CHAPTER XXIX—ENGAGING A DRAGOMAN.—OUR START FOR JERUSALEM.
Views of Jaffa—A queer-looking City—The Oldest Inhabited Town in the World—The Massacre of Jaffa—A Stain upon the Memory of Napoleon—A Contract with a Dragoman—A close margin—The value of Credentials—An honest Arab—Getting into Saddle—An American Colony—Their German Successors—The Fruits of the Country—Generous conduct of the “Doubter”—On the road to Jerusalem—A night at Ramleh—In a Russian Convent—The Gauntlet of Beggars—The Pest of the Road—Begging as a Fine Art—The “Gate of the Glen”—Among the Mountain Passes—In sight of the Holy City.
JAFFA presents a curiously terraced appearance, when seen from the water, and its flat roofs and low arches show its Syrian character. There is a semi-circle of rough rocks that form a sort of harbor for small boats, and it requires good steering to carry a boat through the entrance, only ten feet wide, without accident. The surf breaks violently when the wind is high, and makes a landing or embarkation dangerous. The town looks more beautiful a mile or two away than when close at hand.
The landing place was dirty, and crowded with all sorts of unclean Arabs, and the streets were crooked, narrow, and so full of mud and dirt as to make walking a serious matter. Traditionally, Jaffa is the oldest city in the world; it is said to have existed before the flood, and it is likewise recorded as very old by history. It was one of the towns allotted to the tribe of Dan, and is mentioned as the landing-place of the rafts of cedar and pine from Lebanon for the construction of Solomon’s temple.
It was an important place at the time of the Crusades, but gradually dwindled in commercial and other consequence. Napoleon
caused it to be talked about at the beginning of the present century, by his massacre of the garrison of four thousand men, who had surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared.
We proceeded with our baggage to the German hotel, followed by a bodyguard of dragomen and guides similar to those that had escorted us at Beyrout, and animated with the same noble ambition to make contracts that should transfer money from our pockets to theirs. As soon as we were at the hotel we held an audience of dragomen, and finally selected one that seemed to answer our purpose. As a matter of precaution, we went with him to the German Consul—the American Consul was out of town—and bidding him wait at the door, we consulted the man of authority. He pronounced the dragoman good, and we closed with him, on the Consul’s recommendation. He was to take us on a nine days’ trip to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mar Saba, the Dead Sea, Jordan, Jericho, and Ramleh, at an expense of twenty francs for each person per day.
He was to provide all requisites for the journey; three double tents—one for each two persons—servants, beds, food, English saddles, side saddle for the lady, saddle and pack horses, and to pay all hotel and convent expenses, and supply local guides in Jerusalem; he was to provide sufficient escort when needed, and to pay all fees and “backsheesh” of every kind, except at the Mosque of Omar. The party was to be at liberty to change the route, and to stop whenever it chose. The horses were to be sound, strong, kind, and active, and if any of them were disabled, the dragoman was to provide suitable substitutes without extra charge. In case of dispute, the matter could be referred to the German or American Consul at Jaffa or Jerusalem.
While on the road, the food should consist of tea or coffee in the morning, with eggs, bread, and butter; luncheon at noon, of chicken or cold meat, eggs, bread, cheese, and dessert; and dinner as good as the hotel dinner. In Jerusalem the party could have choice of the Mediterranean and Damascus hotels.
Ten napoleons were to be paid at starting, and the remainder, half in Jerusalem and half in Jaffa, on our return. Ali Solomon was the name of our dragoman, and I will do him the credit to say that we were entirely satisfied with him. He kept his contract more faithfully than we expected he would, and in some points exceeded its terms.
I don’t recommend him to anybody else, for fear he may have suffered a change of heart, and become a rascal; men are very uncertain in this respect.
I once had a servant whom I supposed to be honest enough to be a model for the rising generation. He left my employ to seek fortune and turn an honest penny elsewhere, and I gave him a ‘character’ which a student of theology might ertvy. On the strength of my recommendation, he obtained a situation with a gentleman, whose milk of human kindness had not been curdled by experience. John was trusted with things in general, and requited the confidence by stealing a hundred dollars, and then stealing away. And no man, so far as I have heard, knoweth, to this day, the place of his sojourn.
Since then, I have been cautious about commendations, and, for this reason, I will only say of Ali, that we were entirely satisfied with him, and believed him honest and faithful. If he robbed his next customers of the filling of their back teeth, it is no affair of ours.
