As another memorial of primitive times, we may mention that it is still common in Nazareth to see "two women grinding at the mill;" illustrating the remarkable saying of our Lord in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem. The two females, seated on the ground opposite to each other, hold between them two round flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and which in Scotland are usually called querns. In the centre of the upper stone is a cavity for pouring in the corn; and by the side of this an upright wooden handle for moving it. To begin the operation, one of the women with her right hand pushes this handle to her companion, who in her turn sends it back to the first,--thus communicating a rotatory and very rapid motion to the upper stone; their left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh corn, as fast as the bran and flour escape from the sides of the machine.[158] It is not without pleasure that the traveller contemplates these unaltered tokens of the simple life which prevailed in Palestine at the time when our Saviour abode in the house of Mary his mother; and more especially, as he cannot fail to contrast them with the pernicious mummery which continues to disgrace the more artificial monuments of Christian antiquity. From the extravagances chargeable upon the priesthood at all the holy places in Canaan, there has resulted this most melancholy fact, that devout but weak men, unable to distinguish between monkish fraud and simple truth, have considered the whole series of topographical evidence as one tissue of imposture, and have left the Holy Land worse Christians than when they entered it. Credulity and skepticism are extremes too often found to approximate; and the man, accordingly, who suddenly relinquishes the one, is almost sure to adopt the other. Burckhardt remarks that the church of Nazareth, next to the one over the Holy Sepulchre, is the finest in Syria, and possesses two tolerably good organs. Within the walls of the convent are several gardens and a small burying-ground; the building is very strong, and serves occasionally as a fortress to all the Christians in the town. There are eleven friars on the establishment, the yearly expenses of which, amounting to about 900l., are defrayed by the rent of a few houses and the produce of a small portion of land, the property of the good fathers. Before quitting this interesting place,--the scene where our Lord passed the days of his childhood and youth,--we may observe, that there is a great variation in the accounts given by different travellers as to the number of its inhabitants. Dr. Richardson restricts it to six or seven hundred; Mr. Buckingham raises it to two thousand; while others assert that it does not fall short of half as many more. There are five hundred Turks, and the remainder are Christians,--the later described as a civil and very industrious class of people.