JERUSALEM AND MOUNT OLIVES UNDER SNOW.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XXIII, 4 June 1898, Page 692

JERUSALEM AND MOUNT OLIVES UNDER SNOW.

Lovers of the Holy Land and its memorable history will be pleased to sean the very latest photo, taken of Jerusalem and Mount of Olives, wrapped in its beautiful mantle of snow. A gentleman writing to an Auckland friend, under date of March the 26th, says:-*- 4 I am sending you an unique photo, of Jerusalem and Mount Olives under snow. We have not had snow for four years, and this winter we have had it on four occasions, but it never remained long. The photo., besides showing the dome of the Holy Sepulchre, and behind it the dome of the mosque of Omer and Aksa. which is built on the site of Solomon's Temple. shows also the tower and dome over the new German ehureb.which the German Emperor is coming to open in September. 1 cannot say that the church is an ornament to the landscape, nor can it be called artistic. There has been a great number of travellers in Jerusalem this season, chiefly on account of the absence of war quarantine, etc. It seems that the rule now is for visitors to come in large parties of one or two hundreds. The smaller parties are now very much fewer. The shopkeepers complain as much as formerly. The Americans have the name of being very niggardly: even Vanderbilt, the millionaire, who was here not long ago. made a hard bargain worth only £•>.’ The high tower against the horizon is one of a number of large buildings erected ostensibly as a hospice by the Russian Government. It is situated on the top of the Mount of Olives, and commands a magnificent view of the country round about Jerusalem, the Valley of the Jordan, and the Dead Sea. some 20 miles distant. Between the city itself and the Mount of Olives lies the deep gorge known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the Brook of Kedron. and to the right of a road that leads up the Mount can be seen a few buildings surrounding the ancient olive trees known as the Garden of Gethsemane. Another road still farther to the right leads to the ancient Village of Bethany, the ruins of which are situated on the brow of

the hill. The trees that dot the Mount of Olives are all olives, many of them centuries old, and in full fruit bearing. Immense sums of money are all the time being expended in Jerusalem and vicinity in the erection of schools, convents, and hospitals. Not only is this done by the Greeks and Romanists, between which two sects the struggle for precedence now seems to take an architectural turn, but Protestantism also is represented in the prevailing strife for high monumental position in the religious capital of the world. The Church of the Redeemer, now near completion, is built on the site of a group of buildings the ruins of which date back to the ninth century, in the time of the Emperor Charlemagne. In the year 1869, on the occasion of the visit of ‘Unser F’ritz,’ then the Crown Prince of Prussia and afterwards for 99 days Emperor of Germany, the Sultan caused him to be received as his personal guest, and presented him with the site of the new church, some of the old ruins of which have been built into its walls.

WOMEN WHO SEEK DIVORCE A clerk in the Circuit Court has come to the conclusion that most of the women who sue or are sued for divorce have peculiar given names. To prove the correctness of his theory he went through the court dockets for the last six months and copied the names of every woman who was either a plaintiff or defendant in a suit for divorce in that time, and arranged the names in statistical order. The result was really surprising. There were 398 suits for divorce filed in the six months. Of the women in these suits 44 were Marys, 23 were Annies, 11 were named Florence, 8 were named Margaret, 6 were named Fannie, there were 5 Saras, 4 Sarahs. 4 Marthas, 4 Marias, 2 Maries and 2 Jennies. Those eleven names were the only ones that appeared more than once on the docket. In the other 285 divorce suits all the women had different names, and many of them were very odd. It seems peculiar that out of 398

women appearing in divorce suits 296 should have different given names, but the dockets of the court prove the truth of the statement. A few of the odd names copied by the clerk who made the investigation follow: Arelia, Marina, Lula, Hermania, Merrian, Lila, Juna, Kahrma, Andrina, Rena. Ona, Cleora, Dola, Leola, Urka, Vida, Capitolia, Meatha, Byrdie, Ladybelle, Dorenda, Virgil. Therdocia,Ora,lnez, Velma, Kadi xCathalin, Rhena, Georgianna, Alma, Delia, Luella, Lola, Lauretta, Lorie, Mallie, Manie, Selfa.