Jerusalem is not inhabited by a people; it is a great field wherein are collected members from every nation, brought there by their religious belief, and about to depart when their end is accomplished. No city resembles less a fatherland, none is more like a place of exile. The Turks, after impoverishing and governing the land after their own fashion, give place to new magistrates, and return home with full purses; the Arabs, who acquire there an idea of civilization, depart in search of a place where they can lay out their property to advantage; while those who remain barbarians, after gaining a moderate sum, retire to the desert to end their days. The European missionaries and travellers, after a long stay, desire at length to die in their native land. The Western and Eastern pilgrims make but a brief sojourn, and though many of them bewail leaving the Holy Places, certain it is they never remain. The Jews replace one another constantly, coming to ask leave to die in that fatherland, which in life they have been unable to regain. The few families established at Jerusalem are not ancient. Each speaks of the date of his arrival, but is uncertain of the length of his stay. In the Holy City, therefore, the population is constantly changing, renewed daily by the pilgrims, and oppressed by a disheartening uncertainty caused by the despotism and incapacity of the Government of the Sublime Porte. This of course tends to prevent the formation of intimate friendships and the fusion of the different races. The greater part of the land does not belong to its occupants, but is the property of the mosques or of the churches, and is therefore called _Wakf_. There is the _Wakf_ of the _Haram es-Sherîf_, the property of the great mosque; the _Wakf el-Tekiyeh_, the property of the Hospital of S. Helena (as it is commonly called); the _Wakf Franji_, the property of the Latin convent; the _Wakf Rûmi_, the property of the Greek convent; and in the same way they speak of the _Wakf_ of the Russians, Armenians, Greek Catholics, Armenian Catholics, English, Prussians, Copts, Abyssinians, and Jews. Another part of the ground falls by law to these public bodies in case of the extinction of the families who possess it, or a failure of the male line. These are called _mulk maukuf_ i.e. mortmain. Hence it comes that the smaller part only of the soil is private property (_mulk_); so that, owing to these restrictions, a single small estate belongs to several owners, and there are many difficulties and much danger of being cheated in buying land.