Round the Wonderful World Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: JERUSALEM.]

CHAPTER X

A WALK ABOUT JERUSALEM

We have pa.s.sed along the south coast of Europe and have been into a corner of Africa, and now we are going to set foot on a new continent--Asia. From Port Said, before we go on eastward, I want you to see just a little of the Holy Land--the scene of the Bible. The Holy Land stands by itself, apart, and though it is in Asia it doesn't seem to belong to it. Someone once said that it is to the world what a church is to a town--the centre of religion. Anyway, it is curious and interesting to notice that it forms the middle point where three continents meet, so that they all share it. I expect you know the position quite well. At the east end the Mediterranean does not run into a point as it does at Gibraltar, but comes up against a straight wall of land which cuts it off squarely, and this straight line is the coast of Palestine, better known as the Holy Land. If the schoolboys of Palestine were set to draw a map of their own country, they would find it much easier than a British boy would if told to make a map of his country.

For all that the Jewish boy would have to do would be to make a fairly straight line, sloping a little out at the bottom end. There would be hardly any indentations on it and only one small bay.

Palestine, of course, is the country of the Jews, though people of many other races and nations live there, and thousands of the Jews are scattered in all parts of the world. Some people dream of restoring all the Jews to their own land, but it is difficult to see what good it would do them. Palestine is held at present by the Turks, but everyone can visit it when they please. It is not a very large country, only about the size of Wales, and yet there isn't a country in the world to equal it in importance. Thousands of people visit it every year in spite of the fact that it is very difficult to get there. There are no good harbours, and the landing at Jaffa, which is the princ.i.p.al port for Jerusalem, has to be done in small boats. As we have to make our visit in the winter we may find the sea rough and dangerous, and may even be carried on north of Jaffa and have to come back on another boat as some friends of mine did. The Holy Land is not great or powerful or even beautiful nowadays, though in the spring the wild flowers are lovely.

Seen in the winter it is just a rather barren, stony land, with many hills, and it is inhabited by very poor people. Yet this little country has been more fought over than any other. For centuries there were crusaders, or soldiers of the cross, who went out to try to conquer it, to hold it in Christian keeping, but they did not succeed.

We must leave our heavy luggage at Port Said, to be picked up again on our return, and only take what we can carry in handbags. The rather small steamer which is to take us starts in the evening, and it is best to go straight to bed on board, as we shall have much to go through when we arrive to-morrow morning. After a rather disturbed night we are glad to get up and dress and come on deck. The s.h.i.+p is at anchor off Jaffa, tossing up and down on the grey water, so that we have to clutch at handrails and hold on to keep our footing on the slippery deck, which is c.u.mbered up with bags and bundles and people and crates in a most confusing way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAFFA.]

All around the s.h.i.+p are big clumsy-looking boats filled with swarthy shouting men wearing turbans and immense baggy blue trousers with enough stuff in them to clothe a whole family! Except that they are not armed we might imagine we were held up by pirates! In front of us, a little distance off, are cruel jagged rocks over which the waves pour and dash, spouting up in cascades as they come slap on the hard surfaces.

One of the boats is close to the s.h.i.+p and the men in her are hanging on by a rope which they gather up or let out as they rise and fall at the bottom of the long slippery gangway, much worse than that we climbed at Toulon. The men in our s.h.i.+p are pitching in bags and bundles very cleverly as the boat comes up, and among the things we see our own brown bags. Very soon we shall be pitched in too! How will you like that?

Near us is a very fat Turkish lady, who is so rolled up in clothes, head and all, that it is quite possible she might be mistaken for a feather-bed. Two sailors get hold of her and carry her down the gangway, depositing her neatly in the boat as it swings near.

Before you have quite realised what has happened a muscular man has caught you up like a sack of potatoes. You are run down the gangway with his hand on your arm like a vice, the boat comes up, and just at exactly the right second, when it balances on the crest of the wave, your captor lets you go and you land on the seat gently and sink away again with the boat. I follow, but am not so lucky, for the next wave catches the boat awry and sluices me from neck to heel! However, I have a stout coat on and do not mind. Then, in the heavily laden boat, with the Turkish lady and the bags and the bundles, we start for the distant sh.o.r.e.

