UC-NRjLF llllllllllllllllillllllllil ilM ,: 1 1H Jl,01tlPHAW GIFT or Dr. Robert Ti Sutherland 1 Ww f* JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND BY F. R, OLIPHANT, B.A. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXCI All Rights reserved J>3 lob ops AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY BROTHER CYRIL The bulk of these sketches first appeared in a series of letters to the ' Spectator ' in the summer of 1890. They have now been con- siderably enlarged, and the first and last chap- ters have been added, the former being chiefly intended to give some guidance to people pur- posing to visit the Holy Land, to whom some homely details of direct information such as are not usually vouchsafed by guide-books may not be unwelcome. M292472 CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL, . II. JERUSALEM : THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, . III. JERUSALEM! THE TEMPLE, IV. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF JERUSALEM : BETH- LEHEM, BETHANY, JERICHO, AND THE DEAD SEA, .... V. MOUNT CARMEL, .... VI. GALILEE, VII. DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON, . VIII. THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE, PAGE 1 24 42 61 78 97 117 133 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. I. INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. In these prosaic days there is no very great degree of hardship involved in the notion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, at least for a pilgrim who does not think it necessary to gratuitously increase the hardships of the journey, and who is able, more or less, to pay his way. Still, being an unadventurous person, I will admit to having felt a certain natural shrinking from an expedition which looked so tremendous on the map ; and imagining that there may be some future visitors equally timorous, I think it as well to put down a few facts which may A 2 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. reassure them at least, and be of some use in foreshadowing what they are to expect when they arrive in the Holy Land. To begin with, it is hardly necessary to say that the traveller in Palestine has no longer to encounter the dangers which are so delightful to read of in the fascinating pages of 'Eothen,' and must be so very disagreeable to encounter in reality, unless he wilfully goes out of his way to look for them. There are still brigands in the moun- tains of Moab, who live near enough to civilisa- tion to get an additional touch of roguery over and above their natural predatory habits, who would be delighted to oblige any gentleman who has a fancy to go through the interesting experi- ence of being robbed ; inquirers of this class are, however, advised to travel with a very small train, for fear of frightening robbers away. It is usual to amuse travellers on their way to the Dead Sea with tales of possible Bedouin descents, and dragomans are always careful to make very ostentatious display of weapons on this expe- dition ; I was even taken to task myself at Jericho naturally by the last arrival from Europe for openly wearing a gold watch-chain, INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 3 which might excite the cupidity of neighbouring hordes, and bring destruction upon all of us. The traveller need take no account of such silly stories ; danger there may be for those who go off the beaten track, but no inexperienced person should do this without a perfectly reliable drago- man. I am, of course, not writing for those who have a real knowledge of the country. With regard to the means of getting to Pales- tine, the most usual route is that by Brindisi, from which the Austrian Lloyd steamers go once a- week to Alexandria, Port Said, Jaffa, &c, and the P. & 0. ships weekly for Port Said, and fortnightly for Alexandria. The journey from Brindisi to Alexandria occupies about three days. A pleasant little tour in Egypt can be made in the few days elapsing between the arrival of one steamer at Alexandria and the starting of the next one from Port Said. This will give time for a glance at Cairo, the Pyra- mids of Gizeh which are disappointing, and the Sphinx which is not. Of course, it is by no means fair to Egypt to try and see it in this way ; but it is hardly a chance to be missed, and as there is no time to make one's way as 4 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. far as the greatest wonders of the land, this flying visit does something to get the traveller into tune for the sights he is to see that is, if the East is unfamiliar to him and is hardly sufficient to blunt his appetite. It was Thack- eray's opinion that the most complete appre- ciation of the East would be obtained by the traveller who just got a sight of one thoroughly Eastern town, and then at once turned his face homewards and fled before he had time to lose his first illusions on the subject. With this theory I do not in the least agree. Though beginning with a trifle like Cairo, I have found the wonders I had expected to see, growing greater and greater till they culminated at Da- mascus, where our voyage ended. Still, there is certainly a great deal in the first impressions: the first sight of an Eastern city, where one begins to realise that there actually are regions where the population, as a body, are opposed to the wearing of conventional coats and trousers ; the first Arab mud village ; the first string of camels above all, the first entry into a mosque are things not to be forgotten. There is a faint glamour of the ' Arabian Nights ' even about INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 5 poor prosaic Alexandria in its present fallen condition, a city about as interesting as Mar- seilles. The first ragged fellow one meets with, the extraordinary patchwork garment which serves him for a cloak only hanging together by some miracle of art, might serve for Hassan Alhabbal ; he looks quite equal to making his fortune out of a lump of lead, if he only thought it worth his while to take the trouble. The old woman hobbling along in her blue cloak on the other side of the road, might be the very person who tried to lure the barber's brother to his death ; while the two blind men feeling their way along together, with their boy in front to guide them, remind one of another member of that ill-starred family. At Cairo, of course, the illusion is greater : in spite of all the modern Europeanism of the place, in spite of the crowds of English travellers like ourselves who, we are agreed, had much better have stayed at home loafing about the entrances to the hotels, in spite of Tommy Atkins pacing up and down with his rifle over his shoulder, and the wives of Tommy Atkins's commanders generally per- vading the atmosphere in carriages or on donkeys, 6 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. we see in the bazaars the really Eastern charac- ter of our surroundings. The chief question that presented itself to our minds was, where on earth these hordes of people could have come from. I have seen immense crowds before on great occasions in Europe ; but such an unceas- ing stream, coming and going in every possible direction, whichever way one turns, was a thing not yet dreamed of in my philosophy. And where, in the name of goodness, if the whole of Egypt were roofed in, were they to be housed ? Subsequent experience of other East- ern cities has shown me that this swarming of human creatures is not a characteristic of Egypt alone, but it was certainly in this first view that it made the most impression. I have never been able to understand the great enthusiasm into which some English writers have worked themselves regarding the religion of Islam ; and it was consequently less with any absolute feeling of reverence than with a desire not to appear irreverent, that I entered the Mosque of Sultan Hassan under the guid- ance of a pious Mohammedan dragoman, whose faith, I imagine, was greater than his INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 7 works, for his mysterious habit of returning alone to the shops where I had just made purchases was, to say the least of it, suspicious. But having already covered my infidel boots with good Moslem slippers, in obedience to Mohammedan prejudices, the involuntary feel- ing of veneration inspired by the place made me take my hat off also. There is something to my mind strangely impressive about these Moham- medan churches. There is none of the religious upholstery with which our places of worship are encumbered. A large niche (mihrab) in the wall at one end to indicate the direction of Mecca a great pulpit or canopied chair (mimbar) with a stair leading to it, from which passages from the Koran are occasionally read to the faithful a small stone terrace or platform raised upon short columns for a similar purpose and a profusion of lamps, make up the furniture of the mosque. Outside is a cool pleasant court, with a fountain in the centre where the necessary ablutions are performed, and where also passers-by may come in to rest and refresh themselves, and will seldom go away without a prayer or a holy thought. The mosque itself is, except on rare occasions, a 8 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. place for private prayer, or for the united devo- tions of a few who are gathered together by chance, or have come in a body for the purpose. Such a party we found in the Citadel Mosque kneeling in a row, with one of their number, probably more learned in the necessary prayers, in front of them to lead. The spectacle of this little group, muttering together and bowing their heads in concert, or turning them from side to side to the two angels who stand on either hand of every man to record, one his good and the other his bad actions, gave an added solemnity to the great, cold, silent hall. It was most truly a house of prayer one was inclined to say, the house of God. Yet when one among us spoke of it as a place where one might say one's own prayers, there was a strange repugnance to the idea, which yet I cannot well explain. There is something natural in the disgust one feels at seeing a Christian church turned into a mosque, with all its sacred emblems forcibly erased, or even one that is erected upon a spot which has any sacred associations with our own faith ; but it is hard to see any reason why we should not kneel in the same house of prayer INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 9 with pious men who worship the same God, because they include in their devotions the names of other men whom they regard with an exces- sive veneration. But man is an animal little governed by reason. A day's journey brings one from Cairo to Port Said, half-way by railway to Ismailia and half- way by small steamer up the Suez Canal. From Port Said four lines of steamers go to Palestine the Austrian Lloyd, the Messageries, a Eus- sian company, and the Egyptian Khedivieh mail- steamers. I believe, though I do not personally know, that the last named are a rather inferior class of ships ; the French, Austrian, and Prus- sian are equally good, though at some seasons, especially a short time before Easter, they are most inconveniently crowded. We ourselves had to give up all hopes of the Austrian Lloyd, and thought ourselves lucky to secure sleeping-room in the saloon of the Eussian steamer which started a day later. I cannot wish my worst enemy a harder fate than to spend two days at Port Said, though it was certainly comfortable to have a bed and even a bedroom for the second night. The first had to be got through 10 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. on chairs or tables, or in cupboards or anything that offered. Some people say that Egypt is so delightful a place that one feels it difficult to leave it. We certainly found the process of leaving a most troublesome one. The journey to Jaffa only takes one night, but there is always the pleasing prospect, during bad weather, that it may be found impossible to land passengers at Jaffa : all may consequently have to be taken on to Beyrout. I never heard of an instance myself, but it is said to happen occa- sionally; those who are afraid of such conse- quences had better decide at once to go on to Beyrout, which is an excellent starting- place for the journey through Palestine, though not in Palestine itself. To us the difficulties of the landing at Jaffa appeared to have been exag- gerated. There are certainly some very nasty reefs close to the shore ; but the channel of entrance to the harbour is fairly wide, and easily managed in all but really stormy weather. It is said to have been here that Perseus turned the sea - monster, who was about to devour Andromeda, into stone, and the reefs may well be supposed to be some portions of his petrified INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 11 carcass. Considering the trouble they have caused since his time, one is inclined to doubt whether Perseus was justified in treating a harmless necessary monster in such a manner. Once on shore, after a little troublesome waiting in the custom-house till the authorities have settled the amount of bribe required for letting you pass freely, the traveller will prob- ably stumble through the dirty streets of Jaffa till he reaches Mr Hardeck's hotel on the out- skirts of the town. It may not be out of place here to mention what kind of hotel accommo- dation is to be found in the country we are speaking of. There are excellent hotels at Jerusalem, Damascus, and Beyrout ; my own experience at the last-named place was not a favourable one, but that was the result of arriv- ing late at night in a crowded season. We had to be packed off to a sort of succursale, which, though a fine old Syrian house, was otherwise undesirable, the cookery being wretched and the wine atrocious. But I believe the first-class hotels are good. The Grand New Hotel at Jerusalem, and the Victoria at Damascus, I can heartily recommend from personal experience. 12 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. There are also hotels of a sort at Jaffa, Eamleh, Jericho, Haifa, Nazareth, Storah, and, I believe, Baalbek. Those at Jaffa, Haifa, and Eamleh are kept by members of the German Society of the Temple, which fact is in itself as every one who knows Palestine will agree a guarantee for cleanliness, honesty, and an eager desire to do everything that is possible for strangers of all kinds, whether guests staying in the hotel or not. That at Jericho is a nice little place, well conducted, though perhaps a little primitive in its arrangements. One does not expect much more than a bivouac at Jericho, and from that point of view the hotel is luxurious. 1 At Storah, in the great plain of the Bukeia, be- tween the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, there is now, I believe, a good hotel : though when we were there, the accommodation was of a very primitive nature. Where there are no regular houses of enter- tainment, it is always possible to put up at 1 Since I was in Palestine, I believe some progress has been made in regard to hotel accommodation ; but as this has chiefly- consisted in starting opposition establishments where there was already a hotel existing, I have not thought it necessary to alter what I had written. INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 13 a monastery ; but most travellers in the more rural parts of Palestine will prefer to live in their own tents : this can be made a most luxu- rious form of life. The places I have mentioned are chiefly on the outskirts of the country in which the greatest points of interest lie. Some visitors prefer to take to tent-life at once from their first landing at Jaffa; but the greater number keep to the more civilised habits as far as Jerusalem at least, and only begin their camping life when they make their first move northwards. There is at least no trouble with the weather in well-built stone houses. For a couple of days at Jericho the hotel there is a great convenience, and most travellers will be content to give up their tents at Damascus and return to ordinary life. The hotels, in fact, are to be found in the parts of Palestine where it is possible without extreme discomfort to travel in carriages of some kind, as well as in the sea- coast towns where the great steamers call. Carriages as means of conveyance can only be used in a few localities. There is an excel- lent carriage-road from Beyrout to Damascus, and there are passable specimens between Jaffa and 14 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Jerusalem, and between Jerusalem and Bethany and Bethlehem. It is said to be possible to drive on beyond Bethlehem to Hebron, but it is certainly in the highest degree unadvisable. Driving is also possible at a very slow pace and with great discomfort along the coast from Jaffa to Haifa. In the neighbourhood of the latter place the native roads have been much improved by the efforts of the German settlers, who also keep up a regular communication with Nazareth by waggon, for goods at least. Pas- sengers would find the journey rather fatigu- ing, as the road still leaves much to be desired, and the conveyances are of the rudest kind. The German waggoners had to fight their way against native marauders at first ; but there is very rarely any trouble of this kind now, brigandage in this district having been practi- cally extinguished, as half the inhabitants are awed by the honesty of their German neigh- bours, and the other half are frightened by their courage. It is most advisable not to try any travelling by carriage between Jerusalem and Damascus, but the journey connecting either of these places with the coast is most conveniently INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 15 done in this manner. The best plan at the commencement of the journey is to rest for a while at Jaffa and lunch there, driving on in the afternoon to Kamleh, some fifteen miles away, where there is a fine Crusaders' church, now a mosque, a curious old tower, and a rather makeshift hotel. Here will be found also the first instance of one of the saddest sights in Palestine, the wretched groups of lepers who sit and beg by the roadside ; few travellers will pass with- out giving some trifling alms to the sufferers from this awful affliction. The remainder of the journey to Jerusalem, about twenty-five miles further, can be accomplished with great ease the next day. The road is not of any particular interest, except for the picturesque gorge which bears the name of Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, and the village of Abu Gosh, sometimes iden- tified with Kirjath-jearim, where there are the remains of a fine church of the crusading times. For the journey through Palestine, riding is almost the only possible mode of progression. Care should be taken as to the selection of horses, upon the quality of which the speed and comfort of the journey naturally depend. The 16 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Cook agency and I have no doubt that of Mr Gaze also can generally be relied on to supply sufficiently good horses, but a little personal superintendence never does any harm. For those who dislike this mode of conveyance, the only resource for the long journeys across country is that of a mule-palanquin, a kind of wooden box, something like a sedan-chair, sup- ported on two long poles, the ends of which are borne by one mule in front and another behind. Travelling in this manner is exceedingly un- comfortable, especially in hilly country, as the mules are unable to take advantage of the zig- zag paths, owing to the difficulty of turning, and have to go straight up and straight down. Still it is a way in which people who are incap- able of riding can visit practically every spot of interest in Palestine. I only suggest it for cases of physical incapability, as no knowledge of horsemanship is required for a hundred miles' journey on the back of such sedate and peace- able animals as are usually provided for tourists. The manner of travelling through the country will be new to the great majority of visitors. Great care should be taken in the selection of INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 17 a dragoman. To the inexperienced tourist, igno- rant of Eastern languages and Eastern ways gen- erally, the dragoman is a kind of impersonation of Providence, to whom he must look for the regulation of all his worldly affairs. With a thoroughly qualified person to fill this import- ant post, the traveller enjoys a happy freedom from all responsibility, with a general sense that every arrangement is made for him very much better than he could do it himself. The choice, however, is naturally difficult for the inexperienced, for whom the safest plan is prob- ably to put themselves at once into the hands of Messrs Cook. There are independent drago- mans who are as good as can be desired, but it is not always easy to find the best of them : it is at least a very unsafe course to select the most plausible, as, in the absence of any infor- mation on the subject, one is very apt to do. There are also other agencies besides that of Messrs Cook, but I only speak of things of which I have personal knowledge. We were, I believe, very exceptionally fortunate in secur- ing the services of Mr David Jamal, of whose qualifications it is difficult to speak too highly. 