Nothing was more remarkable than the patience of the soldiery who had to keep order. The Greeks gave most trouble, and in 1873 the feeling evinced by them was very bitter, because their favourite Patriarch had just been deposed. A very fat old colonel walked up and down, armed with a murderous _kurbaj_, or whip of hippopotamus hide; he would sit on the floor and look at the crowd, sometimes putting an additional big soldier at a weak point in the line. The men were armed with the Snider, and were very stalwart and tall. Sometimes the crowd became dangerous, and hissed. As fast as his legs could carry him, the Colonel rushed to the spot, and down came the whip; then where a moment before were angry faces and arms stretched out with clenched fists, there was suddenly nothing but a flat surface of backs, or a few arms raised to protect the heads. Yet on the whole it was a good-natured crowd, and the soldiers were wonderfully patient. Little incidents of a comic nature occurred, and an Arab chief, who tried to swagger down the lane, found his head-shawl off and far away in a moment, tossed from hand to hand amid shouts of laughter. Two wooden galleries were erected, under the arches to the west, each three storeys high; and here sat native women of the better class, in their best silks, yellow and red stuffs, cachemire shawls, white muslin and blue cloth, with flashing eyes and painted faces. They lay scattered over the bright carpets, presenting an effect of colour more brilliant than that of the broad masses of sombre tints below. About one o’clock in the afternoon, the natives of Jerusalem arrived--a long wave of human beings bursting suddenly in from the south, and surging along the narrow lane. Many were stripped to their vests and drawers--in regular fighting costume. They rushed at the fire-hole, and the first comers thrust their arms into it to keep their places. The effect of this crowd within a crowd--a moving wave, ploughing through the two packed masses--was very curious. No sooner was it pushed and swept into place and the lane cleared, than it burst into one long loud shout of repetition-- “Hádha kúb-er Sáid--ná! Hádha kúb-er Sáid--ná!” which was repeated twenty or thirty times at a breath; and a big man was hoisted up, and fairly pounded the walls of the Sepulchre with his fist, shrieking the same refrain and pointing at the chapel with his fingers, while the crowd joined in the last syllable--a tremendous shout of “Na!” And now the rotunda contained some 2000 persons, and the church probably 10,000 in all, when, at 2.15 p.m., the procession was formed, and the nasal chant of the priests was heard in the Greek church.