The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-26
.Ternanleln.

The altitude of Jerusalem Is always a surprise to the visitor who comes here for the first time. HAknows, of course, that 1t Is mountain city, and that 1t was built upon Mount Zion and Mount Moriah: but he does not realize, until he makes the gradual ascent, that 1t is about twenty-six feet above the level of the Mediterranean, and nearly four thousand feet above the surface of the Dead sea. As high on the one side as the Catskill mountain house; as high on the other as the crater of Mount Vesuvius.
 Jerusalem is a city of surprises. It Is, apart from it's sacred associations, an intensely interesting spot even to travellers who are already saturated with hitherto unfamiliar and surpris- ing charms of Cairo Athens and Con- stantinople. Its size can best be ex- pressed by the statement that the jour- ney round about theputside of it's walls may be made BY an ordinarily rapid walker in thsspaSe of ah hour. It's houses are sHaalf, affegular in Shape, squalid, and mean. Its stEeets, if streets they can be called afe hot named or numbered; they ate, steep, crooked, narrow, roughly paved. never cleaned, and in many instances they are vaulted over by the buildihsB on each side of them. Never 2 patE-pf wheels traverse them. and rarely FiSN horsesorAa don- key seen within fthes wails. The halt the maimed, andsthe blind, the leprous and the wretchedly poor, form the great bulk of the population of Jerusalem and, with the single exception of the Hebrews, they are persistent and clam orous beggars. Trade and commerce seem to be confined to the bare necessi- ties of life, and to dealers in beads and crucifixes. There is but one hotel, and that not a good hotel within its walls !; and one Turkish merchant, who dis plays In his little windowless, doorless shop small assortment of silver charms, trinkets, and bric-a-brac to the passer-by, Is almost the only vender of anything like luxures in the place. His customers, of course, are the pill grims who come to see, and not to wor- ship.
 Jerusalem is unique as a city in which
 
 severe. It has no clubs, no barrooms, no beer gardens, no concert halls, no theatres, no lecture rooms, no places of amusement of any kind, no street bands, no wandering minstrels,n no veal thy or upper classes, no mayor, no al- dermen, no newspapers, no printing presses, no book stores-except one out side the walls for the sale of Bibles no cheerfulness, no life. No one sings, no one dances, no oone laughs in Jerusa- lem; even the children do not play.
 The Jews, 1t is said, form almost two- thirds of the population of the city. They occupy a section which covers the greater part of the eastward slope Of Zion, and the Jewish quarter Is the most wretched in the whole wretched town. Its inhabitants are quiet and subdued in bearing; they make no claims to their hereditary rights in the royal city of their kings; they simply and silently and patiently wait. The Wailing Wall of the Jews, so wonder fully painted by Verestchagin, is, per haps, the most realistic sight In Jerusa- lem to-day. In a small, paved, oblong, unroofed enclosure, some seventy-f1ve by twenty feet in extent and in a most inaccessible portion of the town, Is the mass of ancient masonry which is generally accepted as having been a portion of the outside of the actual wall of the Tenn pie itself. Against these rough stones, every day In the week, but especially on Friday, and at all times of the day, are seen Hebrews of all countries. and of all ages, of both sexes. rich and poor alike, weeping and bewailing the desolation which has come upon them, and upon thee ity of their former glory. Whatever may be their faith, 1t Is beau tiful and sincere; and their grief is ac- tual and without dissimulation. They kiss the walls, they beat their breasts, and tear their hair and rend their gar ments; and the real tears they shed come from their hearts and their souls, as we'll as from their eyes. They ask for no backsheesh; they pay no atten- ton to the curious and inquisl- tive heretics and Gentiles who pity while they wonder at them. They read the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the mournful words of Isaiah; they vail for the days that are gone; and they pray for the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, that they may get their own again. From "The Literary Landmarks of Jer- usalem," by Laurence Hutton, in Har- per's Magazine for March.