18 NOTES OF A PILGKIMAGE. An admirable manager of all things under his care, an excellent chief for the numerous retinue which is necessary even for the smallest party, an intelligent guide for all that is worth seeing, and a pleasant, and never intrusive companion, I am not sure whether it may not appear a lower kind of commendation to speak of his remark- able talent for bargaining, which stood us in such good stead in Damascus and Constantinople. Mr Jamal is one of the dragomans in the em- ployment of Messrs Cook. The engagement of the subordinate servants can safely be left to the dragoman. A cook is of the first necessity, a butler, with probably an assistant to wait at table, a groom or two, and a number of muleteers, varying according to the amount of luggage, will make up the train required. With regard to luggage, I do not believe there is any article, of whatever weight and size, which could not be conveyed on a mule's back; but for obvious reasons of con- venience and economy not to mention cruelty to animals it is desirable to have as small and, I may add, as strong articles of baggage as is reasonably possible. Stores of all kinds are easily procurable at Jerusalem or any of INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 19 the principal towns ; they are not, however, easily renewed on the way, and one of the most objectionable features of such a journey is usually the condition of staleness to which the bread is reduced after the first two or three days. Very fair light wine of the country can be bought at Jerusalem, both red and white : the red carries best. It is the fashion with English travellers to declare that the Jerusalem wine is undrinkable, as indeed what country is there where the genial Englishman does not pronounce the native wine too bad for his un- educated palate ? but it is really by no means bad. The Lebanon wine is also good, when it is good ; Jaffa wine is inferior, and that of Safed a trifle less disagreeable than Dead Sea water. A word about languages may not be out of place. A knowledge of Arabic would be of immense value in making the traveller inde- pendent ; but only comparatively few visitors to the Holy Land usually possess this accom- plishment. With a competent dragoman, it is quite possible to see everything in the Holy Land without knowing a word of any language but English. European languages, however, are useful. French is spoken generally in Bey rout, 20 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. and many of the officials and the richer mer- chants in all parts of Syria can speak it ; Italian is understood in most Levantine coast towns, and is also useful in speaking to Latin monks, many of whom are Italians : many also are Spaniards. German is of advantage for the German Society of the Temple though many of them speak English and for German-speaking Jews. Modern Greek might also be useful with Greek priests, but is hardly more generally known among us than Arabic. The line of route chosen by the traveller on leaving Jerusalem will depend chiefly upon the time at his disposal. The journey I am about to speak of myself was undertaken with certain particular objects, which made us stay longer than is usual at certain places, and miss out altogether some others which are well worth visiting, but for which we had no time left. Baalbek, which the traveller under or- dinary circumstances should certainly not omit, unfortunately fell in the latter category. The usual route goes straight northwards from Jeru- salem by Nablous (the ancient Shechem) and Samaria to Jezreel (the modern Zerin) and INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 21 Nazareth, from which point travellers generally proceed in the manner described below. By the very easiest stages, Nazareth should be reached on the fourth day after leaving Jerusalem, and Damascus about a week later, by the ordinary route as I have given it. Mount Carmel is, however, entirely left out of this route, which is, undoubtedly, a pity. Those who wish to include it may, however, make a special ex- pedition from Nazareth for the purpose : it could easily be done in three days extra, and would prove of great interest. To go as we did, from Jaffa to Haifa by sea, is to leave out Nablous and all the famous scenes of Old Testament history which lie between Jerusalem and the great plain of Esdraelon, in the country of the children of Joseph. A course strongly recommended by some is to strike off from Nablous to Beisan (the ancient Bethshean), and from thence proceed straight to Tiberias, which can be reached in two days' journey, or leave the usual route at Jenin in the plain of Esdraelon, and travel straight on by Nain and Mount Tabor. The Lake of Tiberias having been seen, the traveller would now turn back- 22 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. wards to Nazareth (one day), and thence over Mount Carmel to Haifa (two days), and finally to Beyrout along the coast by Acre, Tyre, and Sidon, a profoundly interesting route, which could be accomplished in four days more, allow- ing for easy travelling and time to view the wonders of these famous cities. The coast road by Tyre has recently been much improved. Beyrout would thus be reached in twelve days at most from Jerusalem, or little more than the time which would be occupied by the or- dinary route to Damascus. From Beyrout to Damascus is a day's journey in a carriage, over a splendid road ; on horseback the time would be considerably longer. From Damascus, the Baalbek expedition can be made on horseback, going on from Baalbek by Storah to Beyrout, instead of returning to Damascus. Beyrout should be reached on the sixth day, allowing one whole day at Baalbek. 1 The time of arrival at Beyrout is a matter of importance, by which most movements are regulated for those who begin their journey 1 It is now possible to reach Baalbek by carriage from Storah, INTRODUCTORY AND CHIEFLY PRACTICAL. 23 from the south. The steamers only call at Bey rout every fortnight, so that arrangements have to be made to arrive there at a suitable time. The return is generally made by Austrian Lloyd, Messageries, or Eussian steamer to Smyrna, from which it is equally easy to cross to Athens or go on to Constantinople. The Austrian line goes by Cyprus, Ehodes, and the coast of Asia Minor, the Eussian varies the route by following the coast the whole way, while the Messageries steamers do a little of both. The voyage between the western coast of Asia Minor and the islands of Ehodes, Cos, Samos, Chios, and Lesbos is ex- tremely beautiful, and full of historical interest. Of course it stands to reason that it is equally possible to reach Palestine from this side and go back by Egypt, though this is not the usual custom ; and many people even, who come by Egypt, prefer to start on their journey through Palestine from Beyrout. It is hardly necessary to say that the routes I have mentioned will take, in almost every case, the same time, and have the same interest from whichever end the start is made. For my own part, I should re- commend beginning with Jerusalem. 24 II. JEKU SALEM : THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. It appears to be the custom to say that Jerusalem is disappointing. As my own experience leads me to a directly contrary conclusion, I must assume that this is due to the fact that the first aspect of the city is not so impressive as one would expect, or perhaps wish it to be. Wherein appears a fresh instance of the good fortune which continually befriended me. Our journey, being only from Eamleh, was certainly not a very formidable one ; but still, many hours' jolting in a cramped position over what, being as yet ignorant of Palestine, we considered an indifferent road, will produce fatigue, and may account for the otherwise disgraceful fact that, on arriving in sight of Jerusalem, I was asleep. Being abruptly roused from slumber by well- THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 25 meaning friends, I had not composed my feelings into a fitting frame of mind to look at any view till I found myself standing on the terrace of the Mediterranean Hotel, with all Jerusalem before me. I should recommend other travel- lers to adopt something of the same plan ; the preliminaries need not be exactly similar. The view that I speak of embraced almost all that is of real interest in Jerusalem. Almost at our feet lay the Pool of Hezekiah, a rather turbid-looking piece of water, built in on all sides, the houses running sheer down into the water without any kind of path or bank between. Beyond this came the most conspicuous object, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with its two domes and the old square roofless tower of the belfry, backed by low green hills, one of them being Mount Scopus, from which Titus looked down of old on the beautiful city which he was to destroy. Farther away to the right comes the great open space of the Haram-esh-Sherif, the site of Solomon's Temple, with the mosques of Omar and El Aksa. The Mohammedan feast of Moses is held at the same time as the Christian Easter, and the broad expanse of greensward 26 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. which occupies the place of the Court of the Gentiles was dotted with picturesque figures of pious Moslems, who spend their whole existence for the time within the precincts of the mosque. As a background for the Mosque of Omar, we have the Mount of Olives, somewhat spoiled by the hideous steeple erected on the top by a pious Eussian lady. The rest of the view is chiefly made up by an infinity of tiny domes, which are merely the roofs of ordinary houses, interspersed with a few minarets very few for a city of the size of Jerusalem some larger domes of churches and synagogues, and in one or two places a little foliage. The moderate extent of the city contributes to give it an air of greater completeness and uniformity. Beyond the limits of the last wall, modern improvement has done its ugliest to spoil the landscape ; but within there is fortunately little room for new buildings, and the long line of domes and terraces stretches away unbroken except by the small dark clefts that mark here and there the inter- vention of one of the narrow, winding streets. The mouth of one of the most frequented lay just below us, where the street of David de- THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 27 bouches on the open place in front of the citadel. It was, like most Eastern streets, a seething mass of humanity, their garments in every conceivable variety of shape and colour, sober, Christian Syrians in a kind of semi-European attire, with their lower extremities encased in a curious baggy garment, half pantaloons, half petticoat; Jews with shaven heads, all but the two long ringlets in front, and battered soft black hats except in this respect, they are often magnificently dressed ; wild - looking Bedouins in their striped bur- nouses, from the further shores of the Dead Sea or the desert of the South ; and here and there, to increase the variety of the picture, some large- limbed Eussian peasant-pilgrim, in the same long caftan, fur cap, and high boots that he wears at home, shouldering his way through the crowd to make some purchase for his scanty evening meal. We had little to find fault with in our first sight of Jerusalem. A great proportion of this motley crowd are probably attracted here by religious motives either their own or those of others. For the most pious pilgrims must eat and drink, and even for those who have free quarters at the 28 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Greek, Latin, or Armenian monasteries, food of some kind must be obtained and paid for by some one. Then, of course, among the Chris- tians there is a lavish trade in rosaries, sacred pictures, and the like, by which many worthy persons live and prosper. The motives of this latter class can only be regarded as very in- directly pious. But the quantity of people who have really come to settle here with no other motives than those of religious enthusiasm and love for the holy places of their creed, without any professional inducements or the least touch of ecclesiasticism, is astounding to the inhabitant of a respectable Christian coun- try, where men of business go to church on Sundays and idle people on other days also. These religious motives extend to several creeds, each of which has its special objects of vener- ation, and each of which also naturally regards the other sects as intruders. The times are long gone by when the Psalmist could describe Jerusalem as a city which was at unity with itself. Nowadays it is a place of much con- tention and jealousy, where the Latin Christian hates his Greek brother, and the Greek Catholic THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 29 detests the Latin. The Mohammedan holds both the great divisions of Christianity in equal abhorrence, and all three combine in their loathing for the Jew. The last named profess perhaps the most enthusiastic feeling for Jerusalem, arising probably from the fact that to them the city is sacred for its own sake, apart from any especial hallowed spot to which importance is given by particular incident. Jerusalem itself is the object of the religious aspirations of the Jew. Perhaps a particular sanctity may be atttached to the site of the Temple, but I greatly doubt whether any Jew is allowed to penetrate within the sacred enclosure of the Noble Sanctuary. The one spot to which they gather is outside the Temple, beneath the great stones of the outer wall, where wealthy merchants, in gorgeous robes of silk and velvet, and thrifty small shop- keepers, in patched and ragged garments of every description, unite in their strange ceremony of wailing, swaying their bodies from side to side, or pressing their foreheads against the wall, as they mutter over Jeremiah's words of bitter lamentation over the fall of Zion. " Her gates 30 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars : her king and her princes are among the Gentiles : the law is no more ; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence : they have cast up dust upon their heads ; they have girded them- selves with sackcloth : the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground." How bitterly real these sad words must be as they are read to-day by those to whom this terrible legacy of sorrow and subjection has been left ! There is a dignity of grief about the custom that makes one pass over many details that seem petty, and even absurd, to the stranger. To us the city is holy also without, of course, the distinct national feeling which in- tensifies the devotion of the Jew but in a higher and broader sense, as the scene where God humbled Himself to put on human form, and even consented to endure death in the most degrading form known to that age, the death appointed for pirates, runaway slaves, and the refuse of mankind. But the memory of the last and greatest scenes of His life ties THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 31 us down more than the Jews to particular spots which are difficult to realise in the midst of the crowded busy city, most difficult of all when it is the business of devotion which is being carried on. The scenes of the Passion are all marked out with the utmost care for our guidance, perhaps with too much care not to detract from the sense of reality. Our guide was as certain of the identity of the places he pointed out as more learned critics may be that the traditions connected with them rest upon no authority whatever. The differ- ence of sites, however, cannot be very material, it seemed to us, at least while we were in the open air. Let us take that Turkish barrack to stand on the site of Pilate's Judgment-hall, and the arch adjoining the Convent of the Sisters of Zion to mark the spot where our Lord was brought forth to the multitude. Most of us will follow from thence with reverent hearts the long line of the Via Dolo- rosa all the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We are in no mood for carping at the harmless traditions that have grown up around the great theme of sacred story ; we 32 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. find little difficulty in believing that it was at that corner at the bottom of the valley, that the soldiers caught sight of Simon of Cyrene " coming out of the country," and forced him to help in carrying the cross. It may well have been that some pious woman came out at the very spot where the house of St Veronica is pointed out to us, to soothe and soften the sufferings of our Lord as He dragged His way up that weary ascent ; nor do we smile at the innocent absurdity which fixes a site even for the houses of Dives and Lazarus. But when we arrive at last at the very spot where the great tragedy was enacted, we begin to lose the feeling of reality that has brought us through all the preceding scenes. It is hard for a man to stand in that great church, or rather amalga- mation of churches, with all its garish decora- tions, surrounded by all the appurtenances of religious pageantry, Greek or Eoman, and say to himself : " This is the hill where our Saviour was brought out to die ; here actually stood the cross on which He was bound, and there the sepulchre where His body was laid, and from which He rose again." We cannot help a dis- THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 33 tinct revulsion of feeling, an idea that this is not what we have come out to see. The thought of tracing the course of that last procession is given up, as we find each sacred spot encum- bered with all the paraphernalia of devotion, distracting the eye, and entirely obliterating all sense of locality. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a large and imposing building, which bears strong testi- mony in every corner to the piety of the faithful who erected and adorned it. It seemed to us that they were only too ready to do their in- artistic best to beautify the house of the Lord. The entry is characteristically marked by a divan, on which the Turkish guardians of the edifice lounge and smoke, and float their infidel minds in oceans of coffee. The first spot which is held in any great veneration is marked by a great reddish block of marble, supposed by inno- cent pilgrims to be the stone on which our Lord's body was laid during the funeral ceremonies of anointing. As a point of fact, many stones are known to have succeeded each other in this office. Passing beyond this, we come to the great rotunda, which is built round what is c 34 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. supposed to be the actual burying-place of our Lord. The sepulchre itself is enclosed within a small chapel, which remains, in spite of the numerous lamps which contending sects keep perpetually burning there, in a state of almost unbroken darkness : especially about the time of Easter, when our visit was made, and when great numbers of pilgrims are always crowding in, it is very difficult to distinguish anything at all here. The rotunda is open to Christians of all sects ; but the Church of the Eesurrection, opening out of it, and next in importance, is the property of the Greek Catholics. On the other hand, the chapels connected with the supposed site of Calvary on a higher level in the same building belong chiefly to the Latins. All kinds of different sects have little pieds-a-terre in the great building, and the ignorant visitor is often not a little confused by the various ways in which different Churches combine or oppose each other in their veneration for the sacred spots. For instance, of the forty-three lamps which burn above the Holy Sepulchre, the Greek, Latin, and Armenian communities own thirteen each, the remaining four belonging to THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 35 the Copts. Still more intricate is the case of the chapel of St Helena, which is the property of the Abyssinian Church, who let it for reli- gious purposes to the Armenians. But this is nothing to the confusion, worse confounded, which comes upon the pilgrim who tries to follow out the various incidents of the great tragedy which are here commemorated. It is true that numberless authentic sites are pointed out to us. In this place, we are told, our Lord was mocked, here He was scourged, here the soldiers cast lots for His garment ; but hurrying round from one dark chapel to another only increases our confusion. We cannot help wishing that the devotion of ages had shown itself in some less practical way than that of building churches over the holy places, and decorating them to an unlimited extent when erected. Of course this is a most improper view of the case. It was the most natural and fitting way to testify reverence for these holy places ; it has, no doubt, done good service in marking the spots and keeping them from pollution; above all, it is a great boon to the thousands of pilgrims who come here with less 36 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. artificial ideas on the subject, witness the kind of wondering awed delight with which that little band of Eussian peasants comes upon one after another of these relics of the day of salvation, but to me it was almost a comfort that recent discoveries have made it possible that the sites of the Crucifixion and burial were not here at all. A few days before the suggestion had seemed almost impious, but now I felt an un- reasonable conviction of its correctness. I had rather have the faith of the Eussians, but as a jpis aller I could take refuge with the Palestine Exploration Society. The first doubt thrown upon the authenticity of the recognised sites of Golgotha and of the Holy Sepulchre, came from the supposition that these must have been within the wall of the city as then standing. I believe this question is not yet settled to the satisfaction of all ; but most of the investigations carried on by the able workers for the Palestine Exploration Fund seem to represent them as being within the walls. There can be no doubt whatever that the place set apart for such an unclean purpose as the execution of criminals must have been outside. THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 37 Few other indications of its site can be gathered ; but we know it to have been near a garden where there was a sepulchre, and this sepulchre would most probably be on the north side of the city, as the great cemetery of Jewish times lay on that side, by the great road which ran north- wards through the whole of Palestine. Starting with these slight directions, Colonel Conder hit upon what is now very generally accepted as the real place of the Crucifixion. It is a round green hill just outside the Damascus Gate, chiefly remarkable till recent days for the grotto on its southern side, where, according to tradition, Jeremiah wrote the Lamentations. On the summit, a number of Mohammedan tombs are scattered about, but otherwise the hill is left quite free ; indeed, I believe it has now been bought by a well-known German resident in Jerusalem, for the express purpose of preventing any building upon it. It is the traditionary place of the stoning of St Stephen to the Christians of Jerusalem, and the Jews, who care little for St Stephen, yet describe it themselves as " the place of stoning," a spot set apart for executions from very ancient 38 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. times, and mentioned as such in rabbinical writings. Certainly it is outside the walls, as Calvary was of that we have ocular demonstra- tion from the great rock-foundations which have been laid bare here and there under the present walls. Also, if there be anything in the name of Golgotha implying more than a general con- nection with death, by going a little way down the road between the walls and the hill, we have ocular demonstration of the striking resem- blance this little hill bears to a skull. I was tempted to decide in its favour chiefly by senti- mental reasons. If it be the right spot, it has not changed its appearance, except for the tombs upon it, since the three crosses were planted on its summit. Few people come there : I have seen no one but a few Mohammedan women, going through some ceremonies of mourning at the tombs in a very casual, not to say jovial, manner ; and once a little group of children, to whom an old man was reciting the story of Joseph being sold by his brethren and carried away into Egypt. It is easier, at least, to dream in that quiet spot, to reconstruct in one's own mind all the details of that terrible day, than it THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 39 is in the great church, with its profusion of shrines and altars, of monster candles and bad pictures, and extravagant if not tawdry ornament. It is, however, only with painful reluctance that I can bring myself to