In 1875 the pilgrimage to Neby Mûsa was going on at the same time, and parties of wild fanatical Moslems paraded the streets of Jerusalem, bearing green banners surmounted with the crescent and inscribed with Arabic texts. A bodyguard armed with battle-axes, spears, and long brass-bound guns accompanied each flag, and a couple of big drums with cymbals followed. It speaks well for the Turks, that with all the elements of a bloody riot thus ready to hand, with crowds of fanatics, Christian and Moslem, in direct contact, still no disturbances occurred. By 11.30 a.m. on the 19th of April, 1873, and by the same time on the 22nd of April, 1875, we had been marshalled to a place in the Latin gallery, west of the Sepulchre, and looking down on the rotunda. Between the Chapel of the Sepulchre and the rotunda wall is a space some fifteen paces wide; a double line of Turkish soldiers kept open a narrow lane, in the middle of this space, round the tomb--a lane sufficiently wide for three men to walk abreast. On either side the crowd was packed against the rotunda wall, and against that of the Sepulchre chapel, and packed so thickly, that it seemed impossible for one single body more to be squeezed in. To say that you could walk on the heads of the crowd conveys but a poor idea of its compactness; the whole mass seemed welded into one body, and any movement of a single individual swayed the entire crowd, which seemed to tremble like a huge jelly. But who can describe this wonderful scene? The sunlight came down from above on the north side where the Greeks were gathered, while on the south all was in shadow. The mellow grey of the marble was lit up, and a white centre of light was formed by the caps, shirts, and veils of the native Christians. A narrow cross-lane was made at the fire-hole on the north side, and here first two, and in 1875 six herculean guardians, in jerseys and with handkerchiefs bound to their heads, kept watch--the only figures plainly distinguishable among the masses. The effect of colour was remarkable; it seemed to run in patches, as all of one nationality were near one another. In the sunlight, brown faces and arms, salmon colour, pink, light blue, and cinnamon in the clothing, were blended with the white; but, in the shadow, the dark blue uniforms, the black dresses of nuns, and the brown frieze and red sashes of the Armenians, were streaked across by the long line of the soldiers’ red fezzes.