"What a wretched little hillock it is!" said Claude, as we drew near to it. "It does not deserve the name of hill, much less of mountain."
But to most of us, this "wretched little hillock" was the most sacred spot on earth. There was no doubt about its identity; "the mountain on the east side of the city" could not be mistaken for any other. No vain superstition, no improbable legend had fixed upon this hill as the place where our Lord's feet had so often trod. The hand of time, and the cruel devastations of war, which had laid low the beautiful Temple, and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins, had not been able to obliterate this spot, nor to make us doubtful as to whether it were indeed the same Mount of Olives of which we had read so often in the Gospels.
We crossed the Valley of Jehoshaphat, passed the wall of the so-called Gethsemane, and began to ascend one of the steep stony paths which led across the mountain to Bethany.
"Do you know, Miss Lindsay," said Mr. Stanley, "that these paths, on the hillsides, are probably less changed than anything in the whole country? They must have gone in the same direction years ago, and this is, without doubt, the very road our Lord's feet so often trod to and from the city on His way to Martha's house."
I felt as if it were almost too sacred ground. I did not answer him, for I could not have done so without tears. So we rode on in silence, a little way behind the others, and Evelyn told me afterwards she would have been very thankful to have been with us, for Claude and Alice were laughing and talking the whole way, telling amusing stories of things and people in England, and taking little or no notice of the scenes and places around them. The Mount of Olives was nothing to them!
Mr. Stanley rode forward as we came to a turn in the road on the shoulder of the hill, and made them all stop and look round at the city: for it is at this place that, when coming from Bethany, Jerusalem first comes in sight, and there, he said, must have been the very spot on which our Lord stood when "He beheld the city and wept over it."
Evelyn came close to me and whispered, "Oh, May, I cannot help it, the tears will come; let us go a little way off by ourselves; Claude and Alice will chatter so."
We got off our horses, and left them with the dragoman, and went a short distance from the road to a clump of olive trees; and here we stood, looking down upon the city. If our Lord wept as He gazed on it in its glory, because He saw, in the far distance, the shadow of ruin and desolation creeping towards it, how much more should we weep, who saw the once beloved city, the joy of the whole earth, made a very curse amongst men!
"Look forward as well as backward," said Mr. Stanley's voice behind us.
"Forward to what?" Evelyn asked.