IN THE HOLY CITY.

Western Star, Issue 861, 19 July 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

IN THE HOLY CITY.

SIGHTS IN AND AROUND JERUSALEM.

Smyeena, April 30,1884.

A visit to Jerusalem is at first disappointing and unsatisfactory. However well lead up upon its present condition one may be, it is still to the mind an ideal city. The sight at first absorbs attention, dispelling the ideal, and filling its place with the confusion, jargon, and moral and social debris of a hundred Oriental cities, and crowding or covering the sacred places with the ruins or structures of later ages. It is not till one has made himself familiar with the sites and defined the localities, and torn off the accumulations of centuries, and. spirited away the living populations and slowly reconstructed the past, that the ideal city rises grand and beautiful and sacred before him. But it comes—slowly comes under fixed, welldirected, sympathetic looking, like the sight of a bright planet, in the daytime, or like the soft strains of sweet, enchanting music across the harsh sounds of a thronged street. Then the sight of Jerusalem is rewarding and grand. You see it, and you do not see it. You see what was, not what is. You see the sites; you reanimate the scene. If you cannot do this, do not come to Jerusalem. If you are there and do not do it, hurry away as soon as possible. It is a place of mockeries and lies to you, and can do you no good. THE MOSQUE OF OMAE. I visited what is popularly but erro neously called the Mosque of Omar. The real shrine of Omar is now supposed to be part of the Mosque El Aksa, in front of the reputed mosque of that name, and nearer the city wall and the Yailey of Jehosophat. The true name of the latter is the Dome of the Hock.” This rich and grand mosque—second only to that at Mecca—is octagon in form, and is built around and over the great circular rock, 60 feet long,, 50 wide, and rising 17 feet high at the apex—which is now pretty generally regarded by the best authorities as the basis of the altar of Solomon’s Temple. The celebrated dome rises exactly over it, and passages cut through the rock and leading to a tunnel dug through the rock below, and converging at the foot of Mount Moriah in the valley; are so arranged that the whole could be abundantly flushed with water, showing most admirable preparation for cleansing the premises of the altar and keeping them pure. The temple itself stood west of. the altar, This left a very large space for the courts of the temple between the court occupied by the altar and the city wall on the east, but a great area was necessary, inasmuch as the courts of the temple were sometimes thronged at the great annual feasts by the hundreds of thousands of Jews who went up from all parts of the land to attend the sacred rites, i The vaults under the temple area are something wonderful. There are great chambers, and chambers leading into chambers, and passages leading within a yard built up to furnish a level for the court above. Rock also was doubtless taken out for building into the walls, and at subsequent times the chambers and passages were utilised for various purposes. Under the “ Dome . of the Rock ” great living fountains of water were struck, the source of supplies for the temple, thence running through the canal to which I have already referred, and terminating in the pool of Siloam. SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBERS, There are other subterranean excavations under the. city which astonish one. In the north-western part of the city (here is % email opening under the wali

on the outside, through which I entered, which soon opened out into a succession of great chambers, which seem to ramify under half the area of the city. Of course, groping with a poor light over the irregular rocks, with the mystery of the place and the sound of water dripping into echoing vaults below, which I could not see, was calculated to emphasise the sense of distance. But there is no doubt that the city, for one purpose and another, is honeycombed with subterranean vaults. ORIENTAL CATE-DWELLERS. Nor is Jerusalem singular in this respect. Palestine and Syria is a land of caves and excavations. In no one particular have I been more surprised than in the signs that fb« inhabitants of this land, from the time of fixed habitations, have been cave-dwellers. After they gave up tents and a nomadic life, they burrowed in the rocks. There are many natural caves, and where these did not exist or were too small, the soft chalking limestone rock, which underlies or crowns the whole country, could be easily cut into dwellings, and the scarcity of timber and material for brick made this the easiest thing to do. The rock could indeed be easily cut out into regular blocks, and there was no want of surface loose stones, to be erected into houses; and houses were often built in this way. But they were caverns still —caves above ground and made by human hands. They were dark, windowless, one storey, low, the roofs [flat, and covered with grey limestone earth, which was packed, rolled and dried in the sun, and had but a single opening, which served as door, window and chimney. This looked like another rock on the ground, only a little more regular—a hollow rock, or [protuberant cave. The cave was the type, and they hugged the ground, and sometimes crept half way into it, so as to look as much like a cave as possible. We shall not be able to reproduce the old inhabitants of Palestine till we conceive of him as substantially a burrower in the rocks, a cave-dweller. He not only had his home in the rocks, but he sought natural crypts or chiseled artificial ones in them for resting—places for his dead, and he dug deep wells through the same material and constructed long tunnels through cliffs and hills for aqueducts. Jerusalem was not alone in its subterranean activity and life. THE POOLS OP BETHESDA AND CHHON. The pool of Bethesda is not outside the city, but inside, not far from the north-east corner of the area, which is about 1,500 feet long and 1,000 wide. It is a large deep hollow or pit, upwards of 60 feet deep, 100 feet wide and 300 feet long at the top, and but 20 or 30 feet across at the bottom. It has sometimes surface water; but as I saw it, there was nothing but mud and filth in it. It seems [to be a receptacle for neighborhood city waste, and was anything but an attractive sight. The pools of Qihon are simply reservoirs in the valley of Hmnom, made by excavating the earth and running a dam across below, for the storage of the water, like a reservoir in the mining regions of California. TIEW PROM THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. Prom the Mount of Olives one gets the most general view of Jerusalem that can be had from any one point. From the minaret of the mosque, which stands on the summit, I could see and trace very distinctly the great natural outlines of the city. I am standing 140 feet above the city at its highest point. Eight below my feet is the valley of the Kedron, running here nearly due south. Above its steep northern bank rises the massive and high city walls. Just over the wall is Mount Moriah, the temple area, on the left hand eastern corner of which is the broad and spacious mosque, El Aksa, on the central and western portion the grand and imposing mosque, “ The Dome of the Eock,” known as the Mosque of Omar, Beyond the temple area is the depression which was once a deep ravine, running nearly south, called the Tyropaean. Above this to the northwest rises Mount Zion—quite a high and steep eminence—from which to any other part of the city within the walls is a very perceptible descent. Except the large area of the temple, which covers about one sixth of the whole city, within the walls, the rest is one compact, undulating mass of buildings, having winding or irregular seams between them, here and there, marking the supposed course of streets, and, broken, here and there, by domes and minarets and towers, and the imposing roofs of churches. I see it all under my eye, over on the side-hill yonder. It is a stirring spectacle; not altogether beautiful, not wholly sad. It is a spectacle whose deepest interest is hinted by two facts —Christ looking upon it, and Christ weeping over it. But as I turn round and look in the other direction, my emotions are less mingled. _ There is only the wildness, and majesty, and beauty of nature. I look down into the deep valley of the Jordan, 4,000 feet below me, and see the Dead Sea stretching out as a mirror of glass, and on the other side the dark mountains of Moab and Mount Nebo, and close to me on the south the green fields of Judah covered with flowers. No other sight have I seen of such mingled and contrasting interest in my life as from the top of the Mount of Olives. I, E, D,