abandon the recog- nised Via Dolorosa. Yet if Colonel Conder's theories be correct, only a small portion can have been in the actual line of the procession. At the foot of the hill by the broken column, where Simon was called to bear the cross, they must have turned to the right instead of to the left, towards the Damascus Gate, on the site of which an ancient gate existed, very pos- sibly from those times. Once beyond the gate, the place of execution would be straight before them. The way would in this case be shorter and less toilsome than that leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The words of the evangelists, however, do not seem to point to a long road. There are many other things, too, of course, which must be given up if the ac- cepted site of the Sepulchre is not the genuine one. For myself, I grieve chiefly to think how hopelessly off the right track St Helena must have been, with all her treasured discoveries 40 NOTES OF A TILGEIMAGE. mere illusions. I think of her sitting in the chair that is pointed out in her chapel, watch- ing her men at their work, I picture her to myself in the yellow drapery given her in a picture of Tintoretto's in a small church at Venice, on the further side of the Eialto, I think, Santa Maria Mater Domini, and all the growing excitement as the explorations went on, and the frantic enthusiasm when the crosses were discovered. I can imagine even then cynical courtiers remarking to each other that when a pious (and probably generous) Empress under- takes excavations with the avowed object of finding certain crosses, crosses are pretty sure to turn up somehow or other. It is hard to think of so much pious enthusiasm being thrown away, and of the good Empress exulting over what she thought to be her great discoveries; one might almost believe that she had been handed over to some tricksy evil spirit with full licence to cheat her and lead her astray. However, I believe that certain historical critics maintain that there is no evidence that St Helena ever had anything to do with it, only that excavations were made in the time of Constantine, and that THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 41 he built a magnificent church over what was supposed to be the sepulchre of our Lord. In which case, as I do not care three straws for any illusion that Const an tine may have been led into, I should unhesitatingly give my vote for Colonel Conder. At any rate, it would be a comfort to think that it was not over the actual tomb of our Lord that the miserable jugglery of the " sacred fire " is perpetrated, nor around it that the annual bear-fight takes place, which precedes and accompanies that astounding cere- mony. 42 III. JERUSALEM: THE TEMPLE. One of the earliest convictions impressed upon the mind of the traveller to Palestine is that the Turk is a nuisance. The gigantic absurdity, to call it nothing more, of leaving all these holy places, the centre of veneration to all Christen- dom, in Mohammedan hands, produces a natural feeling of irritation, which is constantly freshened and revived by some vexatious regulation or piece of official red-tapeism, causing the most peaceable pilgrim to regret that the period of holy wars is past, and consider seriously the ad- visability of preaching a crusade himself on his return from the parts of the infidel. It is suffi- cient to talk with any resident who has ever had any serious business with that hopeless Government especially those who are trying to THE TEMPLE. 43 introduce any kind of progress or improvement in Palestine to find a good solid foundation for this feeling against the Turkish rulers ; the ordinary traveller is exasperated by their mere presence. Here we find, in the first place, the unspeakable Turk occupying for his own purposes the site of the Temple, and raising beautiful buildings thereupon for his own worship. This, we consider, is bad enough ; but when he comes to celebrating his own religious festivals there, and consequently excluding all but Mohamme- dans from the whole area during the time that we are at Jerusalem, the enormity is still more remarkable. This is not even a coincidence. The benighted paynim does not want for worldly wisdom, and, having no confidence whatever in the doctrine of peace on earth and goodwill to- wards men, as understood by enthusiastic pil- grims, he has established a feast of his own, which attracts a sufficient number of Moham- medans to counterbalance the Christians. To these latter the whole of the Haram-esh-Sherif * is closed, and many poor pilgrims who cannot 1 The Noble Sanctuary ; the Arabic . name for the Temple enclosure. 44 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. afford to stay long at Jerusalem are obliged to go away without having seen the place of the Temple, a very real hardship to some of them. Being a little less pressed for time than some others, we were able to pay one visit to the Haram-esh-Sherif. The last of the pious Moham- medans had been packed off with much beating of drums, clashing of cymbals, and waving of banners, on their pilgrimage to the spot where it is extremely unlikely that Moses was buried, and in the whole of the enclosure there was scarcely a figure to be seen. We were not, how- ever, suffered to enter without protectors, our body-guard consisting of the cavasse of the Con- sulate, a gentleman of ferocious aspect, with a gold-laced jacket and a curved scimitar, and an aged Turkish non-commissioned officer, who fol- lowed us about brandishing a huge pair of top- boots, in reality taken off from motives of piety, but apparently to be used as offensive weapons. Our time was very short ; but I believe that if you cannot spend three weeks over the Temple, it is better to see it in half an hour. Certainly no subsequent visit can show anything to sur- pass the first view of the whole. We pass in THE TEMPLE. 45 by the beautiful judgment-hall, where the Cadi administered justice at the gate in times gone by, into a vast enclosure, some five hundred yards long, and at least half as wide, studded in all directions with countless little domes and cupolas. The central platform, roughly identi- fied with the Court of the Jews, as the outer zone is with that of the Gentiles, is paved, but most of the rest remains as nature made it, and green crass and trees make a contrast with the white walls and the many-coloured domes. Some of these are merely canopies over the numerous fountains indispensable in a Mohammedan place of worship ; others form a sheltered place for prayer, supplied with a mihrab, or niche in the direction of Mecca, to guide the devotions of the pious, or serve to mark some spot of particular sanctity ; while the row of low domed buildings to the north of the central platform are even utilised as sleeping-rooms by devotees from a distance. Going up by a broad flight of low steps, topped by a single row of graceful arches, we come upon the gem of the whole, the exqui- site Dome of the Eock itself. Certainly no one can accuse the Mohammedans of neglecting to 46 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. make the house of God beautiful. It is true that this building was probably the work of Christian artists under Mohammedan orders ; but this only shows that the early Arab conquerors had sufficient wisdom and piety to seek for their most holy shrine something which they could understand to be finer than their own rude architecture. The Dome of the Eock, though by far the most important building of the central platform, is merely, like many of the others, a kind of shrine built over the most sacred of all the holy places. It is an octagonal building, measuring about twenty yards in every direction, built around the great flat rock to which so many traditions are attached. The exterior is richly, almost gaudily, decorated with coloured marbles and Damascus tiles, and the interior also has been made beautiful with mosaics and profuse decoration of every kind. But these have not the effect that we have deplored in the most sacred Christian shrine, of obstructing the view of the principal object of veneration, or even dis- tracting the eye from it. The rock, which occupies the whole centre of the building, sur- THE TEMPLE. 47 rounded by a balustrade of painted wood, is plain to the sight even of a large concourse of people, and though the amount of light which penetrates through the stained glass of the windows is not exactly dazzling, it is at any rate a great advance upon the profound obscurity which conceals the Holy Sepulchre. Altogether, the idea that this shrine gives is that of a per- fect composition, where, while the eye can find in every corner some beauty of detail to rest upon, the attention is naturally concentrated on the most important point. The admirable art with which the decoration is lavished on the background, while the rock is left in its bare simplicity as the centre of all, seems to me at least far more impressive than all the flum- mery of gold and silver lamps about the Holy Sepulchre. I am speaking, of course, of the generally recognised Sepulchre. It is worth remembering, however, that the mosque in which we are standing was considered by no less an authority than the late James Fergusson to be the Church of the Eesurrection built by Constantine over the actual tomb of our Lord, represented by the 48 NOTES OF A PILGKIMAGE. grotto underneath the stone. This idea has never been generally accepted, and has now probably ceased to have any adherents at all, but Mr Fergusson himself was never shaken in his belief. Certainly all probability seems against it, still it is strange to think that so great an authority on architecture should have made a mistake of three clear centuries as to the date of the building. What the rock actually does represent is not very certain. The Mussul- mans, of course, have its history quite pat, and a very wonderful rock it must have been, accord- ing to them. Not only was it the scene of Abraham's proposed sacrifice of his son in which story Christian and Jewish tradition appear to agree but it is also connected with the personal history of Mohammed himself. Here the Prophet is known to have prayed, and from here he ascended to heaven on his wonderful mule " Alborak," after that sagacious animal had secured for itself a place in Paradise under threats of not allowing him to remount. The influence of the Sent of God was so powerful, that the rock was enabled to hold converse with him as it did later with the Caliph Omar THE TEMPLE. 49 and even attempted to follow him in his aerial voyage, a purpose which it might have achieved, but for the thoughtful action of the archangel Gabriel, who arrested it just in time. The marks of the angel's fingers are there to this day ; so that this story at least must be true. Jewish tradition tends to see here the rock on which the ark rested, and consequently the Holy of Holies, which, however, is more usually placed at a point some way to the south-west, near the top of the stairs by which we approached. The theory that on this rock stood the altar of burnt - offerings is supported by the existence of a channel which might have served to let the blood run down into the cave below, and perhaps through the hollow which evidently exists under the round stone at its centre. Explorers have desired to make further researches by raising this stone ; but though the necessary authorisa- tion was obtained from Constantinople, the local authorities were immovable on the subject. The stone, they averred, formed the cover of the Well of the Evil Spirit ; and, as they very reasonably argued, if it were removed, the Evil Spirit would get out, and might literally play the 50 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. devil with Jerusalem, a contingency against which they, as responsible rulers, were bound to provide. So the mystery is likely to remain unsolved. The central platform abounds in beautiful little shrines, though none of them can be said to come up to the masterpiece of which we have spoken. It should be mentioned, by the way, that the Dome of the Eock, believed by the early Crusaders to be either the original Temple of Solomon, or at least an exact copy, became the model for the majority of churches belong- ing to the Order of the Templars, the Temple Church in London being one instance. Among the most striking of the smaller shrines is the little Dome of the Chain, sometimes called the Judgment-seat of David, an exquisite little open building, consisting practically of a dome and two sets of pillars to support it, the inner ones being arranged in a hexagonal shape, while the outer columns are disposed in eleven sides. It would be the work of weeks to explore and chronicle all that is to be seen of this kind, and we had no such leisure unfortunately. The building vulgarly called the Tomb of Elias, or THE TEMPLE. 51 sometimes of St George, with its beautiful carved stone roof, should not be missed. Towards the northern end the most interesting object is the Golden Gate, the double arch of which projects both on the inside and outside of the Haram, though the gate itself has been walled up. There is a tradition, especially strong among Mohammedans, who fear that it may be true, that a Messiah will revisit the earth who will have no respect for the Prophet at all, and drive his followers out of the city to re-establish the Christian rule. He will enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate, it is said, so the Mussulman authorities have taken the commendable pre- caution of walling it up to prevent his getting through. Certainly, a Messiah who could not get through a closed-up gate, would not be likely to set even the Jordan on fire. In point of fact, I believe it is only a sort of wicket for foot- passengers which has been closed in even com- paratively recent times, as the walling-up of the great gate probably dates from an early period. It is sometimes thought to be " the gate of the outward sanctuary, which looketh toward the east," of which it was said to Ezekiel, "This 52 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it ; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut." Others identify it with the Gate Beautiful, where the lame man was healed by St Peter and St John, a tradition founded, I fear, on a hideous barbarism perpetrated by some un- known translator who rendered the Greek word wpaia, " beautiful," into the Latin aurea. There is a portico inside the closed gate which is worth visiting, though it is not always easy to gain admittance. There is perhaps more to see of interest to- wards the southern extremity of the Sanctuary. Leaving the platform of the Eock by the south- ern stairs, we pass first the pulpit of the Cadi, from which weekly sermons are delivered during the month of Eamadan a marble structure of exquisite workmanship, supported on arches of the perfectly circular formation peculiar to Ara- bian architecture then an immense stone laver, shadowed by immemorial cypresses, which might almost date back to King Solomon's time, and find ourselves in front of a grand colonnade THE TEMPLE. 53 forming the entrance to a Christian church. Yes, there is no doubt about it : it is stripped of all its ornaments, and the Mohammedan attri- butes of mihrab and mimhar have been intro- duced into it ; but no one can doubt for a moment what it has been. It was here that Justinian, twelve hundred years ago, built a church in honour of our Lady, which was re- stored to Christian worship by the Templars after some centuries of Mohammedan domina- tion. There is still the great vaulted hall, opening off the church, where the knights of that fiercest of holy brotherhoods met together. Here, in the long bare aisles not so bare then, we may well imagine they assembled in prayer, often perhaps as a prelude to some savage raid on the nearest infidel stronghold. Here, how- ever, we are not tempted to remember their faults. We are rather inclined to wish that their days had come back, and that we might see them ride clattering into the court again, breaking down the ensigns of Mohammedan worship with their heavy maces, and restoring the holy city to well, probably to be fought over by half-a-dozen Christian sects, all at bitter 54 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. enmity, and " hating one another for the love of God." I fear that we must be content for the present to leave Jerusalem under the direction of the Turkish Pasha, at this moment, no doubt, much troubled in his mind about the dangerous ceremony of the " Holy Fire," which is to take place this very afternoon, and quaking with apprehension at the news that forty stout man- of-warsman have come up for the feast from a Eussian ironclad lying off Jaffa. What if it should occur to them as it actually did to ask their priests whether they should allow Turkish soldiery on this day of all others to stand round the sepulchre of the risen Lord ? These apprehensions are groundless, however. The good Greek priests, even if they are not always in charity with their neighbours, will do their duty to - day in preaching peace to the exasperated sailors, and the Pasha will once more be able to telegraph to Constantinople that the perilous season has passed over without incident. It is best to be at peace with all men. If we are to take any revenge on the Mussul- man possessors of what we are hardly worthy to hold till we have learned to apply the pre- THE TEMPLE. 55 cepts of our own religion, let it be something in the style of the carver of that splendid pulpit, an evidently Christian artist, who has played his Mohammedan masters the trick of introduc- ing in his designs the hated sign of the cross, a fact which has apparently escaped their notice to this day. The hall of the Templars runs from the west- ern side of what must have been the choir of the Church of Our Lady. In curious contrast to this relic of the Christian occupation is the building opening off the eastern side opposite. It is a small and rather bare chapel if we may so use the word chiefly remarkable for some curious early Byzantine stone-work, but it has a distinct historical interest as being in all probability the real Mosque of the Caliph Omar, a term often incorrectly applied either to the whole of the Sanctuary enclosure or to the Dome of the Eock. The Mohammedan chron- iclers tell us how the Caliph was brought to the site of the Temple by the Christian Patriarch, and how he knelt down to say his prayers afterwards in the Christian church, which even then stood on the site of the present Mosque 56 NOTES OF A PILGKIMAGE. of El Aksa, and spat upon his tunic to show his detestation of the manner in which it had been polluted by the sin of polytheism. Then he asked his councillor, Ka'ab el Abhar, the renegade Jew, where he should build his mosque, and Ka'ab said in the hinder portion which is toward the north. But Omar said, " No, for the fore part of the Sanctuary belongs to us." Ka'ab el Abhar was probably one of the biggest liars who ever lived ; but El Walid ibn Muslim, who is made responsible for the story by the author of the Muthir, may have been a reliable man. It seems at least very probable that Omar selected this spot for his mosque. The small chapel in question is prob- ably the only building of Omar's which remains to us. The others are of greatly varying dates ; the Dome of the Eock was erected by Abd- el-Melek, some fifty years after the capture of Jerusalem by the Mohammedans. Somehow we seem to have lost sight of the Temple itself all this while. But of the Temple there is really nothing remaining but the place. We certainly find pillars and stones of great antiquity, remnants of former great works, em- THE TEMPLE. 57 ployed again in the Mohammedan constructions ; but these can be of little service in giving even a general idea of the original building. Those who wish to know more must be content to see with the eyes of Warren and Wilson, and the various explorers who have made researches here and published their discoveries ; for the authorities will only permit excavations on the condition that all the treasures unearthed are to be carefully covered up again. The rest of us must be content with the place alone, the general scene of many incidents in our Lord's life, chiefly preserved for us by St John. If there are no remains of the ancient buildings to guide us in reconstructing these, it is an advantage, on the other hand, that there are no traditional sites pointed out, except those connected with the Mohammedan fairy-tales, of which Solomon is usually the hero. With the Temple and Calvary we have ex- hausted almost all the scenes at all directly connected with the Gospel story which are within the walls of Jerusalem. There is, how- ever, a building to the extreme south of the city, and actually outside the walls, which con- 58 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. tains a chamber identified by tradition with that in which the Last Supper took place. The tradition is said not to be of the greatest antiquity : indeed, we are told that in St Helena's time this spot was revered as the place where the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles after the Crucifixion. The coun- try just outside the walls is full of memories of Old and New Testament history. There are the steep slopes of the Mount of Olives, where our Lord apparently had His simple resting-place during most of His visits to Jerusalem, whether in the hut of some peasant disciple, or in the open among the olive plantations, as many poor men sleep now, with no roof above Him but the great canopy of heaven, which is His throne. At the foot of the hill, opposite the eastern wall of the Temple enclosure, is one of the most sacred spots, the Garden of Gethsemane : the piety of the early Christians had covered it with shrines and chapels, but it has now fortunately returned to its primitive use as a garden, enter- tained with loving care by the Franciscans, to whom it belongs. The principal feature of the garden is the group of ancient olive-trees, very THE TEMPLE. 59 possibly descendants of those which stood here in the time of the Gospel. A most interesting walk can be taken from here along the Valley of Jehoshaphat, generally known to the indig- enous Christians as the Valley of the Lady Mary (Wacly Sitti Mary am), because it con- tains the traditional tomb of the Virgin, which skirts the eastern side of the city and the Temple enclosure. On the eastern slope of the valley are several curious sepulchral monuments, all carefully identified by tradition as the tomb of Absalom the " pillar in the king's dale," which he reared up for himself of Jehoshaphat of St James, and of Zachariah. The Christians take the last named to be the father of St John the Baptist, while the Jews prefer to identify him with Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, who was stoned in the court of the Temple in the days of King Joash. The Koran solves all difficulties by declaring that not only these two Zechariahs, but also Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, were in reality one and the same person. The Prophet was not strong in chronology. Beyond the tombs comes the picturesque little village of Siloam, a group 60 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. of white flat-roofed houses, perched half-way up the hill ; while, almost opposite, is the entrance to the subterranean Pool of Siloam. Further on down the valley, on the road to Mar Saba, is the historic fountain of En Rogel, where Adonijah held his famous feast. We turn to the right, before reaching it, under the wild hill where tradition places the Field of Blood, and so up the Valley of Hinnom, and past the Pools of Gihon to the Jaffa Gate. Many other small excursions of interest may be made by those whose time is not limited ; but for most of the places more intimately connected with the Bible story, one must go rather farther afield. 