It was toward evening when we ran into a rather modern little railway station, and were told that we were "there." We got out of the train then, and found ourselves in such a howling mob of humanity as I never dreamed could gather in this drowsy land. We were about the last party of the season, it seems, and the porters and beggars and cabmen and general riffraff were going to make the most of us. We were seized and dragged and torn and lifted—our dragoman could keep us together about as well as one cowboy could handle a stampeded herd. I have no distinct recollection of how we managed to reach the carriages, but the first words I heard after regaining consciousness were:
"That pool down there is where Solomon was anointed king."
I began to take notice then. We were outside a range of lofty battlemented walls, approaching a wide gate flanked by an imposing tower that might belong to the Middle Ages. We looked down on the squalid pool of Gihon, and I tried to visualize the scene of Solomon's coronation there, which I confess I found difficult. Then we turned to the tower and the entrance to the Holy City.
We were entering Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate, and the tower was the Tower of David.
XXXI
THE HOLY CITY
Thirty-nine hundred years ago it was called merely Salem, and was ruled over by Melchisedek, who feasted Abraham when he returned from punishing the four kings who carried off his nephew, Lot. Five hundred years later, when Joshua ravaged Canaan, the place was known as Jebusi, the stronghold of the Jebusites, a citadel "enthroned on a mountain fastness" which Joshua failed to conquer, in spite of the traditional promise to Israel. Its old name had been not altogether dropped, and the transition from Jebusi-salem to Jebu-salem and Jerusalem naturally followed.
It was four hundred years after Joshua's time that David brought the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, and fifteen years later, when he had become king, he took the "stronghold of Zion," smote the difficult Jebusite even to the blind and the lame, and named the place the City of David.
"And David said on that day, whosoever getteth up to the gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain."