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.