61 IV. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF JERUSALEM : BETHLEHEM, BETHANY, JERICHO, AND THE DEAD SEA. If it could be cast up to Bethlehem in ancient days that she was little among the thousands of Judah, there could at least have been few of the rival cities that had a prettier or pleasanter site. There is something peculiarly attractive in the first view of the little white town, nestling into a nook of the hills, with the great basilica of the Nativity standing out at one end, the mother- building of the city, in a proud supremacy unchallenged by mosque or synagogue ; for the people of Bethlehem, with few exceptions, are Christians. The scene is full of memories, too ; the fields in the valley below us are those where Euth gleaned after the reapers, and David watched 62 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. his fathers sheep. There, too, those other shep- herds watched many centuries later who saw the heavenly host singing glory to God in the highest ; and over the road we have just travelled came those mysterious sages from the far East, whose learning had somehow opened to them the knowledge concealed from all other men but the handful of rough peasants who knelt with them by the side of the cradle. The town indeed is of little interest, but there is a cheery kindly air about the people who crowd round the carriage with smiles of welcome and perhaps, also, of anticipated profit, for few visitors leave Bethlehem without expending ruinous sums on the wonderful mother-of-pearl work for which the place is famous. But of this we cannot yet think, before our pilgrimage is accomplished. We had some apprehensions, as we entered the stately Greek church, that here, too, we should find an excessive wealth of ecclesiastical ornament concealing from us what we wished to see ; but it was not of this that we had to com- plain. The Grotto of the Nativity is at least recognisable in form for what it may have been when the Holy Family were sheltered here, and BETHLEHEM. 63 the ornamentation is in good taste. The tradi- tional site of the Nativity is marked by a single silver star, above which hang the lamps placed there in pious emulation by the various Christian sects. Happy would it be if their rivalry could stop there, so that the devout pilgrim might be spared the sore sight of the Turkish sentinel posted over against that sacred spot. It is impossible to imagine a keener satire on Christian doctrine and Christian practice than is afforded by the spectacle of an infidel soldier standing on guard before the cradle of the Prince of Peace, to prevent his disciples from flying at each other's throats. The sentry is stationed here by the Turkish authorities with two or three comrades within call, sitting on the steps leading to the choir of the Greek church above not as an insult to Christian sentiment, as one is tempted to imagine at first, but as a bond fide precaution, the necessity of which has been shown. It is not so very long since, we were told, the Greek and Latin priests came actually to blows in the church ; and the dormant ill-feel- ing which always remains between the sects, is unfortunately excited afresh by any occasion of 64 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. special religious enthusiasm. 1 One wonders rather that this fanatic spirit is never directed against the Mohammedans, the natural object of enmity to both parties alike. The idea does seem to occur to them occasionally. As I stood in the grotto there came in a very wild-looking Arab convert, under the conduct of a venerable Franciscan with an immense grey beard, who, while kneeling and kissing the sacred spots with great veneration, varied his devotions by casting furious glances at the unconscious sentinel. It would have made a good picture, the old Franciscan in the plain brown gown of his Order pointing to one spot after the other, and mingling, apparently, his explanations with seasonable moral lessons ; the tall, sinewy, handsome Arab, in his black-and-white striped burnouse, listening with all his ears, but glancing back with a kind of tigerish glare in his eyes at the third and least attractive figure of the scene, the coarse shabby Turkish soldier, with his dirty blue uniform and his heavy sensual face. 1 Since this was written another and even more serious riot has taken place between the Greek and Latin Christians at Bethlehem. BETHLEHEM. 65 From the Grotto of the Nativity, a narrow passage cut in the solid rock leads to other traditional sites, of which the most probably genuine is the cell of St Jerome, a saint very dear and familiar to us in Italian painting, with his attendant lion and his piles of books, strangely numerous for an anchorite's retreat perhaps less popular with the students of his life. It was here, perhaps, that he did his greatest work, the translation of the Scriptures into a language understanded of the people, a work the use of which has so oddly survived him into ages when the people do not understand it in the least; here, certainly, that he spirited away poor Paula and her daughter to live out their lives in futile austerity, thousands of miles from home and kindred. The admixture of these kind of associations with the more sacred traditions made us, perhaps, less unwilling to return to the upper air, which we reached at last, after many windings through the corridors cut in the rock, in the Latin church of St Catherine. This is also a sufficiently stately edifice, though some- what over-decorated, but not to be compared with the magnificent basilica in which the Greek 66 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. services are celebrated. The Greeks seem to have rather the best of it here, as indeed is generally the case in the Holy Land. The Latins have, indeed, their chapel opening out of the Grotto of the Nativity, but the access to it can only be through these dark subterranean passages, unless by sufferance of their Greek brethren. So it is that on great festival days the Latin processions have to pass to their chapel across the Greek church, through a passage guarded by a double line of Turkish soldiers with loaded rifles. There is here, perhaps, an excess of precaution, emphasised by official dis- trust of Christianity, Greek or Latin ; though the love that the opposing Churches bear to each other is certainly more after the manner of St Jerome than in imitation of the Founder of the common faith. As Bethlehem shows us the beginning of the Gospel story, Bethany is chiefly connected with its end. Bethany or El Azariyeh as the Mohammedans call it, after Lazarus, who holds a high rank in their hagiology is now a poor village, presenting a ruinous, but not particularly picturesque, appearance from the highroad. It BETHANY. 67 is crammed with traditional sites the house of Mary and Martha, the house of Simon the Pharisee, the tomb of Lazarus all of equally doubtful authenticity. A higher interest is given to the locality from the fact that the ascension of our Lord must have taken place on some point near here, though authorities differ greatly as to the exact spot. I remember stand- ing on the gallery of the minaret of the dervishes' monastery on the top of the Mount of Olives, and looking down on a long train of Coptic women crowding into the little chapel which covers the traditional place, while our dragoman pointed out to us a round green hill covered with stones in the neighbourhood of Bethany as the situation selected by the latest explorers. It is all more or less guess-work, of course, though St Luke's account is clear enough as to the dis- tance from Jerusalem, and the traditional place on the Mount of Olives can hardly be received as possible. The whole neighbourhood here forms a part of the country most trodden by our Lord during His visits to Jerusalem. And there is one among the traditional sites which is un- utterably touching, for which not tradition only, 68 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. but the words of the Gospel and the evidence of the situation vouch, that corner of the road at the turn of the hill where our Lord, on His last journey into Jerusalem, first caught sight of the city, and, in the midst of the praise and rejoic- ings which accompanied His last progress, burst forth into that saddest outbreak of divine regret and compassion, " If thou hadst known ! " Ter- ribly solemn words, even to read ; a lament to be echoed for ages by those whose eyes are opened in a new world to their fearful mistaking. For ourselves, strengthened by preceding cen- turies of belief, we are inclined, with a con- sciousness of our feeble insight into what is really good or bad, to thank God that we were not born in the days when the faith of man was tested by so awful a trial. Our way to Jericho took us past most of these spots, and between the villages of Bethany and Bethphage, an interesting commencement to a toilsome and monotonous journey. The greater part of it lay through a succession of barren, sun -beaten wadies, the very sight of which gives one an anticipatory sense of weariness. The only relief to the monotony was afforded JERICHO. 69 by meeting with our old friends the Eussian pilgrims, trudging sturdily back from a pilgrim- age to the Jordan, with bundles of reeds gathered on its banks in their hands. Merely to see them fling themselves down in utter weariness by the Apostles' Fountain, was sufficient to tell one what a real pilgrimage is, with real hard- ships quietly borne as necessary incidents in such a journey, and a real purpose to carry them through it all. It is a pleasure to meet these honest simple Eussians, with their plain genuine devotion. In a few days we would see them starting off for Jaffa, with their faces turned homewards at last, and that journey they have looked forward to with so many hopes and doubts at least half over : one or two of the luckiest had managed to hire donkeys, but the rest trudged along with an air of perfect con- tentment and pride in the treasures they were bringing home, the reeds from the Jordan, the tapers that had been lit with the holy fire, and the long tin cylinders containing the sacred pictures that had been laid upon the Holy Sepulchre. As we met them now, the quiet patience of their faces rather shamed us from 70 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. grumbling at the road, which is in course of making, and has been so for a considerable time. At the present rate of progression, we cal- culated that it should be finished towards the close of the twenty-second century, and even then it is doubtful whether it would be safe for a carriage. The chief break in this toilsome journey, besides the picturesque Apostles' Fountain, is afforded by the half-way khan, sometimes called The Khan of the Good Samaritan. It was our first experience of such a place of entertainment, and we were somewhat curious as to what we should find there. It consists of a large square enclosure, most of which is uncovered; on the side facing the road, however, are a small build- ing on one side of the gate, where the keeper of the khan lives, and opposite it a cool pleasant colonnade, where the weary traveller can enjoy such provisions as he has brought with him in comparative comfort. The guardian of the establishment can supply coffee or lemonade, but these appear to form the limit of his re- sources. However, a khan is seldom a place of public entertainment in our sense : the shelter JERICHO. 71 from heat or bad weather is usually all that it professes to provide, something on the same principle as an Alpine hut in Switzerland. And certainly, the one thing for which the traveller to Jericho longs is shade, and he is not likely to be very hard to please when this is provided for him. On a hill above the khan are the very dilapidated ruins of an ancient crusading fort. Further along the road the curious inquirer may learn the exact spot where the man in the parable fell among thieves. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that any such person ever existed ; but it is interesting to note that the road which our Lord chose as the scene of His apologue has been always infested by brigands up to a very recent date. The long-wished-for goal was reached at last ; we came finally to a height where there are no further obstacles between us and the view of the valley of the Jordan, and after struggling down a long and steep descent we emerged from the wilderness into a pleasant land of grass and water. We had found some relief already from the heat and aridity of the surroundings in the cool murmur of the brook Cherith, many 72 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE i hundred feet below the road we were travelling on ; but the sudden plunge into this valley was none the less delightful. A beautiful and rich country truly, and better watered than per- haps any spot I have seen in Palestine, but not a prosperous one ; the fields are scantily culti- vated, and great tracts of good land are turned to no use whatever. Nor can we blame the natives for the lack of enterprise which fails to utilise the great resources of their country. With a jealous exacting Government on the one side, and lawless tribes of predatory Bed- ouins on the other, the native cultivator finds himself in a manner between the devil and the deep sea, and we can hardly require him to expend capital and labour, if neither he nor his can count upon reaping the fruits. But it is a sad sight to see all this rich land going to waste. Of Jericho itself there is very little to be seen. It is a place whose annals have been very full and troubled, and has undergone many ups and downs of glory and degradation since it was first laid low by Joshua. There is but a handful of rude huts now to mark the place of JERICHO. 73 it, and the only vestiges of its former grandeur are the great stones that once formed part of some palace or temple now built into the wall of a miserable Arab hovel. There is much that is interesting in the neighbourhood for those who have time and strength and health to endure a stay in that furnace of a valley. Few Europeans can stand the climate; to those who have to spend much time in Palestine there is no bugbear like Jericho fever. But for a day or two it may be very pleasant, though the heat is pretty sure to be tremendous. The usual plan for tourists is to make a three days' excursion from Jerusalem, spending one whole day at Jericho, when an excursion can be made to the Dead Sea and the Jordan. Our way to the sea leads us quickly out of the fertile land which surrounds Jericho itself, over a bare sandy plain, the aspect of which becomes more and more desolate as we go on. On our right rise the bleak mountains of the wilderness of Judah, which we traversed on our way here : one of the most rugged and barren among them, honeycombed with the caves of anchorites of old, in the midst of which now stands a little 74 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Abyssinian monastery, is pointed out as the traditional site of our Lord's fast of forty days. Further to the north, a high peaked hill is regarded as the place from which Satan showed all the kingdoms of the world; this tradition, however, is a little weakened by the discovery that the top of the hill, far from dominating the kingdoms around, is actually below the level of the Mediterranean. This may serve to show us how far down we must be in the valley. The country through which we approached the Dead Sea was dismal and desolate enough to satisfy the gloomiest anticipations, but the sea itself came as an agreeable surprise to us. We had already seen it in the distance from the minaret on the Mount of Olives, a mere dark- blue line, which formed a picturesque enough contrast to the dark mountains of Moab behind ; but we had imagined that only the enchant- ment of distance could give it any beauty. As a point of fact, it is, as seen from the northern shore, an extremely pretty lake of a beautiful deep blue, flanked by mountains of sufficiently picturesque outline and a peculiar richness of colouring, which includes every varying shade THE DEAD SEA. 75 of red and brown ; of green there is none in this desert country. The foreground is spoilt by a dirty disreputable little island of stones and ctebris of all kinds, which lies close to the northern shore : if one could get across to this, the view would probably be a more perfect one ; but I cannot recommend any traveller to a course which would bring him into personal contact with the slimy sticky water, the touch and taste of which goes far to justify all the abuse which has been heaped upon the Dead Sea. From here a pleasant canter across the plain, which becomes green and full of foliage as we approach the Jordan, brought us to the bank of the river, at the spot where tradition is pleased to see the place of our Lord's baptism, and also of the passage of Joshua and the Israel- ites from Moab. The former event is now be- lieved to have taken place much higher up the stream, at a place which is still called Abarah, the Bethabara beyond Jordan of St John. The first sight of the Jordan was most disappointing, the stream, which was swollen by recent rains, being of a turbid yellow colour, which com- 76 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. pared most disadvantageously with the deep blue of the Dead Sea. The banks, however, are fairly well wooded though we grumbled much at the illusion of shade offered by the scanty foliage of the tamarisk -trees and if the water were only of a better colour, and the stream a trifle broader, there are some nice glimpses of river scenery, especially at those sharp bends and curves to which the Jordan seems to be partial. We were rather inclined, however, to adopt Naaman's disparaging view of the little river ; only we found afterwards that Abana and Pharpar, though as pretty rivulets as one would wish to see, were not a bit larger. The return to Jericho is made over broad green plains, which make delightful galloping- ground and produce some singular displays of horsemanship among pilgrims unaccustomed to equestrian exercise. The evening at Jericho was enlivened by a Bedouin dance in front of a great fire built in the open outside the little hotel, a long-drawn-out business of posturing, advancing, and retreating, varied by the eccen- tric movements of an Indian dervish, who THE DEAD SEA. 77 vapoured about with a drawn sword in the middle of all the wild figures, and from time to time affected to throw himself into the fire, though apparently taking care, like Mr Man- talini, to keep a good twelve inches away from it. Chilling doubts were thrown upon the genuineness of the " Bedouin " dance ; " it was a trite affair," as Anthony a Wood said of the herald's visitation, " and many thought it a trick to get money." Next morning we were all glad to turn our faces towards Jerusalem again, and greeted the sight of the Holy City this time with a genuine joy at the end of the long wearisome road. An early start should be made on the return journey, which is fatiguing at the best, and is rendered much more toilsome by the intense heat in the middle of the day. 78 V. MOUNT CAEMEL. It was with a somewhat uncomfortable feeling that we made our first plunge into the unknown in the classic region of Carmel. So far, we had been travelling along well-trodden ways by known methods of conveyance, and sleeping under more or less solid roofs ; but here, at Haifa, we were to commence a life of wander- ing and dwelling in tents, with little prospect of finding civilisation nearer than Damascus. To emphasise our separation from the rest of mankind, we must begin by being in a manner marooned at Haifa being dropped from our good European steamer, full of commonplace tourists en route for Beyrout, at the dead of night into a clumsy native boat, manned by decidedly unskilful oarsmen and felt a certain MOUNT CARMEL. 79 pride at the sight of the retinue which was wait- ing on the pier with paper lanterns to light us on our way to the camp. It is upon record that Mr Boswell, when he was summoned to dinner at Fort George by tuck of drum, felt a moment- ary pride in imagining himself to be a soldier : we were tempted to natter ourselves that there must really be something adventurous about our enterprise, with all these unusual surroundings. It was a pleasant illusion which we conscien- tiously endeavoured to keep up, even when the surroundings had become terribly matter-of-fact, and we found our table constantly supplied with the veriest Cockney delicacies. The waking in strange lands was here an auspicious one. The morning was fine, and the bay of Haifa lay before us, an unbroken sheet of tranquil blue, set off by the reddish colour of the sands beyond. The historic city of Acre was just visible through the morning haze on the further shore, and over the low hills behind it we could catch at rare intervals a glimpse of the snow-capped summit of that shiest of mountains, Hermon, with which we were destined in time to become much better acquainted. Behind us 80 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. rose the northern slopes of Mount Carmel not very interesting in appearance from this side on which, just above the promontory which closed our view to the westward, stood out the great monastery, a disappointing building, with none of the venerable attributes which should distinguish the mother of all the Carmelite establishments in the world. It is, in point of fact, not seventy years old ; and even its prede- cessor, which was destroyed by the Turks some years before the present building was erected, only dated from the seventeenth century. The Order, of course, is of much greater antiquity ; but its fortunes have fluctuated, and many suc- cessive monasteries have been built and de- stroyed since its first institution. All that I can say of the present building is that it gives to the otherwise bare hillside that sign of the pres- ence of something living which always adds in- terest to a landscape; and, as the guide-books say, the traveller who visits it will be rewarded with a fine view : there is no gainsaying that. There is, of course, in this neighbourhood no connection with any part of the history which gives the greatest interest to the Holy Land ; MOUNT CAEMEL. 