The ceremony ended, the multitude returns to Jerusalem, and reaches the city about sunset. Many stragglers fall out by the way, and sometimes the Turkish escort is busy for two or three days, bringing in the last of them. The road, is dreary, and there is very little upon it to keep up the traveller’s interest. We found it especially so, as a drizzling rain came on when we were about half way.
We passed Bethany and wound around the Mount of Olives, then past Gethsemane, and entered Jerusalem by the Bab-el-Asbat, or Gate of the Tribes. We were thoroughly benumbed and wet, and ill-natured; and when our horses stopped at the door of the hotel, every one of us were so nearly frozen that we had to be assisted to dismount. We walked as so many mummies might walk, and with difficulty dragged ourselves to our rooms. We were cold and wet through, and not one of us had a change of clothes, all our heavy baggage being at Jaffa.
What should we do?
I proposed going to bed, although it was two P. M., and sending my clothes to the kitchen to dry, and I was not long in undressing.
Everybody else did the same; all except the Judge, who was afraid his clothes would shrink so much that he couldn’t get them on again. He didn’t relish the idea of going naked about Jerusalem in that weather and riding bareback in the saddle to Jaffa, so he sat on the stove in the parlor for the rest of the day.
Late in the afternoon we received our clothes from the kitchen, and were able to appear presentable at dinner time. But we all had a wrung out appearance, and were not over amiable.
The “Doubter” borrowed a pair of trowsers from one of the waiters. They were very tight and very short, and made the old fellow resemble an animated mummy or the materialized spirit of a blacksmith’s tongs. He had taken cold, and his teeth rattled so much that it was proposed to set him to music, and then sell him as a pair of castanets.
