[Illustration: Ropes used by generations of drawers of water have furrowed the stones of Jacob’s Well where Christ talked with the woman of Samaria. Over it the Greeks have recently erected a stone chapel] [Illustration: There are left in Palestine less than two hundred Samaritans, whose High Priest guards the ancient scroll of the first five books of the Bible, which they claim is the original version of the Pentateuch] One part of the Church of the Nativity is controlled by the Armenians and Latins, another by the Greeks, and there are soldiers on hand to keep the worshippers in order. These two sects fight for the right to take care of the birthplace of Jesus, and not long ago a controversy arose over which should clean one of the windows. Both the Armenians and the Greeks were quarrelling over it when the Mohammedan authorities came in and forbade either sect to touch it. Therefore, that window remained unwashed. The stable is under the church. It is reached by a winding staircase going down into a cave floored with marble about twelve feet wide and forty feet long. Thirty-two lamps burn day and night within it. Set in the marble pavement is a star over which there is an inscription stating that on that spot the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ. This star is held down by nails. Once the Armenian who had the right to clean it was working away when he knocked off the head of one of the nails. This caused a great commotion. The Greeks, Latins, and Armenians began to fight over it, and the governor of Jerusalem, to settle the dispute, called in a blacksmith to drill out the old nail and put in a new one. The blacksmith proved to be a member of one of the quarrelling sects. In order to settle the trouble the governor called in a gypsy, who had no religious standing whatever, and he replaced the nail without opposition. At one side of the cave is a recess called the Chapel of the Manger, where it is said the Saviour was laid after His birth. The manger is of brown-and-white marble, and a wax doll lies in it representing the Christ. The Latins claim that they have the original manger in one of their cathedrals in Rome. It is shown every Christmas. As I stood in the stable not far from the manger, a party of twenty Franciscan monks came in and knelt down and sang a service concerning the Nativity. They were burly men with shaved heads and long beards. They wore long gowns and their heads and feet were bare. They knelt upon the floor as they sang, and at the end each bowed down and kissed the star marking the spot of Christ’s birth.