LEPERS IN JERUSALEM.
I made no notes of Jerusalem, for I did not and do not intend to write of it. It was well done long ago by a man equally innocent and more abroad, and has not changed much since. The Turks are still on guard at the cradle and the grave of Christ, to try and keep the devout Christians from spattering up the walls with each other's blood. The lamps have been carefully and nearly equally divided between the Greeks, Catholics, and Armenians, as well as the space around and the time for worship.
What strikes the traveller most forcibly on seeing Jerusalem for the first time is the littleness of everything. The Mount of Olives is a little mound; Mount Moriah is a scarcely perceptible rise of ground; Mount Zion is a gentle hill; the valley of Jehoshaphat is a deep, ugly gulch, with scarcely enough water in it to wet a postage stamp: and the Tyropoeon Valley is an alley. Then you look at the unspeakable poverty, the dreariness, the miles of piles of hueless rocks, and are interested. The desert is interesting because it is desolate, but it is an awful interest. The people—the beggars that hound you—are as poor, as dwarfed and deformed as the gnarled trees that try to live on the naked rocks.
One day in a narrow street we met two women who nearly blocked the way.
"They are lepers!" cried the guide, pushing me by them. I started to run, for never had the voice of man thrilled and filled me with such fear; but, remembering my photographic machine, I had the guide throw them some coin, and made a picture, but not a good one. I was surprised that the poor beggar near whose feet the money fell made no effort to pick it up, but continued to pray to us, and waited for her companion. Then I saw that there were no fingers on her hands.