81 and even in the Old Testament there is little of interest in connection with Mount Carmel, except the one great scene of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal. But it appears, nevertheless, from the earliest times to have been endued with a peculiar sanctity, of which it has lost nothing to this day in the eyes of Christian, Jew, or Moslem. Perhaps this may account for the remarkable gathering of all varieties of sects which is found in the neigh- bourhood of the Carmel range. The Mohamme- dans, who are considerably outnumbered by the Christians and Jews, are not so well represented ; yet there is at Acre a Persian prophet of great eminence, who has announced himself to be the Bab, or Gate of Salvation, through whom the Deity must be approached, and is regarded with the profoundest reverence by the Mussulmans, especially those of his own country. Indeed, a story is told of a Persian nobleman who offered to give up all his possessions to this prophet on condition of being allowed to serve him even in the humblest capacity, an advantageous offer which the holy man accepted. In the town of Haifa itself, the Melchites predominate a curi- F 82 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. ous sect who appear to hover upon the frontiers of the Greek and Eoman beliefs without dis- tinctly belonging to either. The Latins, indeed, have the benefit of their avowed adherence ; but their practices must be much more satisfactory to the Greeks. They are, in fact, proselytes from the Greek Church, who stipulated as the price of their conversion that they should be allowed to retain their former customs upon three unimportant points, the marriage of the clergy, the administration of the communion in both kinds to the congregation, and the celebra- tion of the service in the vernacular. These trifling concessions having been granted, they accepted the supremacy of the Pope and the Latin date of Easter without further difficulty. Moslem or Christian, Greek or Latin, have done little in all the years they have had for the improvement, material and moral, of the town or neighbourhood. But in the last twenty years the Christian population has been in- creased by the arrival of a new contingent of a very different character. In our camp we were some distance from the narrow crooked streets of the Arab town, but a few steps MOUNT CARMEL. 83 brought us into a broad level road, bordered by double lines of trees and substantial well- built houses, the very model of the chaussee of some little German summer resort. We were in the colony of the German Society of the Temple, which perhaps we may consider the most extraordinary of all the sects assembled here. It is the rule of this singular people not to enter deeply into matters of doctrine or, at any rate, to leave a great latitude for individual opinion but simply to carry out in their lives the principles laid down in the Gospels, a strange idea, indeed, but rather a sensible one when one comes to think of it. They have, indeed, some beliefs of their own, as that the second advent is at hand, and that it will take place in Palestine, so that they have come here to be on the spot. There are other colonies at Jaffa and Jerusalem, as well as in Germany, America, and Eussia : I believe Haifa was se- lected for the first settlement merely from reasons of convenience. The greater number of the colonists are from Wurtemberg, the country of their founder, Professor Christopher Hoffmann, and the adjacent parts of South 84 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Germany and German Switzerland, though a considerable proportion including Herr Schu- macher, the Vorsteher of the Haifa community are German Americans. Of their views we had no means of judging ; their acts speak for them- selves. It is to them that all the progress that has been made in this part of the country is due the peaceful and successful cultivation of the land and the new immunity from brigand- age, as also the fact that we could drive through the town from the pier in what could by cour- tesy be termed a carriage, over something re- motely resembling a road and, generally, all the recent improvements. The peasantry are said to be greatly impressed with this new kind of Christians, whose honesty and benevolence can really be relied on ; the traveller will be equally struck with their invariable friendliness and hospitality to strangers. Our own pilgrimage to Mount Carmel was chiefly to see the scenes in which Laurence Oliphant spent the last years of his life. The man who can claim any connection of kindred or friendship with him is very welcome on Mount Carmel. The Germans have a loving MOUNT CARMEL. 85 recollection of him, and the Druses in the vil- lages of the hills entertain an almost super- stitious veneration for his memory and that of Sitti Alice, his wife. Few, indeed, of the inhabitants whom we meet but have stories to tell of his practical love of his neighbour, and his chivalrous devotion to the cause of all whom he found to be oppressed. The case of the Eoumanian Jews, who were sent out here by the Jewish Colonising Society of their coun- try, and who, finding no preparations made to receive them, were left upon the streets of Haifa, homeless, penniless, and starving, till Laurence Oliphant took them up, maintaining the whole number at his own expense till satis- factory arrangements could be made for the establishment of the colony, is one of the best known cases. But his chief work lay among the Druses, with whom he lived for half the year at the little village of Daliyeh, high up on Mount Carmel. Our road to Galilee was to pass over the hills by Daliyeh, a recognised station of our pilgrimage, and for this we accordingly started from Haifa under the guidance of Laurence's friend and successor, Mr Haskett Smith. 86 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. The first part of our journey was performed in a rough kind of conveyance, a sort of covered char-a-bancs, driven by an honest German who proudly asserted that he had driven the Herr and Frau Oliphant fifty times at least. The road lay across the long level plain which stretches along the coast from Carmel as far as Jaffa. It was smooth and good till after we had passed the pretty Friedhof, where the mortal remains of Alice Oliphant are laid, but after that degenerated into a rough track, with cultivated fields on one side of it, and on the other the singular natural barrier of rock which shuts off the sea-coast from the plain for many miles. A couple of hours' drive brought us to the ruins of the great crusading fortress of Athlit, which we approached through a passage cut out of the rock barrier. Here, in a pleasant green meadow near a little pond fringed with English-looking willows, our luncheon-tent was pitched, and here, too, the son of the Druse sheikh was waiting for us with a small following, a fine, martial-look- ing fellow, whose appearance was somewhat impaired by an old European greatcoat, which he persisted in wearing over his picturesque MOUNT CAEMEL. 87 national dress, and of which, ugly and inappro- priate as it was, he was inordinately proud. The ruins of Athlit lie out of the way of most travellers, and are not so often visited as they should be. It is difficult to imagine anything more impressive than the great grim ruin rising out of the sea on this exposed point, the waves dashing up within a few feet of the mouldering pillars of the ruined banqueting-hall, and the dirty miserable Arab village forcing its way into all available nooks and crannies, like some foul parasite feeding on the decay of the noble building. The outer wall of the north tower is still standing, an imposing pile, in spite of wind and weather and vandal Turks, who regard ruins generally as quarries for building materials ; but the most striking of all is the great hall by the sea, where the Templars met together for the last time before leaving Palestine, when every other stronghold had been taken by the Saracens, and the ships were waiting in the little bay out- side to carry away even this last remnant of the Christian garrisons. The rest of the way lay up Mount Carmel itself, along a winding path, skirting the pic- 88 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. turesque Arab village of Ainhout and ascend- ing through a pleasant country abounding in flowers and small trees, till we came in sight of the long low white house built by Laurence Oliphant for a summer residence, and still in- habited by a little group of his friends. The Druse village lies close by. Every traveller has written something of this strange nation of the Druses, but few have been able to get any certain information. Neither the family of nations to which they belong nor the country from which they come can be decided with any- thing like certainty. The purity of the Arabic spoken by them has made some suppose them to be emigrants from the south of Arabia, while others regard them as an Aryan race from eastern Asia, a theory borne out by their fair complexions, blue eyes, and generally un-Semitic appearance. Others, again, see in them the survivors of a very ancient population inhabiting the same districts in which they are found to-day, from Aleppo to Mount Carmel. Their religion, again, is a thing entirely apart from either Christian, Jewish, or Moslem beliefs, though some traditions of the other faiths appear to have crept into it. It is MOUNT CARMEL. 89 ostensibly taken with their name from one Duruzi, a Mohammedan heretic of the eleventh century, who, however, appears rather to have aimed at founding a political party than a religious sect ; perhaps his teaching was merely embroidered on to an older religion. For reasons best known to himself, Duruzi supported the assertion of the then Caliph, the mad Hakim Biamrillah, that he was an incarnation of Allah, and the Druses are still waiting for that person- age's reappearance upon earth which should happen in some thirty years' time when the world will come to an end. The holiest mys- teries of their beliefs are not even known to all Druses, but only to the initiated among them : it is possible, however, that, as with other great mysteries, there is not very much to reveal. One of their most singular ideas is that there are many Druses in England and also in China the latter being unaware of the fact themselves with which country they would appear to have some mysterious connection. That they should even be aware of its existence is sufficiently as- tonishing. The Druses have been a great nation in their 90 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. day ; indeed, the few Druse communities scat- tered about Galilee are the descendants of the conquerors of a former day, who subdued the whole country from Aleppo to Carmel, under their great leader Fakr-ed-Din. But their days of prosperity are past ; they are still sufficiently formidable in the Hauran a district south-east of Damascus, sometimes known as the Druse Mountain and in the Lebanon, where they share the advantages of that privileged province with their deadly enemies, the Maronites. But the Druse of Galilee is a sojourner in a strange land, disliked by both Christians and Mohamme- dans, and plundered by the Government which he is not strong enough to resist. When Laurence Oliphant came to Mount Carmel, he found the unhappy Druses in despair, overburdened with apparently hopeless arrears of taxes, and he set himself to work to retrieve their position, so far with considerable success. Certainly, the com- munity at present has a very decent appearance of prosperity. They are a kindly people, and gave us almost as cordial a welcome as our kind friends in Laurence Oliphant 's house, to whose good offices MOUNT CAEMEL. 91 we owed most of our favour with the Druses, and on whom we were obliged to depend entire- ly for any manner of communication with the latter, from our lamentable ignorance of the language. Under their guidance we were gen- erally made free of the village, and solemnly re- ceived by the principal sheikh, a genial-looking old man with a bronzed weather-beaten face, and very white hair and beard. We were taken across a courtyard into a large, bare, vaulted room, with queer openings like windows, through which occasionally heads of men, or other ani- mals, were pushed in to see what was going on. The bulk of the population followed us in, men, women, and children, the Druse women are mostly pretty, by the way, flocking in and stacking themselves somehow in corners as Eastern people know the trick of doing, till the room simply swarmed with human beings. Some of the most important had already been presented to us, including a very fine-looking old priest, and the village doctor, a venerable old humbug, who, I could not help thinking, would be safe of a baronetcy in England for his looks alone. I might have suggested his coming 92 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. over for the purpose, as the Druses are very friendly to England who stood by them when they were in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth in return for the crimes of a few among them, after the Damascus massacres in 1860 but, alas! there was that sad ignorance of the Arabic tongue, which limited my powers of conversation to such weighty remarks as " good morning " and " thank you." It was an opportunity lost for both of us. We were to have seen an exhibition of native dancing, and were regaled for some time with cinnamon-tea while the preliminaries were ar- ranged. But we never were allowed to see more than a dance of men, which was not very inter- esting, though one of the dancers, a Druse from the Hauran, who had just come to Daliyeh to see his relations, was held to be a master of the art. Nothing would persuade the women to dance unless the men were quite out of reach though nothing can be more decorous than the Druse women's dance. One little blue-eyed girl was half persuaded, half bullied into begin- ning some steps at last; but she had hardly commenced before shyness got the better of her, MOUNT CARMEL. 93 and she covered her face with her hands, and darted back into the shelter of the crowd. By the time we had seen so much, or so little, the sun was already high in the heavens, and as we had to get as far as Nazareth that day, it was necessary to make a start. We had arranged to go up to the little Latin hospice, built in com- memoration of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal on one of the peaks of Carmel, and descend from there to the plain of Esdraelon, over which our way to Nazareth would lie. Our road took us through a smiling country of verdure and flowers Carmel is celebrated for its flowers. Masses of asphodel, cistus of every kind, cyclamen, anemones, all kinds of flowers, clothed the earth as with a carpet, " Of Nature's couch the living tapestry," as good Bishop Gavin hath it, while, finest of all were the great gorgeous hollyhocks, that light up the further slopes with their brilliant colouring. The little chapel of the Carmelites at the place called Elijah's altar is of no great interest, though it commands a fine view ; but it is easy to see that it cannot be the actual 94 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. place of his sacrifice, nor does it probably pre- tend to be so. Once the neighbourhood of the scene to be commemorated had been reached, the chapel would be built simply on the most convenient spot. The probable real scene of the famous contest was shown to us a little farther on, when we had begun the descent. Here there is a great green amphitheatre, where a vast multitude of people might be assembled. On one side is a fountain which is believed never to run dry, the reader will remember that in spite of the great drought there appears to have been no difficulty in finding the water which Elijah asked for. The steep slope, down which we had to make our way to the plain, might very well have been the scene of the desperate flight of the priests of Baal, pursued by the mob of Israelites in all the ardour of a very new conversion, burning to expiate their backslidings by the slaughter of somebody else, and the river Kishon would naturally be the first barrier to their escape. The sea is not in sight from the place mentioned, indeed we had turned our backs upon it ; but Elijah's servant could easily have run up to the top MOUNT CARMEL. 95 of the ridge, from which he could see over the Mediterranean far away to the westward. I have rarely, even in the Holy Land, been brought so perfectly face to face with a scene from any history, as in that dell of Carmel. From the heights we thus traversed a really magnificent view was obtained, both of what we were leaving behind us and of the country we had yet to travel through. Coming suddenly upon the landscape, as we did at the summit of the ridge, there was something very striking in the aspect of the great plain of Esdraelon below us. There is an air of peace and prosperity about the broad level expanse, checkered with the various colours of the different crops, with the little river Kishon winding its way through the midst of it. Yet it has been known as a battle-field for more than three thousand years, and all its memories are of blood. It was from that queer round hill of Tabor over against us, that Barak and his host dashed down upon the army of Sisera as they laboured through the partly inundated plain, which made their dreaded chariots a mere encumbrance : here, many cen- turies later, was the scene of one of the last 96 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. combats of Christian and Moslem ; and here, too, after a lapse of five hundred years more, the Mohammedans had to encounter a very different enemy in the rough French heroes, who questioned each other on the march (as one of their number relates), " Qu'est-ce-que c'est que la Terre Sainte ? Pourquoi ce nom- la ? " The country where the new Gospel of peace and love has left its traditions lies among the hills beyond. The glimpse of white on the two-peaked hill to the east of Mount Tabor is the end of the village of Nain ; and another white building to the west we were told was above Nazareth, which was to be our halting- place for that night. It seemed discouragingly far away from us. 97 VI. GALILEE. The road across the plain of Esdraelon was not an interesting one, except for the as yet novel incident of fording the Kishon ; but when we got among the small hills about Nazareth, the scenery became less monotonous. We were rather late on the road, having started late, and were constantly coming upon groups of picturesquely attired country people returning from their work in the fields to one of the many villages we passed on the way. Naza- reth itself was reached just before nightfall. Turning the corner of one of the hills, we came suddenly upon it, a rather ghostly-look- ing mass of white buildings staring out in the waning light from their background of dark trees. Lights were beginning to flash out at G 98 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. various points along the hillside, and at one place a broad glare marked the scene of a wedding-feast, which was carried on to a late hour with much shouting and discharging of guns the usual sign of rejoicing in these parts. It was quite dark by the time we arrived at our camp, and there was nothing to be seen for that night but the stores of a few merchants of native metal ornaments, who made their way to our tents ; while our drago- man, who was a Nazarene by birth, gave audi- ence to flocks of cousins outside. In the morning we made the little round of visits to the various spots connected with the sacred story. They are not very striking. The sanctity of the house of the Virgin and the scene of the Annunciation, in the crypt of the Latin church, was somewhat spoiled for us by the appendage of the Loretto legend ; but the kind of cave- dwellings shown to us might possibly have been what they pretend to be. In another Latin church we were shown a great block of stone supposed to have served as a table for our Lord and His disciples, which is perhaps also within the bounds of possibility. I am GALILEE. 99 not learned enough to say more than that I was by no means inclined to believe it. The so-called " carpenter's shop," where a late tradi- tion says that our Lord and St Joseph worked, we did not feel equal to visiting. There was a kind of atmosphere of banal relic-worship about all these sights that only a very strong faith could stand. It is more interesting to know that on the rocky eminence above the quaint little Maronite church probably stood the syna- gogue of the Gospel days, and the place from which the exasperated Jews would have thrown our Lord down. I have always had a fancy that that famous scene must have been the occasion on which St Luke first saw Him. The story is evidently told by an eyewitness, and the details are so minutely described, that they must have been very deeply impressed upon the mind of the evangelist. Another place of real interest is the Virgin's Fountain, a spring of great antiquity, to which the women of Nazareth still come to fill their pitchers. They make a very pretty group there, with their bright- coloured dresses, but hardly a peaceful one, for bickerings are constantly going on between the 100 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Christian and Moslem women as, indeed, seems generally to be the case where the former are preponderant. When the Mohammedans are in the majority, their contempt for the Christians produces a certain tolerance. The next day's journey, to Tiberias, lay in great part over a flat cultivated plain, with few incidents beyond the village of Kefr-Kenna which may perhaps be Cana of Galilee and the meeting of some wonderful long strings of camels, bringing probably the grain and other produce of the Hauran down to the sea at Haifa. It grieved us to think how the vested interests of the poor camels and camel-owners might soon be affected when the railway from Haifa to Damascus through the Hauran came to be constructed. However, as the negotiations with the Government about the railway have only been going on now for some seven years, there is little to fear for the present century at least. In the afternoon it was proposed to vary the route by ascending the curious two-peaked hill called the Horns of Hattin, where the Sermon on the Mount is believed to have been delivered. It is a pleasant-looking green hill, GALILEE. 