their clothes, some renouncing clothes altogether, scores, perhaps hundreds, of men and women stark naked, there in the chilly spring morning, douching themselves till their teeth chattered and their bodies turned blue, while others who came to pray remained to laugh.

On the way back some diverged to visit Mt. Quarantana, the scene of the forty days' fast; very few ascended it. The way up was a narrow path along precipices; broken by forty-five steps, each from five to ten feet high, where there was little foothold and slipping meant death. This ended at the little cave where Christ was tempted by the Devil; the way thence to the summit, from which Christ had surveyed the kingdoms of the world, was not attempted by any one: Lithgow says he reached the top but proves that he did not; and Della Valle says that the only means of reaching it was that used by Christ, being carried up by the Devil.

Easter, too, gave a good opportunity for a visit to Hebron, for the largest caravan went thither at that time also. But this was as much a Mohammedan pilgrimage as Christian, and Abraham's house, another of the remarkably well-preserved buildings of Palestine, was shut against Christians and Jews. Of these latter there were many who journeyed to the Holy Land; how many cannot be guessed, but they certainly outnumbered the Christians of the West, and equally certainly were too many to be omitted from a record of Europeans then, though the only piece of direct evidence at hand is from the itinerary of one Samuel Jemsel[92] with whom, in 1641, one hundred sailed in one ship of the regular fleet from Constantinople to Egypt, some bound for Jerusalem, some for Safed. They come into notice chiefly when a caravan is on the move on their Sabbath, when they remain behind and make up the lost ground as best they can.

From other pilgrims they differed in this; the Christian was leaving home, the Jew was going home. When they reached Palestine, besides, some of the spots they visited were famous among Christians; but mostly they were not. In the best Jewish guide-book in use in 1600, are mentioned one hundred and sixty-eight of their famous ancestors whose tombs were localised. If a Christian visited Abraham's, his duty to the Old Testament was done with; and even then he invariably omitted to observe the stone on which the patriarch sat when he was circumcised. And as for the tomb of Adam and Eve, and of Jacob and Leah, and the prophet Hosea (may his memory be blessed), and of Isaiah (may Salvation be his), and of Rachel (with whom be peace), and of the Rabbi Jeremiah who was buried upright, and, at Ras-ben-Amis, of the wife of Moses our master, and of the wife of the high-priest Aaron, and, on Mt. Ephraim, of Joshua the son of Nun and of Caleb the son of Jephunneh (may God, in his mercy, be mindful of them and of all other righteous men)—why, of all these the Ishmaelites knew nothing, nor even that at Rama was to be seen the spot where the Messiah shall appear, nor that there should be rending of garments when Jerusalem is first seen and again on reaching the place where once stood the Temple, now, for our sins, destroyed.

Outside Palestine, too, was much that the uncircumcised knew not of. He passed through Cairo without hearing of the copy of the law of Moses, written by the hand of Esdras the scribe; though, indeed, no man might see it, not even, incredible as it may sound, if he offered the keeper thereof silver (partly because the holy volume had by now been stolen, and lost, with the thief, at sea). And Damascus Hebrew and Frank might equally remember as the city where fresh fruit was never lacking, but only the former remembered that hard by Esdras himself lay buried, any more than the merchant who reached Baghdad heard that there rested Ananias, Mizael, and Azarias, and also, with the river flowing over his head, Daniel, of glorious memory,—unless the merchant wished to catch some of the great fish which swam thereabouts, for fishing was prohibited at that spot lest harm might befall the greatest fish of all, Zelach by name, who had abided there since Daniel's own time and was fed from the royal table.

And if any of the twentieth-century uncircumcised hesitate to believe that so much could be satisfactorily identified, the twentieth-century Hebrew may answer that there are other tests of identification than those of the "research" that has achieved such wonders at Stratford-on-Avon and that tradition can be traced back, unvarying even in trifles, for centuries.

He might go on to point out that Christian tradition might well be more stable. It is curious how much that is mentioned by fifteenth-century Christians is habitually omitted by those who came after. That the taking of Rhodes by the Turks should cause the disappearance of the basin in which Christ washed his apostles' feet is intelligible; but why, e. g., should the table disappear from Bethany at which the disciples were sitting when the Holy Ghost descended? And why should it have dropped out of remembrance that the torrent of Cedron had been bridged with stone by St. Helen to replace the wooden one from which the wood for the Cross had been taken and over which the Queen of Sheba had refused to walk, saying in a spirit of prophecy, that the Saviour of the world was to die on it? It seems as though there had occurred a diminishment of devotion resulting in the concentration of what devotion remained on fewer objects; or else a widening of interests diverting the attention from minor objects. Sometimes, of course, transference took place; which may, or may not, account for one traveller being shown the pillar of salt which had once been Lot's wife at a monastery near Trapani in Sicily in 1639, whereas in 1613 Coryat was told that she existed on the farther side of "Lake Asphaltitis with her child in her arms and a pretty dog, also in salt, by her." Still, no doubt Giovanni Battista and the warden did their best, and the latter was willing, in addition, to confer knighthood of the Holy Sepulchre on all and sundry, with no questions asked as to lineage, not even of a Dutchman in the grocery business; and at least there was the certificate of the pilgrim's visit to Jerusalem to be received—and paid for.

And now the tourist's last and longest journey has been told; he is at home safe, leaving us with nothing fresh to tell except the incidentals of his journeyings, and leaving us, one tourist, at least, with his blessing: "In the meantime I leave thee, gentle reader, travelling towards the heavenly Jerusalem, where God grant at length we may all arrive, Jesus Christ being our pilot and Janizary to conduct us thereunto."