I proposed to one or two of our party that we should walk on alone, so as to indulge, without restraint, in the emotions which such a view would excite. The proposal was heartily agreed to, and we started. The day had been showery, and, though not actually raining at the moment, the clouds were black and heavy. Scarcely had we commenced the ascent when the rain began to fall in torrents. The stiff, tenacious mud, and the slippery sheets of rock over which the track led, made the walk very difficult; but still we persevered. Soon a miserable, ruinous, poverty-stricken hamlet came in view, standing on a plateau of rock in a slight depression on the hill-side. The pasturage around it was good and abundant, and the olive groves ought to have been a source of wealth to the inhabitants. Under a better system of government, and with a more industrious population, it might have been a bright and prosperous village; but now its only attraction consists in its hallowed associations. It is Bethany—the home of Martha and Mary and Lazarus—the one spot on earth where He who “had not where to lay his head” found a loving welcome and a peaceful home. It has always seemed to me to be not without meaning that our Lord, on his Ascension, “led his disciples out as far as to Bethany,” so that the last spot his eyes looked upon, and his feet pressed before He left the earth which rejected Him should be the one in which He had been a loved and honoured guest. The old name of Bethany has disappeared, together with the palm-trees, which once were in such profusion as to win for it this distinctive epithet.[134] The memory of the raising of Lazarus has lived so vividly in Arab legend, that the name El-’Azirîyeh has supplanted the earlier and biblical one. Of course traditional sites are pointed out for all the events of the biblical narrative. The houses of Simon and of Martha and the grave of Lazarus are shown. The former may be dismissed without a glance or thought. They are evidently modern erections, certainly not earlier than the Saracenic period, and probably much more recent. But the tomb of Lazarus may be authentic. The masonry, indeed, is modern, but the sepulchre itself, a deep recess cut into the rock, is apparently ancient, and, so far as I could judge, was originally a tomb. It is entered by a narrow passage, with twenty-five steps, leading to a _cubiculum_. The tradition which identifies it with “the cave,” in which the “friend,” whom “Jesus loved” was buried, has a respectable antiquity, going back, at least, to the time of Arculf (A.D. 700). Whether this be the exact spot or not, we know that very near where we stand the memorable words were uttered: “I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”[135]