The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

The walls of the Holy City were breached at the Jaffa gate to provide a special entrance for the German Kaiser when he visited Jerusalem. He was arrayed as a crusading knight and rode a prancing snow-white steed

Around the edge of the plateau is a wall about thirty feet high enclosing the Jerusalem of to-day. The wall runs along the rims of the valleys, climbing up hill and down, making its way around the Holy City until it comes again to the Jaffa Gate which is just below me.

The Holy City now covers twice as much space as it did when I was first here a good many years ago. It has doubled in size and has some sixty thousand people. At that time most of the inhabitants were crowded together inside the walls. They are crowded still, but to the north, south, and west large Jewish settlements have sprung up, and among and beyond them have been built great hospices, hospitals, convents, cathedrals, and hotels, so that the population outside the walls almost equals that within. The new buildings have extended to the Mount of Olives, and are working their way toward the east along the road to Jaffa.

Seated here upon the site of King David’s palace, I see the whole city spread out beneath me. What a curious place it is! In my tours of the world I have found no spot so full of strange sights and picturesque characters, so different in most particulars from every other town of the world. Aside from its wonderfully interesting historical associations, Jerusalem has a character of its own. It looks more like a great honeycomb than a city. The houses are piled one above the other in all sorts of irregularities. If you would take a half-section of land and scatter over it gigantic packing boxes just as you find them in a down-town alley, you might get some idea of Jerusalem as it looks to me from Mount Zion. These houses have no chimneys and their stone roofs are almost flat. Many of the roofs have in the centre little domes that remind me of beehives. If the town were on a level these domes would look like the haycocks in a meadow at harvest time.

The wood used in the construction of Jerusalem would not last an American family a winter. Yellow limestone is the sole building material. The roofs, walls, and floors of these thousands of houses are of this cold, yellowish-white rock. Even in the Bishop’s mansion, which is one of the finest in the city, I step out of my bed on to a stone floor and walk to my breakfast down stone steps and through stone halls.

Now look at the streets with me. They are narrow and winding and some are built over, so that going through them is like passing through tunnels or subterranean caves.

Indeed, Jerusalem is a city of cave dwellers. Many of the stores and houses are little more than holes in the rocks. I visited a native inn yesterday right in the heart of the town. It consisted of a series of vaulted chambers which looked much like caves. In one cave were four donkeys, two camels, and a party of Bedouins. In another were a dozen Jews from Samaria, and in a third were some men and camels who had just come from beyond the Jordan. The only sign of modern times was an English lamp burning American kerosene oil. Through my guide I chatted with the keeper of the stable, or inn, as it was called, and he told me that his charge for feeding and washing a donkey or a horse was five cents a day.

Jerusalem of to-day is founded upon the remains of the Jerusalems of the past, and the excavations have unearthed houses and temples far below the streets of the present. The original floor and court of the house in which Pontius Pilate examined the Christ is much lower than the level of the present city, and mosaics and marbles, including carvings of various kinds and Greek and Roman capitals and columns, are frequently uncovered in digging the foundations for new buildings.

There are many caves outside of Jerusalem and people live in some of them. The tombs of the kings on the edge of the city have been cut out of the solid rock, and some of them are so large that a city house could be dropped into one and not touch the walls. An excavation of the Pool of Bethesda has shown that it is eighty feet deep and covers nearly an acre. Right under the temple platform are enormous caverns known as Solomon’s Stables, and near by there is a space honeycombed with vast tanks which will hold millions of gallons of water.

All of the water for the Holy City comes down in rain, and the trees and gardens of the town can be numbered on your fingers. The surrounding hills are almost as barren as some of the rocky slopes of New England, and the only foliage visible is the dark silvery green of the orchards on the Mount of Olives and along the hills between Jaffa and Bethlehem. The only grass to be seen is an acre or so of common inside the walls of the temple plateau, and here and there a house top, which by age has gathered a coating of dirt from the dust of the city, and on which the green grass has sprouted. Occasionally I see ruined arches, too dangerous to be inhabited by the bees of this human hive, on which grow moss and grass. There is one green bushy tree at the base of Mount Calvary, and a solitary palm beside the business street named after King David looks out over the city. Jerusalem is not an attractive looking town, and the glare from its cream-white buildings lying under the rays of this tropical sun makes my eyes sore.