101 but really very stony, the stones being concealed by the long rank grass which grows all over it, and thus made more dangerous. The summit is covered with grass too, and a few wild flowers, but only of the commonest kinds nothing to compare with the hollyhocks of Carmel, or the cyclamen of the plain of Sharon. The depres- sion between the two peaks is very slight, and they are themselves flat-topped ; so that it is conceivable that a considerable crowd might have accompanied our Lord to the very top it is not very high and sat round Him to hear the discourse. Or a greater number could have found place rather lower down, and have been addressed from the rock at the corner of the southern and higher platform. From the only piece of internal evidence, I should incline to the former theory, which would make the Preacher face towards the city of Safed, the extraordinarily prominent position of which, on a higher hill to the north, is supposed to have suggested to Him the illustration, " A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid." The view from the summit was most beautiful. At our feet lay the Lake of Tiberias, like a sheet of dark-blue 102 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. glass, without a ripple to stir its surface, backed by bare desolate hills, with no sign of life of any kind upon them. In the foreground we had a lower hill, or rather plateau, terminating in a grand ravine, the Wady Hammam, or Valley of Pigeons, the gates of which are two towering masses of rock seeming almost to meet at the top. At the northern end of the lake we caught a glimpse of a low white house, which we afterwards found to be the first step towards a new German colony. Further north, a deep gorge runs up towards Safed, and the holy city itself shines out on the dark hillside with an extraordinary lustre ; and still further to the north-west the view is closed in by the wild desert mountains of Naphtali. The descent upon Tiberias is as beautiful as everything must be that is connected with that lovely lake. Our camp was pitched on its shores some hundreds of yards south of Tiberias itself. Of this little town, the only collection of houses which we ever saw on the lake, though I be- lieve there is a village at Medjdel, the ancient Magdala, I can say little, for I was hardly within its walls ; but, especially as seen from GALILEE. 103 the water, it appeared to be one of the most beautiful places we had yet come across. Per- haps it was the illusion of the lake which made us think so, for some camping neighbours who explored the interior did not seem to be extra- ordinarily delighted. It is very dirty, and is inhabited chiefly by Jews ; indeed it is, like Safed, one of their holy cities. Other sects generally speak of it as the residence of the king of the fleas, who should certainly be a great potentate in Palestine. "We did not seek audience of his majesty, having already made acquaintance with too many of his subjects, but leaving Tiberias, took boat for the upper end of the lake. There is a kind of glamour about all the surroundings here. I had so far kept up a stolid belief in appearances, and had no doubts that I really saw Jerusalem or Bethlehem, or whatever the spot might be ; but it seemed much harder to realise the fact that we were actually rowing across the Sea of Galilee, and it required all the discomfort of a cramped position in a not very roomy boat to prove to us that we were not dreaming. Our rowers were doing their utmost, for the dreaded west wind was said to 104 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. be coming, and against it we could make little way. But for the time nothing could be more delightful than the tranquil progress over the calm solitary sea. Far away, towards the part where the Jordan flows into the lake, we could catch sight of one white sail probably a fishing- boat ; but there was no sign of any living crea- ture on sea or land as we made for the northern shore by the ruins of Tell Houm. It is strange to think that in the days of the history which gives life and interest to all these scenes, this northern coast was a centre of bustling life and commerce, with the four cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin, and that other one whose ruins are to be found at Tell Houm or Khan Minyeh whichever is not the site of Caper- naum looking down upon waters covered with fishing and pleasure boats. I have never yet seen anything so awful as the desolation of Tell Houm. Here, whether it was Capernaum or not, stood a great city, with evidently a magnificent synagogue. There are yet lying on the ground, half- distinguishable amidst the long grass, broken columns, and great capitals and pediments, and carved stone- GALILEE. 105 work, as they have lain for ages undisturbed, unless by the careless footstep of some passing- Arab. A rude hut has been erected near the shore, partly with great stones from the ruins, to form a temporary shelter for some wandering herdsman or his flock ; but except for this, for miles around there is not so much as a fisher- man's cottage or a peasant's barn, only the prostrate bones of the dead city mouldering away in the midst of that hideous solitude. The west wind had come by the time we re- turned to the boat, and our progress after leaving Tell Houm became so very slow, that we re- solved to land, and walk the rest of the way. Our path over a green and flowery hillside brought us shortly to another very strange sight, at the spot where the town of Bethsaida is supposed to have stood. The only remains visible, to us at least, were those of a great aqueduct coming down from the hills ; a num- ber of stately arches were still standing, and water was still running plentifully in the chan- nel, but it had burst the limits in which it was enclosed, and, forcing its way through many a cleft, leapt down in a perfectly lawless manner 106 NOTES OF A PILGKIMAGE. to the deserted plain, and made its way to the lake in countless little independent rivulets. On an island in the midst of all these little streams, was a small Bedouin encampment, from which a few wild stalwart fellows came forward to carry the ladies of the party over the water for an infinitesimal gratuity. There was some- thing in the mean black tents of these wander- ers which seemed to give a yet more desolate appearance to the spot ; yet here too may have been a flourishing city. Higher up, on the hills overlooking the lake, a few scattered ruins are supposed to mark the site of Chorazin ; the whole of the prosperous community that filled these coasts is utterly gone, brushed away off the face of the earth, so that it is difficult to tell even where they once lived. There is something more ter- rible in the solitude here than in the sandy wastes around the Dead Sea ; there, one may feel that some awful visitation has come upon the country, and its effects are still more or less visible ; but here, looking over the smiling land- scape, with the pleasant grassy hills, and the sun shining on the lake, it is appalling to think that such utter destruction has come upon all GALILEE. 107 these great centres of life and activity, and that it makes no difference. The grass is as green now, the sea and sky as blue, as in the days of their prosperity ; their history is simply a closed page, turned over and done with ; they are gone, and the place thereof knoweth them no more. A singular contrast was presented when we turned the corner of the next headland, and came upon a neat little white house, with a well- ordered garden and a pleasant little trellised porch, under which a table was being spread for us. This was the property of the pioneer of the German colony which is to be founded here, a hospitable, friendly Badener, from the shores of the Lake of Constance. His delight at the arrival of strangers who could speak his lan- guage more or less, and who had come from his brethren of the Temple at Haifa, was great, and he insisted on making gratuitous additions to our store, of native and European delicacies, wine of Safed, and liqueur from far - away Interlaken. The arrangements for the German settlement were progressing slowly, it appeared ; but some difficulty may be expected in a land where, 108 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. though foreigners are permitted by law to buy land from the natives, the natives are not allowed to sell it to them. The establishment of the colony, however, is a certainty, and may have great consequences to the country round, where a little energy and enterprise may com- pletely change the face of affairs, and bring back prosperity to the shores of the lake. We took a cordial leave of our host, and a short walk along a beautiful path cut in the rock just above the water, brought us to our camp, which had been set up at a pleasant grassy spot not far from the shore of the lake, surrounded with bushes of flowering oleander, which bore the name of Ain-et-Tin, or the Fountain of the Fig-tree, in a corner of the plain of Gennesareth. Next morning, with great regret, we had to turn our backs upon the beautiful lake to pursue our journey northward. The low hills above us had first to be crossed, from which we got some beautiful views backward over the lake and for- ward over the upper valley of the Jordan, along which our journey would lie for the next two days. It forms a broad and fairly flat plain, part- ly cultivated, partly used for pasture, but, except GALILEE. 109 for a few groups of rude Bedouin huts, almost entirely uninhabited. On the hill we first crossed, but at some dis- tance from the lake, we came across a ruinous khan, called for some reason the Khan of Joseph, which is used by passing travellers, though it does not look inviting, and is perhaps not more dilapidated than most khans in this country. Some considerable way further, when we had got down into the valley, the little Jew- ish colony of Eosetta one of those which have been started under the auspices of the French branch of the Rothschild family was pointed out to us, up on the hillside on the western slope of the valley, by a courteous Arab gentleman journeying on his own affairs and on a lovely little black mare who gave us what was no doubt an exhaustive account of the place, by which our ignorance of the language again pre- vented us from profiting. With these excep- tions, from the time we lost sight of the Sea of Galilee till we reached Banyas on the second day, there was nothing to be seen but the primi- tive erections of the Bedouins, consisting usually of three low mud walls and a black canvas roof, 110 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. one side being left open. One of their villages, if it could be called so, was established on the site of an old Eoman mining station, from which a strange group of gaunt ill-favoured girls the Bedouin women seem to be uniformly ugly draped in the queer dark-blue garments of their race, rushed out upon us with much shrill chattering to offer for sale some Eoman lamps and other curiosities picked up about the place. The incidents of the road were many. Occa- sionally we would meet an Arab party on their travels, sometimes a dangerous-looking group of men, armed to the teeth, and beautifully mounted, but painfully harmless in demeanour, passing what would once have been a rich prize with no sign of notice but the solemn " Mar- hdba ! " (" Welcome ! ") once uttered by every member of the party : or at other times, a whole family travelling together, the father either mounted or on foot, with a gun slung round his body, and a reed spear with a metal point, some ten feet long, in his hand ; the women in a little kind of tent on the back of a donkey, in which two could sit, one on each side, to keep the balance true ; and the children stowed away GALILEE. Ill somewhere about the beasts in the saddle- bags, or the holsters, or whatever came handy. Certainly it was from the oddest places that we could see the little unkempt heads protruded, with cries of " Bakshish, hakshish ! " apparently intended rather as a friendly greeting than with any hope of receiving anything. There is a story in Herodotus of an Egyptian king who had two children carefully isolated from their birth, to see what language they would evolve from their own consciousness, having heard nothing spoken. The first word they said was bekos, which was found to be the ancient Phrygian for " bread " ; whereupon the Phry- gian language was rather hastily pronounced to be the oldest language in the world. My experience in the East has convinced me that the king was mistaken, and that the word was bakshish, the first word which an Egyptian, or, for the matter of that, a Syrian baby, would naturally use, without requiring any mother or nurse to teach it. Our first halting - place was at a place called Ain-el-Mellahah (the Fountain of the Pavement), in the neighbourhood of the Waters 112 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. of Merom. The camp itself stood on firm ground, but the centre of the valley was of a very marshy character, even in our immediate neighbourhood. Perhaps this accounted in some degree for the plague of flies with which we were troubled. There had been much wind a little before sunset, at which we grumbled, and our dragoman told us it would drop at sunset, but we should be worse off then, for the flies would come. His prophecy proved perfectly true : at sunset the wind suddenly dropped, and the next moment everything about us we were at dinner was black with flies. Plates, glasses, knives, everything was covered with an infinity of tiny flies, who kept constantly increasing in number till we gave up our meal in despair and made a rush for the open air. Pharaoh himself cannot have suffered much more. The view of Mount Hermon from this point was magnificent, nor did we ever again see it nearly as well, though we had to beat about its sides for some time to come. Next day we still kept along the valley of the Jordan, and made our mid-day halt by one of its sources, where the round green knoll of the Cadi (Tell-el-Kadi) marks the GALILEE. 113 site of the ancient Dan, the northernmost point of Israel in Old Testament days. An hour's ride further through the thickets of oaks of Bashan, which abound by the head-waters of Jordan, brought us to Banyas, a beautiful little village nestling right under the majestic Hermon, the site of the ancient Cnesarea Philippi, and the furthest place to which our Lord is known to have come according to the names given in the Gospel narratives : I believe, however, that not only is the Transfiguration now generally con- sidered to have taken place upon Mount Her- mon which would be a little farther north but that He is even supposed to have been at or near Damascus. To this favoured spot it has been given to have all the warmth and sunshine of the south, together with that wealth of wood and water which is generally reserved as a con- solation for the colder north. Another of the sources of the Jordan rises here, under a great beetling mass of rock, in which a few shell- shaped niches with inscriptions over them show all that remains of a once great temple of Pan. There is something almost comic in the piety of these inscriptions in such a place, though the H 114 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. surroundings are certainly such as Pan would have loved, the little river stealing away among the trees, and the prospect of the broad green valley stretching away to the south. Above the rocks a little beyond, a little white mosque looks complacently over the land in which, after so many vicissitudes, its religion has got the upper hand, while the hill to the back of the village is covered with the ruins of a crusading fortress. It is not only poor Pan's dead and forgotten religion that has faded out of the country before the fierce devotees of the little white mosque. We were now on the very outskirts of Pales- tine, and the most interesting part of our jour- ney was over. A day's scrambling over the lower slopes of Hermon in very bad weather brought us to the plain on the other side of the range in which Damascus lies. Our first rest- ing-place was in a very windy valley on the banks of a branch of the Pharpar, opposite the village of Beit Jenn : while on the second night our tents were pitched on a knoll above the pretty little town of Kattana, the traditional site of St Paul's conversion. We had been GALILEE. 115 travelling by very easy stages, as we had a mule-palanquin with lis which could not go very fast or very far in one day. At Kattana civil- isation met us 'in the shape of a landau, in which we had an agonising drive to Damascus over an appalling parody of a road. Here also we had to take an affecting farewell of our numerous retainers, with the exception of our dragoman, who accompanied us as far as Constantinople. The praise of other men's servants is seldom interesting to the most indulgent reader, or I would willingly write the panegyric of all these worthy persons, collectively or in detail, of Hamet, the swift-footed, the untiring, who per- formed the whole journey on foot, and always arrived first at the camping-ground ; of Eashid, the helpful, the music-loving, always at hand when anything was wanted, and under all cir- cumstances singing to himself the same monot- onous Arab song ; of Georgy, the simple and blundering, who officiated as a kind of under- waiter or steward, and seemed always in disgrace with his chief, the consequential Ibrahim ; of Hadj Hassan who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and wore a strip of green in his turban 116 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. in commemoration of the fact and of his donkey. The donkey especially : he was a beast of an aspiring mind, and when the pace was not too severe for him, he loved to walk at the head of the party. Having once attained this desirable position, he would resort to every kind of device to prevent any one passing him. It was quite a lesson in race-riding to try and get ahead of him, having to creep up to his shoulder without attracting his attention, and then to " come " at exactly the right moment, before he could rush across your path and shoulder you back. Usually, in the East, the first place appears to be accorded to the donkey without dispute, for almost every string of camels that we met was headed by a small grave donkey, who had the end of the rope which passed from one to another of the great beasts behind. But enough of donkeys ; as old Gerard Legh says, " I could write much of this beast, but that it would be thought it were to mine own glory." 117 VII. DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. The early Mohammedans thought Damascus an earthly representation of Paradise ; more modern visitors say that to realise this idea you must have been born in the desert. Certainly the approach to the city is extremely beautiful per- haps, with the exception of Banyas, the prettiest, or rather the pleasantest, bit of scenery we have seen in Palestine. Here, again, we have the fresh green trees and the cool gurgling water, in strong contrast to the barren hills on the western side the end of the Hermon range or the yet more sterile country to the east, which is, indeed, the beginning of the great Syrian desert. There is something very re- freshing in the long stretch of the famous Damascus gardens, or, more properly speaking, 118 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. orchards, outside the city ; but they are not yet quite in their fullest beauty. Passing beyond them, we come to a still more beautiful scene. The road lies along the southern side of the depression in which Damascus lies. A little stream of water, in an old Koman aqueduct cut in the rock, flows by its side with a pleasant murmur ; while the valley below us gradually opens out, a grassy plain divided by the clear blue waters of the Abana, with the countless domes and minarets of the city beginning to show in the distance. As we come down upon the valley, and cross the Abana, we come upon the beautiful Mosque of the Dervishes, a great dome between two tall minarets surrounded by others of varying size, which reminded us irre- sistibly of the singular Church of St Antonio at Padua. Unfortunately it is rather too new to have served as a model for the Santo, or we might think that some Venetian explorer had brought back a sketch of it ; it is also extremely improbable that the Mohammedan architect has taken his model from Italy, so we must decide that the resemblance is acci- dental, if, indeed, it does not prove to be DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 119 imaginary. The mosque, at any rate, has the advantage over the Christian church of standing in a cool enclosure, shaded by fine trees, of a size that we have not seen in Palestine. There was an exuberance of foliage and verdure on every side of us as we drove along the river- bank into the city. The wonders of Damascus are very difficult to expound to others, the greatest wonder seeming to us to consist in our being there at all. There is not very much to see, as compared with some other places ; but it should take one half a life- time to see it. The whole city seems so com- pletely what it ought to be, such a perfect type of all that is strange and mysterious in Eastern life. The crowd in the bazaars is just as we have fancied it to be since we first read the ' Arabian Nights,' if there ever was a time when we read them first. The bazaars are always the first thing that a visitor to Damas- cus thinks of. My principal recollection is of a pleasant little street that led to them. I forget whether it was called a bazaar itself; but it was not covered in, and it had shops on one side, and on the other great trees, the 120 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. hollow trunk of one of which was the dwelling- place of a dervish. I believe it was also on these trees that the ringleaders of the 1860 massacres were hanged, which is not a very cheery association for any one. Among the houses were at least two mosques, such as are to be found all over the place, with little unpretending entrances, which do not attract the attention, only one of the open arches of the court giving a glimpse of the beauty of the interior. At the further end was a more pre- tentious place of worship, with a very fine doorway decorated with coloured marbles, and a minaret of fine carved stone-work. Here we came into the bazaars proper, a series of un- paved streets, roofed in at the top, which occupy the principal part of the city. They run in all directions, but through the midst of them goes the stately "street which is called Straight," little changed, no doubt, from what it was in St Paul's time, a broad straight road, traversing the city from east to west, and covered in like the others. The wares are of every conceivable kind, each trade having a division to itself. There is the Shoemaker's DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 121 Bazaar and the Harness Bazaar, the Gold- workers' and the Silversmiths', the Silk Bazaar, the Cloth Bazaar, the Bakers' and the Pastry- cooks', and many others, each with a separate street, in which no other trade is conducted. Among the most curious is the Bazaar of Sales, where second-hand articles of all kinds are sold by peripatetic salesmen, who push their way about, shrieking the amount offered by the last bidder for the wares they are carrying. The shops are in most cases little more than small cupboards open to the public, with just room for the merchant to sit in a corner; but the richer traders often keep their stores out of sight. A little obscure entrance down a dirty passage leads suddenly into one of the beautiful Damascus interiors, a cool inner court, planted with lemon and orange trees, with a fountain in the centre, and a recess fitted with a divan at one end, in which the merchant's family are luxuriously reclining. The traveller, under these circum- stances, will probably go completely off his head, and fall a willing victim to the persuasive offers of the courteous merchant. But no doubt he has expected to spend his money at Damascus, 122 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. and if he has an honest dragoman, skilled in bargaining, will find the treasures offered him not dear. Should he prefer to buy nothing, he can find almost the same things for sale in London, at three times the price. So much for the sellers ; but who could give anything like an adequate picture of the buyers or the passers-by ? an ever-changing crowd of men and horses, camels and donkeys, from every corner of the East. Arabs, Kurds, Druses, Circassians, Negroes, every conceivable variety of Eastern humanity elbowing each other along, dodging the projecting loads of passing camels, or hastily crushed into a corner by the approach of a carriage almost large enough to fill up the road itself, with a load of infidel sight-seers, whose mere presence is an insult to the feelings of the true believer. It adds a certain piquancy to the general interest of the scene to know that the unbelieving visitor is really a source of fanatical hatred to the great mass of the pop- ulation. Only thirty years ago, Damascus was the scene of a fearful massacre of Christians, and the offenders, it is hard for us to believe, were those same kindly hospitable Druses we DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 123 had fraternised with on Mount Carmel. "We had expected to forgather once more here with the Druse sheikhs of Daliyeh, who were called to Damascus on business about this time ; but they had, unfortunately, been obliged to leave before our arrival. We were inclined to hope that there might be some mistake in the stories told us of 1860. It is certainly strange that Druses and Mohammedans, who hold each other in abomination, should have joined hands even against the hated Maronites. 