This is the princ.i.p.al landing-place for Palestine! Babies and bishops, pilgrims and pigs, pianos and potatoes have all to be pitched into boats!

Our excitement is not over yet, for as we near the rocks it looks as if we must be smashed by the heavy waves. The roar of the surf is so great that we cannot hear each other speak, and the rain and foam bespatter our faces. We blink and hang on to each other, see-sawing up and down, and wondering every second if we shall be feeling colder yet when we are actually in the water, and then the boat swings up on a wave and runs through into calmer water beyond.

We thread our way in and out of narrow channels, still between rocks, and see ahead of us a desolate land with a queer flat-roofed town.

When at last we are on firm ground our guide leads us quickly through some narrow dirty streets, and before we have time to notice anything we are in a noisy, fussy little train, bound for Jerusalem.

We are actually in the land of Israel, the land where all the Bible stories happened, not only those of the New Testament but also of the Old! Here Noah lived when the Flood came, here Abraham and Isaac and Jacob pitched their tents and pastured their flocks. From here the sons of Jacob, who was also called Israel, went down to the land of Egypt to buy corn when there was a terrible famine lasting many years. We know that they settled there, having found their brother Joseph in great power; and long, long after they had all been dead their descendants multiplied into a great people and were treated as slaves by the Egyptians, so G.o.d brought them back again to the land of their ancestors.

When they arrived here, after wandering many years in the wilderness, they found the country occupied by stranger races whom they fought and conquered; among them were the Hivites and Jebusites and Amorites and Hitt.i.tes. Then the Israelites became a great nation and had kings of their own. The second king, David, was of the tribe of Judah, one of the best of old Israel's sons, and he drove out the people who occupied Jerusalem and made it his capital. His son, Solomon, built here the most wonderful temple ever known. But later on trouble came upon the Israelites, and mightier nations from the east swept down upon them, and carried them away as slaves. After long years of captivity some came back to Jerusalem, and they were the descendants of Judah and Benjamin, but the other tribes returned no more, and no one knows what became of them; they are spoken of to this day as the Lost Ten Tribes, but the descendants of Judah were called Jews. These Jews, who returned and lived again in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, were again conquered by the Romans, and when the Saviour Jesus Christ was born the Romans held the supreme power in the Holy Land.

As the train goes on we see a bare and bleak country, which looks as if giants had had a desperate fight and hurled stones at each other, after which the stones had lain there ever since. This was the part of the land inhabited by the Philistines, against whom the Israelites had so many and such bitter fights. It is quite likely that Goliath of Gath, whom David fought, once strode among the fields; and we know that the great Israelitish hero, Samson, the strong man, lived about here and wandered in among the valleys. Most people are disappointed with the country unless they come in the spring, but when you get used to it you find it has a wonderful charm.

It takes nearly four hours in the train to reach Jerusalem station. It seems quite odd to think of Jerusalem having a station. We have heard the Bible stories so long that we forget that they are real, and that they actually happened just as truly as the stories in our own history.

Jerusalem is a real town, just as real as York, though it is not like it, except for the fact that it has city walls. The station is a good way from the town, and a mob of eager men are waiting there to catch any tourists and drive them up. They are quite ready to fight each other or to clutch us to gain this privilege, and if it were not for our guide we might be torn in pieces.

Our dragoman is a clever man; he chooses his driver at once and helps us into the ramshackle old conveyance and off we go over the hillside. Soon we see ahead of us the encircling wall of the city on a height above, and we wind up to it by gradually inclined roads till we come to the great gate. We cannot have the satisfaction of saying to ourselves, "Jesus actually looked at these walls with His human eyes," because the walls were built long after His death. The town was utterly destroyed about sixty years after the crucifixion, and nothing was left but piles of stones, and when the rebuilding began no one remembered where the streets had run or where the holy places had been. All we can say with certainty is that the present city must be very much the same kind of city as that Jesus knew.

The hotel is just inside the gateway, and here we can rest and get something to eat, and then we can go out; but we must have the guide with us, for any well-dressed European walking alone in the city would be pestered to death by beggars and touts trying to get money out of him.