We selected horses from a large number, and very good horses they were. About 2 o’clock we rode out of the German colony of Jaffa, which has bought the property formerly held by the American colony from Maine. The Germans are prospering, and promise well for the future. I was told that the Americans might have prospered, if their affairs had been well managed, but that their leader was about the worst head that could have been chosen. Only four, I believe, of the American colonists remain there, three women and one man. One woman is in a state of poverty, but I was told that the rest were making a good living. The Germans have a good manager at their head, and all of them are industrious. They have a second village about two miles away from the one originally founded by the Americans.
Through a street paved with mud and filth, and bordered by tents and booths, where oranges and other things edible—in theory or in practice—were exposed for sale, we moved toward the interior and away from the sea. Orange groves were on every side, and we appreciated the reputation of Jaffa for this excellent fruit.
Even the “Doubter” was convinced of the excellence of the oranges, as he filled his pockets without expense, and became liberal enough to bestow an orange upon a small boy who held his horse and wanted a slight “backsheesh” in return. “I don’t believe money is good for you,” he said to the boy; “you had better take an orange.” The boy could have had all of this sort of thing that he wanted, and indicated an objection to receiving payment in fruit, but his objections were of no avail.
One of the “Doubter’s” strong points was in never paying at all for small services, or in paying in something that cost him nothing. His sympathy was roused for a poor woman in Jaffa, and as we finished dinner he took a large orange from the table and said: “I would like to give this to that poor woman over the way.” We applauded his burst of generosity in giving away what belonged to the hotel, and didn’t let him hear the last of it for a day or two.
Outside of Jaffa, the road goes over a flat or undulating country, evidently quite fertile, excepting at intervals, where it is too sandy for cultivation. For saddle horses the road is excellent; it is intended for a carriage road, but has never been finished, though carriages do manage to get over it now and then, all the way to Jerusalem. The story goes, that when the Sultan visited Paris in 1867, the Emperor told him that Eugenie wished to visit Jerusalem, but was unable to ride there on horseback. "There shall be a good carriage road there in a year,” said the Sultan, and he at once gave orders for its construction. But somehow it still remains in an unfinished condition, and the promise to complete it within a year is like many other promises of the Turkish ruler.
The Russians have a convent at Ramleh, for the accommodation of Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem, and there is also a Latin convent there, under the management of French and Italian monks.
The Latin establishment is really a convent, or rather a monastery, but the Russian one is more like a hotel, as it is kept by a Russian family, whereas the Latin convent is really in the hands of holy men, clad in hood and cowl. Our dragoman rode ahead and arranged that we should stop at the Russian convent, and sent a boy out to meet and guide us into the place.
Along the road side, as we entered, there were a lot of beggars—twenty or more—drawn up, or rather squatted in line where they could assail us. Some were blind, some had lost their hands or their fingers, and each of them held up his mutilated stumps to attract attention. We were told some of them were lepers, but that the majority had been mutilated either by themselves or their parents in order to insure their success as beggars. One of our party gave a small coin to the worst looking of the mendicants, and immediately the whole crowd set in pursuit.
If you give a gratuity in Syria, you are at once pursued by all the beggars in sight, including the one to whom you have made a donation, and nothing short of a blow with a cudgel will shake
them off. This systematic begging is apt to harden one’s heart, especially when you find it impossible to satisfy the demands of an applicant. The government would do a charitable work if it would assemble the beggars of Ramleh into a close room and asphyxiate them over a charcoal fire. They have been suppressed two or three times, but are sure to spring up again.
We were up early, and for three hours had a road very much like that of the day before. This ride brought us to the Bab-el-Wady, or Gate of the Glen, where there is a sort of hotel which furnishes everything for the traveller, except food, drink, and lodging, and there is a room where you can sit at a rickety table in a rickety chair, and eat the provisions you have brought along.
From this so-called hotel we moved up a glen or valley with the rocks on both sides of us, and the road making a steady ascent. We were now among the rugged mountains that extend to and beyond Jerusalem, a dreary and almost sterile waste, whose every aspect is forbidding.
I know of no mountain ride more dreary than that from Babel-Wady to Jerusalem. In nearly all other mountain chains I have ever seen, you have frequent glimpses of scenery that would partly reward for your toil, but here there is nothing of the kind. It is a succession of rough and rounded summits, too rocky for cultivation, and not broken enough to be picturesque. A few villages nestle in the glens, and there are occasional patches of olive trees, but the general aspect is one of unredeemed sterility.