1 The principal sight of Damascus is the great mosque, which is magnificent. It has once been a Christian church, and still retains some of its characteristics, its form being that of a great nave with two lines of pillars running along it, and one or two graceful little shrines interspersed, one, I believe, supposed to contain the head of St John the Baptist, known here by the uneuphonious name of Neby Yahyah. There even remains over one of its great gates, now 1 M. Elisee Reclus, in his magnificent work, the ' Nouvelle Geographie Universelle,' says, "On accusa les Druzes d'etre les anteurs de ces exterminations en masse, mais ils n'y prirent qu'une faible part ; les principaux coupables fnrent les soldats turcs, reguliers et irreguliers. " Vol. ix. p. 755. 124 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. disused and ruinous, and only attainable by a staircase communicating with the bazaar of the (Christian) silversmiths, the Greek inscription, set up by its original owners : " Thy kingdom, Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endure th throughout all generations." Such inscriptions are usually erased with great care by the Mohammedans. One or two may also be found, however, in the mosque of St Sophia at Constantinople. The court of the mosque is a singularly beautiful one, and con- tains some exquisite little cupolas, used as storehouses for the sacred books, while out of the court opens the splendid mausoleum of Saladin. The mosque was crowded, when we visited it, with motley groups of men of various nationalities a few engaged in their devotions, but most of them simply loafing or chatting in little groups. It was the month of Eamadan, the most sacred month of the year to the pious Mohammedan, and I have no doubt our intrusion was regarded as particularly untimely and unwarrantable. It appeared that our escort consisting of four Turkish soldiers, with a non- commissioned officer in command, a cavasse from DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 125 the Consulate, and two or three dragomans, for it was a large mixed party were a little nervous about the chance of some insult being offered to us. In the month of Eamadan the Moslem law, among other regulations, requires true believers to fast from sunrise to sunset, and fasting naturally makes men savage. Nothing occurred, however, though we were afterwards told that insulting remarks were made by the men who crowded round us while one of the soldiers was struggling to turn the key in the rusty wards of the lock of Saladin's mausoleum. This, it appears, is a very sacred spot, which the wretched infidel is not always allowed to visit. As we did not understand the insults, we remained most stolidly unaffected by them. The inhabitants of Damascus have the repu- tation of being the most fanatical Mohammedans out of Arabia, with the exception perhaps of those of Hebron. They are also, fortunately for the traveller, very conservative in all things, and offer a strenuous resistance to the encroach- ments of infidel refinements. But for this feel- ing the city would not be so entirely and delightfully oriental ; the few carriages are 126 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. almost the only things which remind one of the nineteenth century, and considering the nature of the crowd in the streets, they are a sufficient advantage, from the point of view of convenience, to make up for their want of keep- ing with the surroundings. The driver should be instructed to take particular care not to run over any of the many dogs, whose lot is already hard enough in this city of the faithful. If you do happen to hurt one of the poor beasts, the nearest representative of that noble species, man, will very probably give it a kick on the injured part to show a true believer's loathing for an unclean animal. I may perhaps take the opportunity here to record a protest against the inconsiderate abuse which is so often lavished upon the dog of Palestine who is really a most estimable beast even by Chris- tian travellers. He is certainly not pretty to look at, but to class him at once, as many people do, as a " horrid wild animal " is merely the injustice of ignorance. The Palestine dog in every case I have ever come across is very sensible of kindness, and eagerly and pitifully grateful for it. His faults are the DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 127 effect of the abuse of man's power over him ; one might almost parody the axiom of the Galician novelist, Franzos, about the Jews, and say that every land has the dogs that it deserves. From Damascus to the coast at Beyrout there is that most precious of rarities in Syria, a really good road, made by the engineers of a French carriage company in 1863. That those French engineers may be rewarded accord- ing to their works is the earnest prayer of the thankful traveller. The scenery through which it passes is generally pretty, and at times very grand ; but the very magnificence of the sur- roundings shows us what difficulties must have been surmounted before the road could be made. We left Damascus by the right bank of the Abana, or Barada as it is now called, as we approached it by the left, and followed the river for a considerable way towards its source in the Anti-Lebanon range. The lower part of the Wady Barada is of a peaceful character, full of soft green foliage, and dotted here and there with white buildings, the country-houses of wealthy Damascus merchants. The scenery grew grander as we got further on ; the char- 128 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. acter of the gorge changed ; wild bare cliffs rose on either side of us, and we seemed to be in the heart of a most inhospitable desert, but still, by the side of the little river there was the same luxuriance of vegetation of every kind. This, however, did not last very long, for the road left the stream and entered another valley where the rock-walls were as imposing, but the centre of the valley was no longer as an oasis in the desert, but rather a part of the desert itself. The cliffs here are grouped in such fantastic masses that one wonders that there should be no wild Mohammedan legend to account for their formation, especially as the neighbourhood is full of sacred associations to the Mussulman, reaching to the earliest times. Adam is be- lieved to have been made out of the red earth of a spur of Mount Hermon overlooking Damas- cus. The rocks of the Anti-Lebanon range are just of the kind that tradition loves to represent as the remains of some mythical hold, " Piled by the hand of giants For godlike kings of old." But at least no such story was told us. On DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 129 the desert plateau here, we were informed, the troops at Damascus hold manoeuvres from time to time ; but this information was unexciting. The road became less interesting for a while, and a tiresome series of ascents and descents had to be gone through before we had made our way through the fastnesses of the Anti- Lebanon range and got our first view of the central plain. This great and fertile valley, called by the ancients Ccele- Syria, or Hollow Syria, and now known by the almost equiva- lent Arab name of Bukeia, stretches away for more than fifty miles between the Lebanon and Anti- Lebanon ranges, and is watered by the river Litany, which flows down it to its southern extremity, some twenty miles north- west of Banyas, and thereafter, forcing its way through a narrow rocky gorge, flows into the sea a little to the north of Tyre. The Bukeia is one of the richest districts in Syria, and its smiling corn-fields and fresh green pasture were very pleasant in our eyes. On the further side of the plain we halted at Storah, where the road to Baalbek which, unfortunately, we had no time to visit breaks off, and where there was I 130 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. then only a small and rather primitive inn, which called itself a hotel. Now, I believe, the hotel at Storah is one of the best in Palestine. From here the road began to wind up the bare eastern slope of Lebanon. The scenery here was rugged, and rather imposing at places, with fine views backwards on the plain, and the Anti-Lebanon and Hermon ranges beyond ; but this was nothing to compare with the grand view of the sea, and the valleys beneath, and the great Lebanon chain stretching away to the north, which came before us when we had got to the further side of the ridge. Almost on the very top we passed a singular group of three or four eagles and a couple of vultures truly loathsome creatures these last, with their ringed necks, bald heads, and cruel beaks ap- parently deliberating as to what they should do, whether in the way of sport or other business we could not tell. We had hoped that eagles would have kept better company. The road all the way down remains interesting, but the view gradu- ally narrows down to very little beyond the sea, and an unbroken view of the sea is never to me personally a source of intoxicating delight. The DAMASCUS AND THE LEBANON. 131 entrance to the town of Beyrout cannot be called interesting, but this is not out of keep- ing with the character of the town itself. The only point of view from which Beyrout could possibly be considered interesting is from the contrast it forms to the conservative system we had observed at Damascus. Beyrout is nothing if not progressive. All innovations that come from the westward are acceptable in its eyes ; nor does it ever think twice about the advisability of leaving the ancient way when this has once been suggested. The result would hardly be gratifying to the most ardent apostle of progress. There are certainly streets of such an advanced character that in them carriages are not necessarily instruments of torture, but this is almost the only substantial advantage that I could observe. For the rest, Beyrout gives one the idea of a sort of parody of a French seaside resort, of which it reproduces all the least attractive attributes. The same may be said of many coast towns in the Levant. The country round is rather pretty, and the aspect of the town from the sea is pleasing enough, while the views of the Lebanon range 132 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. spurs of which run down almost to the shore of St George's Bay, a little north of Beyrout are very fine indeed. The mosque is an old Crusaders' church, but Christians are very sel- dom allowed to visit it. Otherwise there is absolutely no interest attaching to the place, except that St George is said to have killed his dragon on the shores of the bay which bears his name. The contest between Perseus and his monster took place near Jaffa, so that there seems to have been good sport with dragons along this coast in bygone days. They are not, however, to be met with frequently now, and the sportsman of the present day must content himself with smaller game. There are wild boars in plenty in the lower valley of the Jordan, to kill which is an act of charity to the native proprietors, and Mount Carmel simply swarms with porcupines. 133 VIII. THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. It is impossible to visit Palestine without being struck by the unanimous feeling manifested by its many different sects and divisions of some approaching change, which is vaguely expected to relieve in a way as yet undefined the evils of that unfavoured land. The sentiment is no doubt strongest among the Christian sects, who detest each other with a hatred passing the hate of the Mohammedan, and who look forward to important results ensuing upon the great Euro- pean contest which is expected to come off some time within the present generation, and must, in their opinion, have a great effect on the future of Palestine. Diplomatists in general are apt to make no very great account of this corner of the earth, though its value, even from the prosaic 134 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. point of view of fertility, is considerable ; and the matter-of-fact statesman is a little scornful of the sentimental longings to possess the land of so many sacred associations, when compared with questions of practical politics. Yet the most superficial traveller to the Holy Land can see that the sentiment thus excited in various forms among the followers of various creeds, is as formidable in its way as the superstition which animated the Ghazis of Afghanistan or the Dervishes of the Soudan. The people who talk and plot about the future ownership of the Holy Land are no idle dreamers. Eeligious en- thusiasts they may be, but their views are emi- nently practical ; and each looks to the increase of the temporal dominion of the State which protects him as indicating his ascendancy over his spiritual adversaries. It is a singular effect of visiting the places where the Gospel of Peace was first preached, that it appears to arouse among many of the least excitable of men a kind of appetite for an internecine religious war such as, happily, has rarely been seen in this world ; but there are many profoundly re- ligious people who regard the tolerance of other THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 135 ideas than their own as a sign of indifference to the truth. The Greek Christian in the Holy Land regards the Latin in almost the same light as the follower of Mohammed, though in his own country he might think nothing at all of the difference of creed. The followers of one sect are in the eyes of all others mischievous heretics, the propriety of whose mere presence on the sacred soil is doubtful, and is reasonably the cause of many most un-Christian conflicts. All these troubles, however, they believe will be re- moved when Eussia is victorious and the Greek Church shall inherit the earth ; or when the supremacy of France is established, and the hands of the Latin Catholics are strengthened ; or in such other cases as the various remain- ing religious parties desire. Nor are the adher- ents of the various Churches either reluctant to engage in the conflict, or despondent as to their power of letting loose the dogs of war when the proper time comes. It is no great cause of wonder that all alike are dissatisfied with the present condition of Palestine. It would be a bold statement to assert that there is no worse governed province 136 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. in the Turkish dominions ; but its condition is at least sufficiently grievous to excite the as- tonishment and indignation even of the chance visitor, unless he has already some experience of the benefits of Ottoman rule in other parts. The difficulty of getting official sanction for any kind of projected improvement is one of the principal mysteries to the inexperienced ; yet much of this may be accounted for by the short and uncertain tenure of office enjoyed by the various governors and under-governors of the country. There is really no time to think of anything that does not bring in money at once. Palestine is divided under the last arrangement longitudinally into two parts : the less visited half, east of the Jordan, is subject to the Walee of Damascus ; the western half, including almost all the scenes described, to the Governor of Beyrout, next to whom come the two Mutaserifs or lieutenant-governors, as we may call them, of northern and southern Palestine, whose respective headquarters are at Acre and Jerusalem. Be- neath them again are the smaller potentates, re- joicing in the title of Kaimakam, whose principal duty is to collect a sufficient amount of taxes for THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 137 the superior officer to remit to the central Govern- ment, with a trifling margin for his trouble, and perhaps a small extra contribution to eke out the scanty salary allotted to an official who is known to have sufficient opportunities for help- ing himself. Among these are undoubtedly some officials possibly many who are honest and intelligent, and sincerely desire the welfare of the province committed to their charge. But it must be remembered that even the Governor of Damascus is liable to be removed at short notice, and rarely retains his command for a whole year, and that when there is a change in the head of the government, all the underlings are likely to be turned out of office also. " Every man for himself " is therefore not unnaturally the maxim of the smaller authorities at any rate ; if their tenure of office is to be short, it must be made all the more profitable while it does last, and the unhappy peasantry must pay the piper. The people of the country are patient enough ; indeed, any attempt at resist- ance or remonstrance only brings further evils on their devoted heads. The Kaimakam is absolute in his small way, and there is no hope 138 NOTES OF A PILGEIMAGE. of making a stand against him or his myrmidons. The Turkish soldier himself is, in the enlightened nineteenth century, an exact reproduction of the lanzknecht of the middle ages ; undaunted in battle, where his services are often held to outweigh all his misconduct at other seasons, but in time of peace an absolute pest to the country, with an insatiable appetite for pleasure and gain, utterly unscrupulous how he procures them, obedient to no authority but that of his immediate military superior, and not to him when there is a chance of a successful mutiny. To such administrators of the law, the peasant has no power to refuse anything, happy if only the extortioner may be content with all he has, and does not march himself off to forced military service as a penalty for not having more to give. To such dominion, however, the peasant is accustomed, as eels are to being skinned, and probably would not even wish for a change of rulers, which would seem to him but an ex- change of tyrants. But the stranger who comes into Palestine, especially if he wishes to settle, as foreigners continue to do in spite of the resist- ance of the Turkish Government, detests and THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 139 resents this obnoxious system ; and, if he be in the slightest way inclined to entertain political views as to the future of Palestine, it is almost impossible that he should not say to himself, " Would it not be Christian charity to relieve these poor people from the intolerable burdens laid upon them ? It is naturally objectionable that the Holy Land should be in the hands of an in- fidel Power, but it might be borne if that Power's rule were even ordinarily just. But here we have a Government that is obviously unfit for such a charge. Is it not our duty to take it out of their hands ? " I am not to be supposed to in- dorse such an opinion : I merely represent it as it occurs to many. Timid and feeble, even to im- becility, in its foreign relations, and brutally tyrannical at home, the Turkish Government wilfully alienates the support, even of those who are most willing to make allowances. It needs no long experience to understand the two categories into which the Sublime Porte divides those who have any dealings with it : (i.) enemies i.e., persons to be feared cringe to them ; and (ii.) friends videlicet, good-natured fools take advantage of their folly. It is no very great 140 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. wonder if the latter are often disgusted, while the pretensions of the former grow constantly greater. As it happens, two of the most influential parties in Palestine are respec- tively led by the two Powers most dangerous to Turkey, whose principal consolation must be that the nations in question, however united upon other subjects, remain and must continue deadly enemies in the Holy Land. In this fact lies for the present the safety of the Turkish rule in Palestine, as the most ardent enthusiasts for the rescue of the holy places from Mohammedan hands have the one great natural barrier between them. The lion will lie down with the lamb long before the Greek and Latin Churches will join hands even against a com- mon foe. The population of Palestine may amount to some three hundred thousand souls, of whom about two-thirds are at present Mohammedans. It is not, however, in this Moslem population that the Turkish Government will find any zealous defenders of the existing regime. The fellaheen of Palestine, who form the bulk of the Mohammedan element, are not without good THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 141 points, but they are by no means warlike. Nor are they in the least likely to fight either for the Government they live under or for the religion they profess. The peasantry of Palestine are believed to be the direct descendants of the ancient Canaanites, and have been hewers of wood and drawers of water since the time of Joshua. For three thousand years they have been accustomed to be ruled, with varying de- grees of cruelty, by alien masters professing various religions, Jewish, Pagan, Christian, and Mohammedan, to each of which they have con- formed in turn. But these alien creeds have probably never taken any very strong hold on their spirit ; and there may be detected, under the veneer of Islamism which covers them at present, remnants of ceremonies and superstitions which take their origin from some very ancient heathen worship which they have never aban- doned. To people such as these it can matter very little from a religious point of view whether their rulers be Moslem or Christian ; while, as regards material prosperity, their lot would cer- tainly be easier under the rule of a civilised Power. It is not certain whether they are aware of this 142 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. last fact, but they must know at least that they could hardly exchange for the worse. The more warlike Arabs of the south could not probably be counted upon much more than the passive fellaheen of the plains in a struggle where Turkey seemed likely to get the worst of it. There is no love for the house of Osman among Arab nations. The Sultan is indeed the commander of the faithful, so long as he is established at Constantinople ; but should there be any chance of his losing the immense prestige attaching to the possession of dominions in Europe, as is not improbable, if the Turkish Government continue the sagacious and en- lightened policy of giving the cat the cream to keep, there are princes in Arabia of as sacred a line as Abdul Hamid himself, who will be set up in opposition and will prove very formidable rivals. Let the Sultan be once driven across the Bosphorus, said one who had studied the Moslem populations deeply, and all Arabia will revolt. There is little material for the Turkish Government to count upon there. It may be mentioned, at the same time, that the proximity of Arabia would be one of the greatest dangers THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 143 to be provided against by any European Power which could possess itself of Palestine. So far I have attempted to show three things. In the first place, that there is among all sects in the country with the exception perhaps of the timid native cultivator a general expecta- tion and desire of some change in the govern- ment of Palestine; secondly, that that govern- ment as at present existing is radically bad, and that any change from it would be to the advan- tage of the people ; and, thirdly, that in case of a contest for the possession of the country, it is not probable that the inhabitants would make any stand on behalf of their present rulers. I think that these combined facts entitle us to look to a change in the affairs of Palestine which may possibly be very near at hand. Unless the system of government can be entirely reformed, I fear that every visitor to Palestine will even be inclined to hope that such a change may be very near indeed. But this is hardly a profit- able subject for speculation; a more practical inquiry would be, What other lot is possible for Palestine ; and what advantages or disadvantages are implied thereby ? 