It is not long before we sally forth and are led into a curious long dark alley or pa.s.sage where the houses almost meet overhead; it slopes down steeply and there are shallow steps at intervals. The sun has come out, luckily, and looking up we can see a very narrow strip of blue sky, but down below it is very dark. You slip and nearly come full length on the pavement because of the old cabbage leaves, bits of orange peel, and other messy remnants of food left about, and then I, in my turn, go almost headlong over a bundle of rags lying on a door-step. Immediately a shrivelled hand shoots out and a long melancholy cry which curdles our blood comes from the heap. It is a woman, so wrapped up in rags that she looks like nothing human. A small coin dropped in her hand brings down what we must suppose are blessings on us in her own tongue.

The wee strip of blue sky is cut across here and there by iron bars, high over our heads; these are "camel-bars" put to prevent camels pa.s.sing through this way, though the donkeys and people can get along underneath. Then we turn a corner and pa.s.s into a slightly wider thoroughfare, though it is still merely a pa.s.sage in comparison with any streets in our western towns. Swaying high above us is the head of a camel whose squashy feet come down almost upon us as we hastily tumble back into our entry, while the great bales on his back brush the walls as he goes on his lordly way. Women selling vegetables crowd the more open s.p.a.ces at the crossing of the narrow streets. Men in red fezes and flowing garments like dressing-gowns stride along; brown-faced boys run in and out, and the din, the confusion, and the smell are very trying.

We begin to wonder when we shall get out into the real streets and we ask the dragoman. He tells us at once that we _are_ in a street, one of the princ.i.p.al ones, that, in fact, they are all like this, and no wheeled vehicle can pa.s.s in any part of Jerusalem! This is so bewildering that we feel as if we were in a labyrinth, and huddle close up to the guide anxious not to lose sight of him for a moment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BEGGAR, JERUSALEM.]

Overhead there are arches sometimes spanning the narrow s.p.a.ce, and at others we cross over curious little open bridges joining one house to another, then we plunge into a cellar and walk right through it and out on the other side. Everyone seems to be doing the same; it is a regular pa.s.sage-way, and yet people live in that cellar, for we see them crouching over a red fire in the cavernous dark, and we wonder how they like strangers to make a highway of their home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A JEW.]

All the way we see people of so many kinds we have never seen before that it is difficult not to stand still and gape. There are men in cloaks and wrappings, weather-beaten and worn, and men in European clothes and brown or yellow boots, there are thick-lipped negroes with rolling yellow eyeb.a.l.l.s, and warlike Turkish soldiers, who clank down the street thrusting everyone aside. The Jews themselves are the least attractive of all, with very greasy head-gear, from each side of which hangs down a corkscrew curl, as often red as black; they wear usually a kind of soiled dressing-gown garment and seem afraid of being struck. Of the many types of men the Arabs are the manliest, and come nearest to our idea of the old patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They wear a kind of cloth on their heads falling down behind, you could easily make something like it with a towel any day. This is bound round the forehead by a fillet sometimes made of camel's hair, which holds it in its place tightly, like a cap. They have across their shoulders a striped narrow blanket of brilliant orange or scarlet, and they walk with a free stride and their heads held up; they are men of the desert, accustomed to freedom and to taking care of themselves against all comers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEWS' WAILING PLACE, JERUSALEM.]

At one corner a man who has been angrily expostulating with another bangs him with a bag he carries, the bag bursts and the air is filled with a cloud of flour which envelops the two until they cannot be seen.

Furious voices come out of the cloud, and as everyone hastens to the sight we take the chance to go the other way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ARAB IN JERUSALEM.]

