With the prosperity which is coming to Palestine the Mount of Olives is rapidly changing. Its slopes are cultivated, the rocks are being picked up and laid in stone fences, and the cleared spots planted to crops and to orchards. There were many olive orchards on this mount in the days of the Saviour, who came here frequently to get away from the crowds of the city. The soil seems fertile, and the crops upon the mountain grow luxuriantly. There are green patches of wheat, barley, and oats, while here and there are carob trees, with pods like those which furnished the food for the prodigal son when he ate with the swine.
The Mount of Olives is now spotted with churches and chapels. It has monasteries and convents, a great Russian church, and several hospices, including the huge sanitarium built in honour of Augusta, Empress of Germany. One of the most interesting of these institutions is a Carmelite nunnery, which has been erected over the spot where tradition says Christ taught the Lord’s Prayer to His disciples. The church here is called “The Church of the Lord’s Prayer,” and has in its court tablets inscribed with the prayer in thirty-two different languages. I visited the chapel of the nunnery, where prayers go up every day and night and every hour of the day all the year through. The nuns so divide their time that one is always praying. They kneel behind a screen and are not to be seen by visitors. This church is one of the quietest and most solemn of all in the Holy Land. After the noisy scenes which take place about the Holy Sepulchre it is a relief.
The Carmelite nuns are devout. They do not go out of the nunnery except it be absolutely necessary. Even when they walk in its garden they wear such heavy veils that they have to hold them out from their faces to see where they are going. My guide tells me that each nun digs her own grave, and that when she is about to die she is dressed in her shroud and carried into the church in order that she may pass away there.
In the floor of the Chapel of the Ascension near the nunnery is a spot which looks like a footprint, and is said to be the place where the foot of the Saviour rested before He ascended to heaven. The chapel belongs to the Mohammedans and is let out at times to the Christians. But to me the Garden of Gethsemane was more interesting. It lies at the foot of the Mount of Olives, just off the Jericho road. It is surrounded by a wall of yellow limestone twelve feet high and about four feet thick. On the outside of it, in the shade of the wall, sat a score of lepers who held out their hands for alms as we passed. They were dirty and filthy and their disease had made them repulsive sights. Some had no fingers, some no noses, and one held out a tin can tied to the stump of her wrist from which the hand had dropped off.
The garden goes up the side of the mountain. It is almost square and does not cover two acres. It is cut up into flower beds bordered by inverted beer and wine bottles. There are eight old olive trees, pansies of all shades of the rainbow, and many beautiful flowers, as well as dark cypress trees. The garden belongs to the Franciscan monks who opened the gate at our knock. The gate is a mere hole in the wall, so low that all who enter must stoop. It is closed by an iron door, with a round black bar of iron, ten inches long, as a knocker.
Just back of the entrance to the garden is a ledge of limestone where the disciples are said to have slept during the night of the agony, and perhaps one hundred feet farther away stands a column which tradition says marks the spot where Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss. Both of these places have been worn smooth by the lips of thousands of pilgrims.
The source of the Jordan at Banias is one of the largest springs in the world. The Jordan is rightly named the “down-comer,” for in its winding course of two hundred and forty miles it drops from the mountains to the Dead Sea, nearly thirteen hundred feet below sea-level