144 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Supposing, then, that Palestine is no longer under Turkish rule, it may be said at once that no other Mohammedan Power is likely to estab- lish its supremacy there. No doubt the Arabs of the borders might be inclined to make fight for the possession of the Holy City, and might, from time to time, especially in an age when Mahdis are fashionable, make serious attacks upon Palestine, with the support of the stronger and more fanatical tribes of Arabia itself. But I cannot consider this as more than a danger against which the occupants of Palestine would be bound to make provision, and probably would make quite adequate provision. There would be frontier troubles constantly recurring, at least for the first twenty or thirty years, but it is within the resources of civilisation to overcome such disturbances. Leaving Mohammedan rule aside, we find apparently no less than four possible future conditions for Palestine. It may be occupied by any one of three European Powers, Eussia, Prance, or England, no other nation has a sufficient interest in the country to have any claim, or it may be formed into a little State by itself. We may now consider the re- THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 145 spective advantages of each of these conditions in detail. It is natural to consider first the claims of the Greek Church, which has much the most numer- ous following of all Christian sects in Palestine. To the Greeks and the kindred sects all hope for the future centres in Russia, and that very energetic Power shows no intention of disap- pointing the confidence thus put in her. Neither her diplomatic nor her civil servants are allowed to lose sight of Palestine. The Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem is, through the exertion of Russian influence at Constantinople, practically the nominee of the Czar. Pilgrimages from Russia receive encouragement and even pecuniary support from the State, and the Imperial Government is never slow to point out to the pious and stalwart pilgrims it sends forth the many advantages, spiritual and temporal, of settling in the Holy Land. The Russian Chris- tian, once settled, feels perfect and well- warranted confidence in the power of his Government to meet all objections on the part of Turkey to his presence or his behaviour. The amount of interest taken in the affairs of Palestine at St K 146 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Petersburg may be estimated by the fact that Eussian officials have even intervened in protec- tion of the Jews of their own nation, whose treatment by the authorities at home can hardly be described as paternal. In view of all these facts, it cannot be doubted that Eussia would be glad to possess herself of Palestine, which would probably be of more political importance to her than to any other nation. The possession of Jerusalem would indeed add so enormously to the prestige of Eussia at least among Slav races and in the Greek Church that it is for that reason highly inexpedient that she should ever be permitted to acquire it. Of other reasons for and against a Eussian occupation of Palestine, we may say that the country would, in Eussian hands, probably be better off than it is now ; the peasantry, whose submissive character would admirably suit Muscovite landlords, would not be quite so harshly treated, and there would undoubtedly be a great deal done in the matter of roads and other public works, of which it is difficult to overrate the importance. But the present intolerant spirit existing in the Greek Church of Palestine as in other Churches too, THE BALANCE OF POWEK IN PALESTINE. 147 unfortunately would not be restrained but encouraged, and it is probable that pilgrims of any other shade of belief would find a great many new difficulties thrown in their way, and the Latin Church would be practically extin- guished. Now, one of the first points in the readjustment of the government of Palestine - if there is sufficient reason for a change at all must be the stipulation that pilgrims of all nations and beliefs have equal liberty of access to the sacred places they wish to visit. This is the first general objection to the Eussian supremacy ; others arise from the general belief that though the peasantry would be better treated and the country turned to better account by Eussia than by Turkey, yet a more civilised Power would be better qualified to take charge of people and country than either. So much for general reasons ; from the point of view of England, it would be absolutely impossible to tolerate the presence of Eussia so near the Suez Canal under any circumstances whatever. The Latin Church or, as we in Europe are accustomed to call it, the Eoman Catholic Church looks to France as its deliverer. It 148 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. has made great progress in Palestine of late years, owing to the unceasing work of the Franciscan and other Latin monks, and is now more near to equality with the Greek Church than has ever yet been the case. Strangely enough, in view of the anti- religious attitude taken up oi ^ late years by the home Govern- ment, there is not only a great interest taken by France in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Holy Land, but the French consuls are chosen principally with regard to their individual piety. The result may, perhaps, be a little trying to some of the gentlemen themselves, as the Latin Catholicism of Palestine is very catholic indeed, and includes a variety of strange sects, whose practices cannot commend themselves to a strict observer of Catholic principles as understood in Europe. " The French consul-general at Bey- rout," said Laurence Oliphant, " goes to Mass on Easter Sunday with the Eoman Catholics. On Easter Monday he attends Mass with the Maronites, and on Tuesday he worships with the Melchites, thus dividing his favours equally, and patronising with great impartiality any heresies he may happen to come across." THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 149 Such impartiality is, however, a most suit- able characteristic of a Power which aims at ruling in Palestine ; and it is in a great meas- ure owing to the fact that France has not the same ecclesiastical character or connection between Church and State as Eussia has, and could hardly, without inconsistency, allow of any religious persecution, that many people are inclined to think French dominion in Pales- tine not undesirable. That France has long had an eye upon the rich province of Syria is well known ; and no existing Power would be more qualified to take it in hand and develop its resources. In the memorandum drawn up by General Gordon after the Treaty of San Stefano, embodying the best arrangement of the situation that he could see, Egypt was to be given to England, and Syria to France, who would thus be equally interested with England in checking the further advance of Eussia to the East. Of course, Syria could not be given to France unless Egypt was definitely in the hands of England, and, perhaps, Tripoli held by Italy ; but in such a case there are many advantages that might arise to both countries by such a redistribution 150 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. of the shores of the Mediterranean. To secure so substantial an advantage to a Power which England has always wished to count among her best friends would be, from the point of view of general convenience, a wise and statesmanlike measure, and one which would undoubtedly be popular among her Majesty's subjects. The public works necessary in Palestine would be soon and well done in the hands of so ener- getic and civilised a nation ; the country would thrive generally ; and full religious liberty, we may be assured, would be allowed to Chris- tians of all creeds. It does seem almost the most hopeful future that could be designed for Palestine ; and it is a great pity that we should be obliged to reject it. But it is not pos- sible to believe that the tolerance of Prance would be absolutely universal ; and what in- justice was done would fall upon those whom we are bound to protect. Without counting the probable ill treatment of the German settlers who have a Government of their own to look after them there can be little doubt that Prench rule in Palestine would mean the extermination of the fine Druse nation. The THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 151 French bear them a grudge already for having slipped through their fingers in 1861, when, but for the intervention of England, Napoleon III. would have made an end of them once for all. It was just the kind of sweeping measure that would go to the heart of a sover- eign who played so consistently to the gallery. Even if the French authorities nowadays were not inclined to initiate any severe measures against the Druses and it is not probable that they would do so without a more or less decent pretext the Maronites, who are among the most powerful adherents of the Latin Church, and the bitterest foes of the Druses, would be sure to precipitate matters. It would not be easy to utterly destroy the gallant Druses, who have so often repulsed the unprovoked attacks of unprincipled Turkish governors on the rich lands of the Hauran ; but France has done as hard and as cruel work already in Algeria. England, however, could not, with unstained honour, stand by and see the work of destruction done upon a people who love her and put trust in her good- will. The impossibility of providing against 152 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. such measures being taken in a remote and little -visited district seems to me in itself a sufficient reason why England should resist the establishment of French supremacy in Syria. The great Powers of Palestine are, after the Mohammedans, the Greek and Latin Churches, who would probably consider themselves the only persons to be taken into account in a consideration of the future of the country. But there is besides these a remnant in Israel, made up of many various elements, but chiefly of Protestants, Jews, and Druses, who severally, and with no thought of action in common, look to the establishment of British rule in the Holy Land as the most hopeful manner of settling all difficulties. With the Protestants, whose numbers are very small, such aspirations are only natural ; the Jews regard England as a Power in whose hands their interests are fairly safe, and are probably not unaware of the senti- mental inclination to give back Palestine to the Jews, which is nowhere stronger than among us. As for the Druses, they have some slight memories of protection afforded at no great price THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 153 in time past, and a vague idea of some myste- rious affinity which binds them to us, the two together producing a feeling of attachment and confidence which one would willingly do some- thing to deserve. Probably no section of Pales- tine would, in time of war, have a more im- portant voice in deciding its destinies than the Druses; their numbers are not very great, but they contain the best fighting material to be found in those parts, with the exception, perhaps, of some select Bedouin tribes. I mention this as showing that an attempt to extend British rule over Palestine would be attended with perhaps less difficulties, and require less vio- lence, than any invasion by France or Bussia. Nor do I think that the people of the Holy Land would have any call to complain of the consequences of even annexation on the part of England, much less of a British protectorate. Energy, justice, and toleration are the things wanted in Palestine, and these we humbly be- lieve to be usually supplied in most of our dependencies ; nor can I foresee any likelihood of internal troubles were England to take charge of the Holy Land unless, indeed, the Anglican 154 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. element, which always shows such an astound- ing desire to fraternise with the Greek Church, as opposed to the less superstitious and less tyrannical Latin establishment, were allowed to push itself into the front rank. But England has no desire to annex Palestine, nor indeed would she be suffered to do so without unani- mous protests from many influential nationalities, whose susceptibilities it would be madness to offend in a cause which would bring no sub- stantial advantage to the British people, and only enlist the sympathies of a comparatively small minority among them. The establishment of a British protectorate is more within the range of practical politics. Unless following upon some European convul- sion, even this would be a stronger step than our cautious rulers are apt to take, but all our suppositions are based upon some revolution in the affairs of the world as known to our poli- ticians. I should not myself expect to see such a measure, even as the consequence of a war which materially increased the power of Great Britain ; but it might possibly be set up for a while to give some new form of govern- THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 155 ment in Palestine a fair chance without molesta- tion from external sources. Should the event of a European war leave the destinies of the Holy Land in our hands, much pressure would certainly be brought to bear on the Govern- ment to try the experiment of restoring the country to the Jews. It is a favourite dream among Englishmen this restoration of Palestine to its early conquerors, and it would certainly be very ardently advocated in such a case. For my part, I cannot believe that any such plan would succeed. It is extremely doubtful whether any Jewish community could be formed in these days at all fit to administer such a country as Palestine. They have, it is true, been in some cases successful as colonists ; but a much higher and more difficult task would be imposed upon them in the case supposed. They must, to justify even the experiment, be quali- fied to stand alone when once restored to their old country; and what expectation can we have that they could do so ? If their government required to be constantly bolstered up by ex- traneous assistance, it would not be worth the trouble and expense necessary to support it. It 156 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. is allowable, however, to suppose that a real Jewish nation might be re-formed, capable of standing by itself and defending itself against all adversaries, and we may ask, Who would profit by the establishment of such a power ? The country possibly, for there are no better men of business than the Jews ; the people not probably, for Hebrew masters are not famed for gentleness, and there would be no peerages to be won by philanthropy there ; while as for the pilgrims, a Jewish Government, strong enough to be independent, would probably be more in- tolerant than the harshest Mohammedan ruler that has yet been known. There is, however, perhaps a chance that an independent State might be set up in Palestine which could take care of itself without being offensive to others. It could only exist under the sanction of the strongest guarantees from all the Powers interested say, England, Prance, Germany, Eussia, and such Mohammedan Power or Powers as may be to the front at the time when the question comes to be considered. It is true that guarantees are of little value in our days perhaps they never were, though one THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 157 likes to think that there was once a time when nations kept more honourably to their engage- ments. Still Belgium has not yet been attacked in the forty odd years of its history. In the new State the utmost liberty must be accorded to all manner of creeds, of access to the sacred places, and exercise of their religion. Liberty to settle under some slight restrictions should be freely granted, and new colonists, for the first few years at least, easily admitted to the privi- leges of citizenship. There would, of course, be some danger of a manufactured majority, who would vote for the establishment of the pro- tectorate, if not of the actual dominion of some foreign Power, but this might be easily guarded against. Money would be necessary, but capi- talists should have little reluctance to make advances to a country so rich in natural re- sources. A considerable amount of public works, particularly in the line of roads but not rail- ways and harbours would be imperative ; but the expense thus incurred would be fully counter- balanced by the increased facilities for disposing of the plentiful and varied produce of the land. Coast defences might also be required, as a pro- 158 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. vision against a possible coup-de-main y but the guarantees of neutrality ought perhaps to make them unnecessary. The hardest matter in reality would be to protect the newly established State to the south, especially in the direction of Arabia, from which the most danger would be appre- hended. The absence of a sufficient force to withstand any such attack would be a serious matter. In a few years it might be practicable to set on foot a serviceable militia force, with European officers, who might make a sufficient frontier guard, at least with the aid of well- planned fortifications. But for the first year or two much trouble must probably be expected in this quarter, nor can I well see what measures could be taken to provide against it. The most natural expedient of admitting a foreign pro- tecting force for the first years would be simply suicidal. The State should be under the control of a European prince, whose religion had better be Protestant, as the Protestants are few and of little importance in Palestine, and there would thus be some guarantee of impartiality in dis- putes between the two principal Churches. For THE BALANCE OF POWER IN PALESTINE. 159 nationality an Englishman or a German would be most suitable, perhaps the former for choice. Mohammedans have no prejudice against British rule, and Jews respect England as one of their most reliable protectors. On the other hand, the spread of anti-Semitic ideas in Germany might make the latter suspicious of German rulers, with whom also the former have practi- cally no acquaintance. Nor should it be forgot- ten that an attempt might easily and innocently be made to turn the new kingdom of Palestine here projected into something resembling a Ger- man State. I have not previously spoken of Germany in connection with the Holy Land, because, though Germans are likely to be among the most prominent of its future leaders, it is at present impossible to foreshadow what part they may be called upon to play. The German Gov- ernment has obtained a footing in Jerusalem by the cession of the Mouristan, or Hospital of the Knights of St John. This is, however, of little importance, except as indicating a desire on the part of the Imperial Government not to be quite left out of the reckoning. The real importance of Germany in Palestine comes from the German 160 NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE. Society of the Temple. The original settlers of this Society had no thoughts but of leaving the world and addicting themselves to good works, but the sons who succeed them have no such all-absorbing ideas of piety. Honest God-fear- ing men they may be, and I well believe are ; but at the same time they are practical men, full of enterprise, starting with a knowledge of Palestine such as few Europeans can ever have, and, at the same time, with all the prestige acquired among the natives by the unvarying integrity and unfailing charity of their fathers. In the hands of these men the future of Palestine must lie to a great extent. I do not suspect them of misusing their power in the least degree, nor do I even think that they are likely to harbour any design of putting Palestine into the hands of Germany, to whom it would be more of a burden than an advantage. 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