Letters from the Holy LandButler, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson)
Religion
Letters from the Holy Land
Butler, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson)
Palestine -- Description and travel
refreshing after my "test ride" of yesterday in the dry glare. We soon
left this zone of verdure, however, and began the ascent to Jerusalem
through that gloomy pass which Our Lord chose for the parable of the
Good Samaritan. They are making a road here, but, being as yet
bridgeless at the ravines, it is not open to carriages. Our
halting-place was Bethany,--most lowly hamlet--and I made a sketch of it
at our mid-day halt. We then proceeded to our camping-ground, which W.
had selected outside the north wall of Jerusalem, and in skirting the
base of Olivet we had again that great view of the city that artists
love (and I must say have often exaggerated as regards the height of its
rocky pedestal). For the first time there was a "hitch" in the
arrangements for the camp. On reaching the north wall no camp was there,
and we rode in and out of olive-woods and ugly new roads and dusty
building _débris_ in search of it, Isaac _appearing_, at least, to be
quite at sea. At last, after sending him _ventre-à-terre_ successively
in several directions, we saw him returning and calling out that he had
found it. To our horror we found the people in charge of the baggage had
selected the only really hideous and repulsive spot in all Jerusalem,
of all places, the Jewish extra-mural colony! There were our white tents
pitched down in a hollow full of the back-door refuse from the houses of
this unsavoury population, surrounded by youths and bedraggled women who
might have just come out of Houndsditch to look on at the preparations
of the camp. The idea of a night on this ground was impossible. On
catching sight of this state of things W. pushed forward at a gallop at
the whole assemblage of servants, muleteers and cook, and the whole
amalgamated crowd, and with an unmistakable twirl of his stick told them
to "be out of that"; and the muleteers, servants, and cook fell on their
knees and with joined hands called out "Pardon! pardon!" In the
twinkling of an eye tents were struck and reloaded, dinner preparations
bundled away and an instant movement made to the place behind the north
wall on Mount Moriah, which W. had fixed upon in the morning. He
suspects that he was disobeyed on account of the ease with which the
servants knew they would obtain drink from the Jews.
Certainly our final encampment was enchanting, overlooking Gethsemane
deep down to the east, with the battlemented walls of Jerusalem before
us to the south, and tall pines waving above our tents. The moon was now
waxing bright, and never can I forget that evening, as by its light I
looked upon these things.
What a change in the temperature here! It is quite cold. My kit is
proving well devised for this country. You must be prepared for these
very marked changes of temperature in a land which rises so high and
sinks to such abnormal depths below the level of the sea in such a small
space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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