In every Eastern city there is a "bazaar" corresponding with what in England we should call the market-place. The guide leads us to the "bazaar," and at the first glance we can hardly believe he is right, for we plunge into a long narrow pa.s.sage arched overhead so that it is simply neither more nor less than a tunnel. There are three of these, and the light only comes in from the ends or from some holes far overhead. In this dimness we see caverns or recesses on each side, quite open, with no gla.s.s, and these are the shops. There is a curious glare from some of them where the owners have a fire for cooking food or for heating their forges. Butchers and shoemakers abound, and the smell of raw leather is revolting. In the next pa.s.sage many things are sold, and there are quite a number of chemists' shops. In most of these the owner sits serenely smoking as if he had nothing on earth to do. In one we see a chair tilted up against the merchandise, this is to signify that the owner is away and that no one must touch anything till he returns. In the third tunnel, which is the noisiest and darkest of all, there are many silversmiths showing some wonderful work. It is no use our buying any of it, for we cannot carry it round the world with us. Even if we could, we should be rash to get it here, for every man asks about four times as much as he expects to get. That is one of the things which is so different in the East and West. Fancy going into one of the big west-end shops in London where an article was marked at a fixed price and trying to beat the shop a.s.sistant down. He would only smile, hardly answer, and turn away. Such a thing is absurd, but in the East any article is worth just as much as it will fetch, and the merchant says at first an enormous price in the hope that his customer is ignorant and will give it him, but if the customer bargains he will slowly come down.

It takes much time to shop in this way, and is not altogether satisfactory, for you really have to know what the things are worth first.

After this we must go back to the hotel, for we have wandered about all the afternoon and are weary and bewildered, and we have many sights to see to-morrow.

Thoroughly rested after a good night we start out next morning to see something of the sacred places. Of course we know very well that when the long lane is pointed out down which Jesus bore His cross, the very spots where He stumbled and where Simon was made to carry it for Him, that these things cannot be true. Speaking of Jerusalem Jesus said once, "There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down," and it came literally true, so the present streets are not those He trod. Yet even so the scene is wonderfully interesting, for the old Jerusalem must have been like the present town, and the sights Christ saw must have resembled those we see, as for the first time we walk down these narrow steep alleys. We are going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built over the place where the sepulchre of Christ is supposed to have been. As we go toward it we come across more beggars than we yet have encountered. A perfect army of halt and maimed and lame and blind crouch by the sides of the lane and live on the charity of the pa.s.sers-by. This sort of thing would never be allowed in any Western country, and, as we are not accustomed to it, it strikes us as very distressing. Then we come out into an open s.p.a.ce where there is a great building so irregular and piled up that it is difficult to recognise it as a church. Here are seated on the pavement numerous gaily clothed men with crucifixes and mementoes of the Holy Land for sale. They spread their wares out on the paving-stones.

Pa.s.sing them all we go inside the church and find a darkened atmosphere where red lamps burn always.

We are led up steps and down steps and this way and that, and have many things pointed out to us. We are shown, for instance, the slab on which Christ's body lay and the sepulchre hewn in the rock where He was buried, and though we know that neither of these things can be true, still we feel we are in a more sacred place than any we have ever yet visited. For centuries men of all races and all nations have come here to wors.h.i.+p and pray, as the shepherds and Wise Men came to wors.h.i.+p and pray at the manger in Bethlehem. The slab of the marble is worn away by the soft lips of adoring pilgrims, who fall prostrate before it and kiss it while tears roll down their cheeks. Of all that come from far the Russian pilgrims are the most devout. These poor people, worse off than any English labourers, save their pence from year to year, and then tramp hundreds of miles from their country homes to the seaport of Odessa in Russia in order to come across to see the Holy Land. They live on the charity of other poor villagers as they go, or they carry sacks of bread-crusts, getting more and more mouldy every week. Thousands arrive at the Holy Land every year just before Easter, old and frail men and women who have undergone incredible hards.h.i.+ps. They say, "What does it matter what happens to our bodies?" and many of them die uncomplainingly. They are so good and simple that they believe everything that is told them, and almost faint with joy to think they have at last arrived at the holy places. The air seems to glow with their wonderful faith and love and kindliness to one another. If, indeed, this is not the real sepulchre, at least it is a very holy place.

