While our guides took the horses to be watered, we wandered about the open cemetery, alternately “meditating among the tombs” of the brave Crusaders who lie buried there, and watching the animated scene in the portion of the square used as a market.
We laughed heartily at one unwary traveller who, having yielded weakly to the persuasive powers of an importunate shopman, was literally besieged by half-a-dozen others. The unfortunate object of these attentions looked simply desperate, the perspiration pouring from his face as his enemies pulled him this way, pushed him that, shouting and yelling in the Arabic tongue, and gesticulating menacingly with one hand while they held on to him with the other. He could not understand, poor fellow, a word they said, and evidently thought they were going to murder him. We saw him finally dragged into a shop by the two strongest, while the other four waited outside for their victim to emerge, when the attack would be resumed. We wondered whether his friends would come to the rescue!
The few remaining minutes at our disposal were spent in visiting the famous study of St. Jerome, a gloomy cell cut in the rock in the vaults of the Church. It was here the great Father spent so many years of his life in translating the Scriptures into the noble Vulgate. He was helped in his herculean task by Paula and her daughter Eustochia—learned Roman ladies—who followed Jerome to Bethlehem and founded a convent there over which he presided. Their tombs, with that of Eusebius, are in the vaults. The Grotto of the Nativity we left for another day.
We were joined in the square by a fine-looking Arab, with loins girded, and his bare feet thrust into red shoes. He saluted us gravely and with much dignity. Pointing to an ancient rifle (which was slung across his shoulders and was patched up in an original and striking manner, calculated to burst if by any chance it was loaded), he informed us that he had been appointed our escort across the wilderness and, further, that he would guard our lives and property as he would his own.
Miss B., who translated his remarks, told us not to be alarmed, for if by any chance we should be attacked by robbers, Mustapha would be two miles ahead of us, and we should run no danger of being killed by the explosion of his gun! This we felt was severe on our aristocratic-looking defender.
The horses and their attendants now came up, “Bon Jour’s” beast more grotesquely laden than before. We were soon in the saddle, and winding round the eastern corner of the Monastery, turned our backs on civilisation, and entered the dreary wilderness called in Scripture Jeshimon or Solitude.
For the next four or five hours we rode through this region, which in winter must be ghastly indeed. Even the glory of the spring flowers, which thinly covered its otherwise naked, soft, chalky slopes, failed to enliven it. Everything but the flowers was of one colour—the glaring ridges, the fantastic peaks, the sharp spurs, the rugged rocks, the narrow ravines with their stony beds, the camels, the foxes, and the dogs all were a kind of tawny yellow.
BETHLEHEM. (From the painting by Paul Linke.)