The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-14

ITeaIIuv
da,iy steps of the .Carpenter's Son.
| When was at Nazareth | purchased the
seven acres OF Wild rock and ruins on that
4inIthe exact and certain spot where our
Loru opened the Book and read'-hop-
| ing 10 found small hospital there, and at
Mtst the humble enterprise prospered.
| But the Greek and Latin monks ouarreled
about it; difficulties interviewed, the sail
| ing snip. which took the beds, fittings
ana inscription stone went down at sea.
Inc project had to be abandoned. Lat
teriy, however, il has been revived, with
new hopes and efforts, and Just before
IeaVing England last year l agreed TO make
over the sultan's firman, which | held, to
ihose VINO are again endeavoring to estab-
hsn the Katherine Arnold Hospital"
men. onward from Nazareth, with
Mount carmel still towering on the right
ana standing grandly up from the sea,
thls intensely absorbing and unequalled
| Journey leads the traveller down the rug
geo slope from his native city into the
| PLAIN OF Esdraelon, over the brook Kishon,
with such remarkable places as Main,
Shunem, Chesulloth, Megidbo, occurring
by the wayside to King Ahab's country,
10 Jezell and Gerizim and the country of
Samaria. There lives in my recollection
j memorable ride | took hereabouts from
the walls OF Nablous, at the special re-
quest OF Dean Stanley, my old tutor at
oxford, to visit and sketch the alleged
tomb OF Joshua. We got into temporary
ditticulties'with the Moslems at the out of
the way spoI for breaking off a twig of
tree growing by the tomb, which, they
averred, was of miraculous character,
moving itself once year away from the
structure in order to allow its walls to be
newly replenished. line of telegraph
posts runs nowadays between Mount Ebal
and Mount Gerizim, under the gates of
Nablous, and actually skirts the broken
and scattered masonry of Jacobs well,
where our Lord talked with the woman of
Samaria. All the way from Nazareth to
Jerusalem you follow-and must follow
the path trodden by His feet whenever He
went up to the Holy City. the first sight
of which from the hill Scopus. when you
have threaded the valley OF the Robbers"
and the desoIate hill country of the
Prophet Samuel, is more impressive, l
think, than that of any other city on the
earth
Ali along the road the sorrow-stricken
and deserted land i s so poor and depopu-
lated, but its name and fame so rich
There are not twenty miles of good road
where you can canter your Arab horse
from Damascus to the Mount of Olives,
and if it rains too hard to pitch tents you
must put up every night IN the squalid,
bare huts of the miserable peasantry,
where the only furniture will be roll of
bedding, few brass and clay vessels, a
Koran in a silk bag and a bottle OF anti
mony, with pointed stick IN 1t to blacken
the under lids of the womens eyes.
There is no exit for the smoke
of the fire lighted on the floor,
except the low door, and the cattle
share the only apartment with the family
and their guests. One side of street in
Chicago would buy the fee simple of all
Palestine! Yet at Nazareth. at Bethle-
hem, and on that first view of the City of
the Cross and the Passion, lying under
the fair slopes of Olivet, all fatigues, all
hardships fade from the wanderers mind,
and the bare, hungry, neglected, lll-gov-
erned land seems proud and rich, power
ful, queenly. and simply by possessing
those sites and furnishing those scenes.
In Jerusalem itself you sleep, as it were,
on the very lap of religious history and
breathe an air charged with imperishable,
sacred recollections. Too probably it will
b charged with a good deal of fever be-
ides. from such places as the Pool of
Hezekiah, by which your hotel will in all
tary but deeply interesting spots. For
| most pilgrims the interest of Palestine
centers and eliminates within the walls of
Jerusalem, and truly wonderful it is to
see the deep fervor of alteration provoked
among those crowds of poor and pious
votarles from all nations which gather in
and around the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. There the irony of history is
shown by the two strange and significant
facts that the soldiers of the sultan of Tur-
key guard its gates, and that not Jew is
ever permitted to enter them. OF course
| the precise localities pointed out
| in this edlfice and near at hand are al
most always fictitious. Nobody knows
| for certain single spot connected with
| the trial and crucit xion of Christ, and
| probably great surface changes have
effaced the features of most of them. But
| enough in and around the city has been
spared to fill and feed the imagination.
| The Mount of Olives, Bethany, the Gar
| den of Gethsemane, Kedron, the site of
| the Temple the Pools of Bethesda and
| of Sloan, the road to Jericho and that to
| Bethlehem and Hebron, such are surely
| enough to satisfy, to saturate rather, the
reasonable sojourner. For me, during
| those never to be forgotten days of resi-
| dence in Palestine, it was the city and the
| country itself, its daily life and the scenes
| in town and village, its air and trees and
creatures end landscapes, which taught
me most and most occupied and en-
| thralled me.
Meantime all this disc ursive and ire
| pressible retrospect springs from the ques-
| ton asked whether | recollected any
| special incident of travel in the Holy Land.
|. do. indeed. remember a curious night
| passed there, full of solemn and far-reach-
| ing thoughts, mingled with the most in
congruous scenes and pursuits. 1t was a
| night spent on the plain of Jericho shoot
| ing wild boar in the company of the Arabs
| of Er-Riha-namely, the village of the
strong odor'-which place was, by the
way very justly named. My sister and
| had ridden over the arid hills of Jerusalem
TO the Ghor. as that deep depression is
| called, wherein lies the Dead Sea. We
| took an escort of Turkish soldiers, for the
| district was dangerous, and especially
| about that particular locality on our
| way where the man fell among
| thieves" From the brow of the west
| 'ern range, where they locate the Mount
| of Temptation" you look into the deep,
| hot hollow of the Sea of Lot" tBahr-Lut),
| and all over the lower portion of the Jor-
| dams course. The irnpetuous river. hast
| ing to die, PUSHES through the thlckets OF
| thorn and reed beds into the great, still
| caldrou of the trimming lake and makes a
| long line of Whiteish water where it enters
| the thick and foul basin. Then it per-
| isnes, like everything else there. There IS
| no exit TOR the lost stream, which is
| sucked up by the hot sun as fast as it
| enters, leaving in the scorched and yellow
| hollow only that evil, sticky, poisonous
! bat beautifully blue and placid sheet of
| stagnant slime. The Dead sea borders
| nourish nothing OF either animal or vege-
table life, but are fringed with gaunt, dry
| white trunks and branches of trees, car
| ried down by the Jordan, scared and sailed
| by the asphalt of the Lake of Death"
| If you battle in it. as | did, you cannot
| sink, albeit YOU may very likely float feet
| upward and head under the sicklv wave,
| unless you are practiced swimmer. The
| water-if such hell broth may claim that
| wholesome appellatiOn-tastes like petro-
| ieum, lamp oil and colocynth blended to-
| gether. When you emerge il is 10 find