San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1882-03-16
JERUSALEM.
How ihf Holy city Looks 10 a Modern Traveller
Atlantic Monthly.


Everybody knows the general aspect
of Jerusalem now. Ordinance surveys
societies for exploration, Sunday
school teachers, and artistic friends
have brought pictures OF il for those OF
us who live in these most remote cor
ners; Jerusalem itself, be ID remem-
bered, being in the middle of the
world" Indeed, such is the ease of
travel now, that 10 is safe TO take IL for
granted, in any considerable assembly,
that some one is present who has
walked in the streets of Jerusalem, has
seen the Jews weeping by its walls, and
can describe from personal remem-
brance the Mosque OF Omar.
This general aspect helps us in form
ing an idea of what it looked like 1850
years ago, of which, by misfortune,
there is no description. OF the temple
and its glories. as all readers know,
there is very full description; but the
indifference of the ancients to the pic
turesque, and even TO topography,
leaves us to construct for ourselves the
Jerusalem of the gospel time. Still,
the slopes of the hills are there; the
olive trees and the anemones, and the
cyclamens, with the rest of the spring
We getation are there. The wood has
been destroyed from the country gen.
orally by the ravages of Islam or Islams
wars. But the neighborhood of city
as large as Jerusalem was then is never
heavily wooded. The population of the
city itself was then six or eight times
what it is now. Such population re-
quires diligent farming and market
gardening in the neighborhood. So it
is probable that the country around had
more farm houses and hamlets and
other aspects of habitation than it has
now. But, making such allowances for
changes, the traveller to-day has right
to feel that he looks on much such q
landscape as the traveller coming down
to Jerusalem from Jericho saw in the
days of Jesus Christ. A New Highlander
sometimes catches bit of landscape in
his own region which reminds him, if
the conditions of the sky and climate
are right, of these rounded hills and
rounded olive trees and closer olive
orchards. 1 have photograph of a
piece of chill country" near Jerusalem
which may easily be mistaken for a
home scene in Northern Middlesex or
Southern New Hampshire. You have
only to select bit of rolling country,
well covered with orchards, without
New England houses, forests, ever
green's or pines, but with fair share of
stone walls, photograph it, and place
your picture in a portfolio, between a
view of Jaffa and one of the Dead Sea,
and even an experienced pilgrim would
take it up and say:
"And this is somewhere near Jerusa-
lem?" .
This city was built so long ago that
nobody knows when. 1t is on the crest
line between the waters of the Dead
Sea Valley and those which flow into
the Mediterranean. The hills on which
it stands were abrupt enough to make
an admirable fortress; what has been
said of rounded slopes does not apply
to them. Fortress it was in those days
of the Jebusites when David took it.
After this time it assumed the state and
importance of capital. And this was
no little state and Importance when it
meant capital to which "the tribes
came up three times a year."
Josephus says-in what is probably
an unintentional exaggeration = that at
the time of the Passover million and
quarter people assembled in it, or in
tents around it. Even if this is not
true, it gives an idea of what an intelli-
gent man thought true Immediately
after Christ's visits to the city.
It is not so much matter of regret
that we have not the physical picture
of Jerusalem of that day, as we have
from the gospels and from many other
writings of these times good glimpses
of social order there, and of mems hab-
it's of life. All this delving into the
Talmud and kin 1red writings, which
has taught something even to super
fetal readers, gives local color to pic
lures of gospel Zines. And all the pho
Biography in the world would never help
us to any knowledge of Jerusalem as 1t
was then though we had perspectives
of Herod's temple, and elevations of
Herod's architects-unless we could
make real the moral perspective and
moral elevations of the city. In an
admirable paper by Mr.. Francis Tiffany
be compares this city, the head of &C.
clesiastical machinery, with such man
ufacturing place as Lowell or Holyoke
Imagine all the mills in Lowell one
vast corporation temple; the bulk of
the operatives in it priests and temple
servants; the fabrics turned out
creeds, treatises, or disputaions; the
tenement owners dependent on pill
grims for their dodgers; the neighbor-
ing farmers finding the market for their
wood, cattle and oil in selling them for
the sacrifices, or for the maintenance
of those performing the sacrifices-do
all this, and you have rough but pal
sInn Of InrrSn