After this the guide leads us through so many churches of all sorts that we are quite bewildered, until at last we come out on a high open place where all is quiet, and in the midst there stands a huge church quite different from anything we have yet seen--it has a round dome rising from walls of exquisite blue and green slabs of polished stone. This is the church of the Mohammedans, called a mosque, and why it is so especially interesting to us is because it stands on the very spot where stood the Ark of the Jews, and where, from the days of King Solomon, they wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d in the Temple. When Solomon built the Temple it was the most wonderful and beautiful church in the world. It was put together of ma.s.sive stones, made ready and hewn and carved before they came to this place, so that there was no sound of axe or hammer in the sacred precincts. And the fittings were made of carved cedar wood, brought down by sea from Lebanon, while the furnis.h.i.+ngs were of pure gold. Never was any building before so carefully finished or so artistically designed. Solomon's Temple was utterly destroyed, but there were temples built and rebuilt on the same site, and that site is considered to be peculiarly sacred, because it is a peak of a mountain called Mount Moriah. You remember that it was to Mount Moriah Abraham was told to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him? The Jews hold that the very peak on which the mosque now stands is that place. It is, indeed, quite certain that there is an outcrop of rock belonging to part of the summit of Mount Moriah in the mosque which stands just where the Temple stood. You shall see it. Meantime we must put on huge loose slippers, made of sacking and straw, over our boots before we go in, for the Mohammedans always take off their own shoes on entering holy places, and as our modern boots are not constructed to be easily slipped off like Eastern shoes, we must cover them up. The man at the entrance ties on these enormous things and we shuffle along in them as best we can.

Inside, the mosque is light and high and very rich in polished stone and gilding; it is very different from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We are led through it, wondering and gazing, until we come suddenly to a bare rock cropping up out of the pavement to just about your height, and this, for all the ages past, has been a sacred rock. Indeed, no one can say that it was not on this mountain-top, then in the midst of wild natural country, that Abraham laid his only son bound. From this cause the mosque is often known as the "Dome of the Rock."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MOSQUE OF OMAR ON MOUNT MORIAH, JERUSALEM.]

One more sight we must see before going out on to the quiet hillside called the Mount of Olives. This is that most curious place called the Jews' Wailing-Place.

To reach this we pa.s.s down long staircase-like streets in a poor quarter. We see many tall and fierce-looking men, with hooked noses and keen eyes, who wear a white cloak thrown round their heads and hanging down on their shoulders; but there are also many other Jews from all parts,--the Polish Jews are most conspicuous in their brilliant crimson or purple plush gowns, with round velvet hats of the same colour edged with fur; and then we come out into an open s.p.a.ce with a huge wall as high as a very high house made of enormous blocks of stone. This is said to be part of the actual wall surrounding the Temple built by Solomon.

It is Friday afternoon and there is a great concourse of men and women in flowing garments, bending and bowing and kneeling before the wall and wailing out their prayers. Some crouch low, others cling to the giant blocks and kiss the rough surface, others beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if in agony. Standing not far from us is a tall man who calls out some words in a long wailing cry, immediately the crowd respond as in a Litany.

What they are crying out is something like this--

"For the sake of the Temple that is destroyed We sit solitary and weep; For the walls that are thrown down We sit solitary and weep."

We are alone at last. All the morning it has been raining heavily, and in our wanderings about the city we got drenched by water-spouts from roofs that stuck out across the street, and deluged by drippings from window-sills. In many of the narrow streets we simply had to wade, for the water rushed down them like mountain-torrents, and then we went back to the hotel to get warm and dry before sallying out again. Now we are sitting on a great grey stone on the Mount of Olives, and the sun is coming out and drying up all the dampness. We look down upon Jerusalem as Christ looked down on it that day when He entered in a triumphal procession and paused to weep over it. We can see the domes and the flat roofs with the sun glinting on them and making them s.h.i.+ne out white, and the great wall with its turreted top running round all. It is not the same city He saw, but it must be very like it. These buildings, churches, and mosques were not there, of course, and there were a good many more trees than there are now. An olive tree never looks young; from the earliest time it always has a twisted cross appearance like an old man who knows what rheumatism is. The blue-green leaves are small and narrow, and they turn edgewise to the sun as if they were reluctant to give anyone beneath them any more shade than they could help. There is one line of a hymn that always comes into my mind when I look at an olive tree, it runs--

"Beneath the olive's moon-pierced shade."

That is very good, because the brilliant clear white light of an Eastern moon would certainly pierce through any "shade" an olive tree could make.