The road from Jaffa to Jerusalem is about thirty-six miles in length: travellers generally divide it by going to Ramleh—nine miles—the first day, and to Jerusalem the next. The ordinary time for a party unused to travel is twelve hours; going up we made it in ten hours, and coming back we did it in seven and a half, which was very fair speed.
We wound along the mountain road, and four hours after leaving Bab-el-Wady, the foremost of our cortege swung his hat from one of the rounded summits. “Jerusalem,” said the dragoman, and at the word we pressed forward.
There lay the Holy City, as it lay when the Crusaders came hither to wrest it from the hands of the Moslem, and as it has greeted the eyes of many a pious pilgrim in more modern days. Its towers and walls rose before us, while around were the everlasting hills of Israel. Tasso’s lines describing the first view of the city by the Crusaders came involuntarily to my mind.
Winged is each heart, and winged every heel,
They fly, yet notice scarce how fast they fly,
But by the time the dewless meads reveal
The golden sun ascended in the sky,
Lo! towered Jerusalem salutes the eye.
A thousand pointing fingers tell the tale,
“Jerusalem!” a thousand voices cry;
“All hail, Jerusalem!” hill, down, and dale
Catch the glad sound, and shout, “Jerusalem, all hail.”
The towered walls recalled the pictures of Jerusalem, with which the whole world is familiar, and we seemed to be entering a city that we had seen before. The Turkish soldiers at the gate made no opposition to our entrance. Formerly strangers were kept waiting at the gate until their passports had been sent to the j police for examination, and sometimes the detention lasted two or three hours. A few steps inside the gate brought us to the door of the Mediterranean Hotel, where we dismounted and made ourselves at home.
CHAPTER XXX—THE LIONS OF JERUSALEM.—THE TEMPLE, THE SEPULCHRE, AND THE HOLY OF HOLIES.
First Sights in Jerusalem—Appearance of the streets—What the “Doubter” thought—A change of opinion—The Tower of David—The Street of David—Church of the Holy Sepulchre—Scenes around it—Palace of the Knights of St. John—Via Dolorosa—Damascus’ Gate—Walls of the Holy City—Visiting the Temple—The Haram and Mosque of Omar—Visaing the Substructions—A triple veneration—Place of Wailing—The Quarries—Remains of an Ancient Bridge.
AS soon as we were fairly in Jerusalem and had brushed up a little, we started out to see some of the many sights that the city contains.
Apart from its historical interest and the picturesque appearance of its walls, towers, and domes, Jerusalem is the reverse of pleasing. Its streets are narrow and badly paved, and no effort is made to keep them clean. Some of the narrow ones are particularly filthy, and one must have good boots and be careful about his steps to walk safely along these ways. I laughed inwardly as the “Doubter” hesitated at some of the corners and showed a determination to turn back, or rather an uncertainty about going forward.
When we descended the Danube, we stopped a short time at Belgrade, the capital of Servia, and standing on the frontier between the Occident and the Orient. The pavement there was rougher than that of European cities, and the “Doubter” doubted if there was anything worse in the world.
“Let us hurry up,” said he, “and get to Constantinople or Jerusalem where the streets are better.”
"Why, my dear “Doubter,” said I, “these are far better than the streets in those cities. They have worse pavements and deeper mud.”
“I know better,” was his rejoinder, and that closed the argument. I said nothing till I had him climbing the wide street that leads from Top-Hané to the Hotel de Byzance in Constantinople, and there I gave him a little prod about Belgrade. He got out of it by saying that he knew Jerusalem was much better.
Naturally, I was pleased when I managed to get him between two mountains of mud, or something of the sort, in a narrow street in Jerusalem, and just as he was extricating himself, I asked about Belgrade.
He made no reply that I heard, but I saw his lips moving and his mental agitation was so great that he slipped and fell where the mud was worst. He was not presentable in polite society after that, but rather looked as though he had been hired out by the day as a friction roller for smoothing a freshly flowed swamp.
From the front of the hotel, one can see the Tower of David, the structure which King David erected upon Mount Zion, according to Biblical history.
From the Jaffa gate, also called the Hebron, and the Mediterranean gate, runs the street of David, descending the hill and subsequently ascending another to Mount Moriah Our first walk was down the street of David to the first turning to the left.
