In The Levant 12

In The Levant 12

"And do you believe it?"

 

"I cannot say edzacly where him been. Where you t'ink he done got that

leaf?"

 

Along the east wall of the Harem there are no remains of the long

colonnade called Solomon's Porch, not a column of that resplendent

marble pavilion which caught the first rays of the sun over the

mountains of Moab, and which, with the shining temple towering behind

it, must have presented a more magnificent appearance than Babylon, and

have rivalled the architectural glories of Baalbek. The only thing in

this wail worthy of note now is the Golden Gate, an entrance no longer

used. We descended into its archways, and found some fine columns with

composite capitals, and other florid stone-work of a rather tasteless

and debased Roman style.

 

We climbed the wall by means of the steps, a series of which are placed

at intervals, and sat a long time looking upon a landscape, every foot

of which is historical. Merely to look upon it is to recall a great

portion of the Jewish history and the momentous events in the brief life

of the Saviour, which, brief as it was, sufficed to newly create the

earth. There is the Mount of Olives, with its commemorative chapels,

heaps of stone, and scattered trees; there is the ancient foot-path up

which David fled as a fugitive by night from the conspiracy of Absalom,

what time Shimei, the relative of Saul, stoned him and cursed him; and

down that Way of Triumph, the old road sweeping round its base, came the

procession of the Son of David, in whose path the multitude cast their

garments and branches of trees, and cried, "Hosanna in the highest."

There on those hills, Mount Scopus and Olivet, were once encamped the

Assyrians, and again the Persians; there shone the eagles of Rome, borne

by her conquering legions; and there, in turn, Crusaders and Saracens

pitched their tents. How many times has the air been darkened with

missiles hurled thence upon this shining prize, and how many armies

have closed in about this spot and swarmed to its destruction! There the

Valley of Jehoshaphat curves down until it is merged in the Valley of

the Brook Kidron. There, at the junction of the roads that run over and

around Olivet, is a clump of trees surrounded by a white wall; that is

the Garden of Gethsemane. Near it is the tomb of Mary. Farther down

you see the tomb of Absalom, the tomb of St. James, the monolith

pyramid-tipped tomb of Zacharias (none of them apparently as old as they

claim to be), and the remains of a little temple, the model of which

came from the banks of the Nile, that Solomon built for his Egyptian

wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, wherein they worshipped the gods of her

country. It is tradition also that near here were some of the temples he

built for others of his strange wives: a temple to Chemosh, the Moabite

god, and the image of Moloch, the devourer of children. Solomon was

wiser than all men, wiser than Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons

of Mahol; his friend Hiram of Tyre used to send riddles to him which no

one in the world but Solomon could guess; but his wisdom failed him with

the other sex, and there probably never was another Oriental court so

completely ruled and ruined by women as his.

 

This valley below us is perhaps the most melancholy on earth: nowhere

else is death so visibly master of the scene; nature is worn out, man

tired out; a gray despair has settled down upon the landscape. Down

there is the village of Siloam, a village of huts and holes in the

rocks, opposite the cave of that name. If it were the abode of wolves it

would have a better character than it has now. There is the grim cast

of sin and exhaustion upon the scene. I do not know exactly how much of

this is owing to the Jewish burying-ground, which occupies so much of

the opposite hill. The slope is thickly shingled with gray stones, that

lie in a sort of regularity which suggests their purpose. You fall to

computing how many Jews there may be in that hill, layer upon layer; for

the most part they are dissolved away into the earth, but you think that

if they were to put on their mortal bodies and come forth, the valley

itself would be filled with them almost to the height of the wall. Out

of these gates, giving upon this valley of death, six hundred thousand

bodies of those who had starved were thrown during the siege, and long

before Titus stormed the city. I do not wonder that the Moslems think of

this frightful vale as Gehenna itself.

 

From an orifice in the battlemented wall where we sat projects a round

column, mounted there like a cannon, and perhaps intended to deceive

an enemy into the belief that the wall is fortified. It is astride this

column, overhanging this dreadful valley, that Mohammed will sit at

the last, the judgment day. A line finer than a hair and sharper than a

razor will reach from it to the tower on the Mount of Olives, stretching

over the valley of the dead. This is the line Es-Serat. Mohammed will

superintend the passage over it. For in that day all who ever lived,

risen to judgment, must walk this razor-line; the good will cross in

safety; the bad will fall into hell, that is, into Gehenna, this blasted

gulf and side-hill below, thickly sown with departed Jews. It is in view

of this perilous passage that the Moslem every day, during the ablution

of his feet, prays: "O, make my feet not to slip on Es-Serat, on that

day when feet shall slip."

 

 

 

 

IV.--NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM.

