These tens of thousands of pilgrims continue to pray as they rise from the Stone of Unction, and then with bowed heads walk on into the great rotunda of the church itself. Here in the very centre rises an oblong marble structure about thirty feet high, twenty-five feet long, and seventeen feet wide. The marble is yellow with age and the architecture of the building is rude rather than artistic. This is the tomb of Christ. It is more like a chapel than a tomb, and its fronts and sides are covered with candles. Curious brass lamps, with glass globes of different colours, hang like a frieze around its alabaster top, and between these are oil paintings of scriptural scenes. In its front, in gold pillars as tall as a man, are columns of painted wax each six inches thick and twelve feet high. At the top of each of these a flame trembles. At Easter there flows through its low door an endless stream of humanity. We enter through a vestibule so dark that we can hardly see the features of the people around us, and find the same kissing and praying going on. Upon the column of marble about three feet high, standing in the centre of the vestibule, thousands of kisses are pressed every day. Into its top is set a piece of the stone which was rolled from the door of Christ’s tomb. The stones walling the tomb are very thick, and the door is so narrow that only one man can enter it at a time, and so low that even boys bow their heads in going in. The space within is so small that it will hold only four persons at once. It is dimly lighted with candles, and a Greek priest in cap and gown is always on guard. At the right of the room, set into the wall, there is a marble slab of purest white resting upon another slab about four feet high and forming a box or ledge. This box is supposed to have been the sepulchre of Christ, to the people of the Christian world the holiest of the holy places of the earth. The worshippers here pray and drop their tears, and men reverently back their way out to give place to others. All of the Christian sects claim a right to the tomb, and it is free of access to every denomination. The chapels of the various churches opening into the rotunda are gorgeously decorated, and each sect has some relic of the Crucifixion which people consider their especial charge and which they guard with the greatest reverence. One chapel contains the stocks in which some of the saints were imprisoned, and the chapel of the Syrians has the tomb of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Arimathea. The Latins have the column of the scourging. The Greeks, who have the finest chapel of all those surrounding the rotunda, are first, both in wealth and power, in the Church of the Sepulchre.