This took us into Christ street, and a walk of three or four minutes there brought us, by a single turning, into the space in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This space was full of beggars, and of people selling various sorts of ornaments and relics. Some had rosaries made of various kinds of wood, generally of the olive tree or the seeds of the olive; some had crosses and holy pictures cut in mother of pearl; and others had old coins or stone ornaments made of pieces of the Temple of Jerusalem. The traders and beggars were very persistent, and one could not stand a minute in contemplation of the building without being annoyed by the one class or the other. More than one of us wished that a scourge could be set in motion to drive away these pests from the exterior of a building, which is regarded with special interest by all Christian people. We could not enter the church at that hour, and so we contented ourselves with a visit to the hospital of the Knights of St. John, or rather to its ruins. We walked along the Via Dolorosa and were shown the supposed spot where Christ rested his cross, then we went along the street of the Gate of the Column and the street of the Palace, to the Damascus Gate.
Then, as it was approaching sunset, we returned to the hotel and had a pleasant conversation with Dr. De Hass, our newly appointed Consul to Jerusalem.
On our way back to the hotel we stopped in two or three of the many shops where olive wood is wrought into various interesting forms for strangers to buy and carry away. It seemed as if about one-fifth of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were engaged in the manufacture of objects of olive wood. Canes, boxes, portfolios, candle-sticks, and a hundred other things were made of olive wood, and some of them were very pretty. Jerusalem is the same towered city as of old, and her walls have a massive appearance. Sultan Suleiman erected them, as they now stand, in the year 1542; but portions of them were standing before that time, and some of the towers have undergone very little change in the various calamities which the city has suffered.
The latter portions were built from the ruins of the older walls and generally on the sites of their predecessors, so that the city has preserved its form with but little alteration.
The distance around the walls is about two and a half miles, and in this distance there are five gates; the most important of these are the Jaffa gate and the Damascus gate, the others being but little used There are two gates wholly or partially walled up; one of them being the Golden Gate on Mount Moriah, and the other, the gate of Herod. The principal streets of the city run at right angles, and by them Jerusalem is divided into the Moslem, the Christian, the Jewish, and the American quarters.
So much for the general description of Jerusalem.
To those familiar with Bible history, the enumeration of the holy places of Jerusalem would be to repeat many names with which they are already familiar; to those who are not Biblical students, the list would be tediously long; I shall therefore confine my account of Jerusalem to the story cf what we saw and did during our brief stay. Any one wishing to know more of the city has doubtless within his reach one or more books, that will give the required information. A perusal of the Bible, especially of those portions describing Jerusalem, would not prove at all injurious.
We entered by a gate in the wall, and the transition was quite sudden from the confused mass of houses where we had been wandering to the open space of the Haram. We ascended a flight of steps to a broad platform, and stood in front of Kubbet-es-Sukrah, or Dome of the Rock, as the central mosque is called.
It is generally known as the Mosque of Omar, for the reason that the Kalif Omar is credited with its construction. There Accompanied by a guide and by a janizary of the consulate, we started out of the hotel in the morning and descended the street of David to the entrance of the Haram or Sacred Enclosure, the name given by the Arabs to the portion of Mount Moriah that contains the Mosques of Omar and El-Aska, and formerly contained the great temple built by King Solomon.
The Haram occupies a large space, almost equal to a fourth of the city; it is surrounded by strong walls and is dotted with platforms, niches for prayer, cupolas and olive trees in addition to are two or three stories about its origin, but, whatever that may have been, the architect deserves great credit for erecting a building beautiful in itself and quite in keeping with the surroundings.
It stands on the very summit of Mount Moriah on the sacred rock, supposed to have been the site of the threshing floor of Or-nan, the Jebusite, which King David bought for fifty shekels of silver. The building is octagonal, and each of the sides measure sixty-seven feet. The octagonal form is preserved in the interior, where the rock is inclosed in a railing and rises above the level of the floor.
Unfortunately, the mosque was undergoing repairs at the time of our visit, and the interior was full of scaffolding, while the floor was covered with rubbish.
But we could see enough to show that the mosque is a structure of great beauty. The lower part of the wall is composed of colored marbles in complex patterns, and the upper part contains no less than fifty-six windows of stained glass, equalling in beauty anything that can be found in Westminster Abbey or the cathedrals of Europe.
The dome presents an imposing appearance, whether seen from the outside or from within. Externally it is a prominent feature of Jerusalem, and no picture of the holy city would be complete without it.
Antiquarians are in doubt as to the extent of the great temple, but there is likely to be a complete solution of the difficult questions when the work of the Palestine Exploration Society is finished. The English and American sections are working in perfect harmony, and have portioned out their territories so that they shall not come in contact or perform the same work twice over. Part of their efforts are directed to settling the discussions about the extent of Solomon’s Temple, and they have already made some important discoveries. We were shown the localities of the excavations, and after visiting the two mosques in the Haram we went below ground to look at the substruction of the great temple. We descended a flight of steps into a subterranean apartment where there is a sculptured niche, which bears the name of “The Cradle of Jesus”.