 

|WHEREVER we come upon traces of the Knights of St. John, there a door

opens for us into romance; the very name suggests valor and courtesy

and charity. Every town in the East that is so fortunate as to have any

memorials of them, whatever its other historic associations, obtains an

additional and special fame from its connection with this heroic order.

The city of Acre recalls the memory of their useless prowess in the last

struggle of the Christians to retain a foothold in Palestine; the name

of the Knights of Rhodes brings before every traveller, who has seen it,

the picturesque city in which the armorial insignia of this order have

for him a more living interest than any antiquities of the Grecian Rose;

the island fortress at the gate of the Levant owes all the interest we

feel in it to the Knights of Malta; and even the city of David and of

the Messiah has an added lustre as the birthplace of the Knights of St.

John of Jerusalem.

 

From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, they are the chief figures

who in that whirlwind of war contested the possession of the Levant with

the Saracens and the Turks. In the forefront of every battle was seen

their burnished mail, in the gloomy rear of every retreat were heard

their voices of constancy and of courage; wherever there were crowns to

be cracked, or wounds to be bound up, or broken hearts to be ministered

to, there were the Knights of St. John, soldiers, priests, servants,

laying aside the gown for the coat of mail if need be, or exchanging

the cuirass for the white cross on the breast. Originally a charitable

order, dwelling in the Hospital of St. John to minister to the pilgrims

to Jerusalem, and composed of young soldiers of Godfrey, who took the

vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they resumed their arms upon

the pressure of infidel hostility, and subsequently divided the order

into three classes: soldiers, priests, and servants. They speedily

acquired great power and wealth; their palaces, their fortifications,

their churches, are even in their ruins the admiration and wonder of our

age. The purity of the order: was in time somewhat sullied by luxury,

but their valor never suffered the slightest eclipse; whether the field

they contested was lost or won, their bravery always got new honor from

it.

 

Nearly opposite the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the

green field of Muristan, the site of the palace, church, and hospital of

the Knights of St. John. The field was, on an average, twenty-five feet

above the surrounding streets, and a portion of it was known to rest

upon vaults. This plot of ground was given to the Prussian government,

and its agents have been making excavations there; these were going on

at the time of our visit. The disclosures are of great architectural

and historical interest. The entrance through a peculiar Gothic gateway

leads into a court. Here the first excavations were made several years

ago, and disclosed some splendid remains: the apse of the costly church,

cloisters, fine windows and arches of the best Gothic style. Beyond, the

diggings have brought to light some of the features of the palace and

hospital; an excavation of twenty-five feet reaches down to the arches

of the substructure, which rest upon pillars from forty to fifty feet

high. This gives us some notion of the magnificent group of buildings

that once occupied this square, and also of the industry of nature as

an entomber, since some four centuries have sufficed her to bury these

ruins so far beneath the soil, that peasants ploughed over the palaces

of the knights without a suspicion of what lay beneath.

 

In one corner of this field stands a slender minaret, marking the spot

where the great Omar once said his prayers; four centuries after this,

Saladin is said to have made his military headquarters in the then

deserted palace of the Knights of St. John. There is no spot in

Jerusalem where one touches more springs of romance than in this field

of Muristan.

 

Perhaps the most interesting and doleful walk one can take near

Jerusalem is that into the Valley of Kidron and through Aceldama, round

to the Jaffa Gate, traversing "the whole valley of the dead bodies, and

of the ashes," in the cheerful words of Jeremiah.

 

We picked our way through the filthy streets and on the slippery

cobble-stones,--over which it seems dangerous to ride and is nearly

impossible to walk,--out through St. Stephen's Gate. Near the gate,

inside, we turned into an alley and climbed a heap of rubbish to see

a pool, which the guide insisted upon calling Bethesda, although it is

Birket Israil. Having seen many of these pools, I did not expect much,

but I was still disappointed. We saw merely a hole in the ground, which

is void of all appearance of ever having been even damp. The fact is,

we have come to Jerusalem too late; we ought to have been here about two

thousand years ago.

 

The slope of the hill outside the gate is covered with the turbaned

tombs of Moslems; we passed under the walls and through this cemetery

into the deep valley below, crossing the bed of the brook near the tombs

of Absalom, Jehoshaphat, St. James, and Zacharias. These all seem to be

of Roman construction; but that called Absalom's is so firmly believed

to be his that for centuries every Jew who has passed it has cast a

stone at it, and these pebbles of hate partially cover it. We also added

to the heap, but I do not know why, for it is nearly impossible to hate

any one who has been dead so long.

 

The most interesting phenomenon in the valley is the Fountain of the

Virgin, or the Fountain of Accused Women, as it used to be called. The

Moslem tradition is that it was a test of the unfaithfulness of women;

those who drank of it and were guilty, died; those who were innocent

received no harm. The Virgin Mary herself, being accused, accepted

this test, drank of the water, and proved her chastity. Since then the