Our guide lighted some candles, and we kept on down another flight of steps that brought us into some vaults, containing numerous pillars about five feet square and constructed of huge stones. The t arches supported by these pillars were generally semi-circ ul ar, and the whole work had an appearance of great durability. Only a portion of this subterranean space has been explored, and the extent of the arched space is unknown. These were for the purpose of making the ground level and thus prepare it for the foundation of the great temple.
We were shown some roots of trees that have made their way through the platform and run a long distance through the underground debris. The crusaders used these vaults as stables, and some of the holes in the pillars where they fastened their horses can still be seen. None of the horses are there.
Jerusalem is emphatically the Holy City. It is a little singular that it should be venerated by the disciples of three great teachers, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed, and that while Christians
call it the Sacred City, the Arabs should have almost a similar title for it. Its Arabic name El-Kuds signifies “The Holy,” and the rock beneath the dome of the Mosque of Omar is the locality of the triple veneration.
At the south-east corner of the rock, we were conducted into a chamber or excavation, called the Noble Cave. It is asserted to be the praying place of Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus, and in its center there is a slab of marble covering a cavity, which is called the well of spirits by the Moslems. Some call it the gate of Paradise and others say it leads to a place whose character is quite the reverse. The guide stamped upon it, and the sound that resulted showed that the place was hollow.
It is generally claimed that this rock, now covered by the dome of the mosque, was the site of the altar of Solomon’s Temple. The Jews used to come to this rock as far back as the fourth century to wail over the departed glories of Jerusalem; but when the Moslems took the city, and appropriated the spot, a new wailing place was selected On one corner of the rock the guide showed the footprints of Mohammed, where his foot last touched the earth when he went up to heaven; and near it is the hand print of the Angel, who seized the rock and held it down to prevent its going to heaven along with the Prophet.
Thus the Jews revere the spot as the site of the altar of their temple; the Christians revere it as the praying place of Jesus, and the Moslems revere it for the reason above given. Strange indeed that it should thus be the sacred spot of three distinct religions. No other place of the globe compares with it in holiness.
We looked from the walls of the temple over into the Valley of Jehoshaphat and saw Absalom’s pillar and other objects of interest. The garden of Gethsemane was pointed out, and over against us was the Mount of Olives with its triple summit and the crown of the Church of the Ascension, and the building erected by the Princesse de la tour l’Auvergne. The olive trees had lost their leaves and were bleak and bare, and the sides of the hill had an uninviting appearance.
Down to the Brook Kedron our gaze extended, or rather to its bed, as the valley was dry and dusty as if no brook had ever flowed there. Other places of historical or traditional note were pointed out, but we were too far away to discern them clearly.
We left the temple and proceeded to the wailing place of the the Jews. Here are the foundations or a small portion of the lower walls of the great temple where, every Friday, the Jews come to wail and weep over their downfall. Half a dozen Jews were there are the time of our visit; with their faces to the stone, they read from their prayer books in a low wailing tone that was exceedingly impressive.
At the wailing place there were visible five courses of beveled stones in a fine state of preservation; in some places they have been worn considerably by the kisses of the devotees, that for many centuries have pressed around them and wept for the downfall of Jerusalem. Both sexes and all ages are represented here, and they have come from all quarters of the globe.
“Oh! weep for those that wept by Babel’s stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;
Weep for the harp of Judah’s broken spell;
Mourn—where their God hath dwelt, the godless dwell.”
From the Place of Wailing we returned to the hotel, and, as soon as we had taken lunch proceeded to The Quarries, an excavation which is entered just outside of the Damascus gate.
This is supposed to be the locality whence came the stone for the Great Temple, and it was only a few years ago that it was discovered. The quarries extend beneath the city, and one can walk more than half a mile from the entrance directly under Jerusalem.
We wandered around here for about an hour, lighted by candles that saved us many a disagreeable fall. The slope of the interior is very steep, and how the stones were managed there, is a mystery. The Judge had several slips, but none of them were serious, as they all happened among the sand and smaller chips of limestone. On our return to the hotel, he took a respectful position in the rear of the party, and for an hour or more was locked in the recesses of his own room. What he did while thus secluded, I cannot say, but I know that he summoned a servant to bring him a needle and some thread.
