The Saint Paul globe., 1899-04-27
SAND AND STONES.
THERE IS LITTLE ELSE TO BE
SEEN ON THE ROAD TO
JERUSALEM,
NO SIGN OF LIFE FOR MILES.
Journey That Is In Many ways n
Disappoin menf-Scenery Is Conn
monpIace DesOlate Plains and
Mountains.

Mountains.
land flowing with milk and honey,
that ought to be pleasant to the eye,
even though a triAe sticky. OF course,
between Haifa and Jaffa. where the road
Follows the coast line. you naturally ex-
pect sand; and where there are so many
crusading ruins on the way you are not
surprised to find the barren monotony OF
the sand diversified by heaps Of stones
For OF that noble emouonalism which
Peter the Hermit excited, heaps of brok-
en- stones lying in the sand are all that
remain as memorials OF the pitifu trag-
edy Of their chivalrous enterprises The
Saracen planted hts flag over their i'm
pregnable strongholds and contemptuous-
iy pulled them stone from stone. The
barren sand reasserted its dominion and
swept over everything, and though It
is not SO many hundreds of years ago,
heap of stones that might mark a name
less grave Is all that remains of the very
ruins of many building that was meant
to be eternal
Go along the dreary coast; there. where
the crusaders fixed their strongholds, you
40 not look for the beauty of fertile
land. But when you leave the white pile
mound Of the Jaffa houses behind and
strike inland toward Jerusalem you 90
begin to look out with thrilled expectation
Ior n2p the milk and the honey, the kline
placldiy grazing IN the smooth pastures,
the bees hitting among the flowers and
all the other signs Of the abundant rich
ness Of the Land Of Promise. You look
from the windows of the narrow-gauge,
craving, rafting Jerusalem railway
. train, and you see land flowing with
sand and rocks.
Near to Jaffa you see here and there a
gray-green patch. " hich means olive trees
or 6 brighter green patch. which means
an an orange grove. But these you find are
signs not of the natural richness Of the
country, but OF the supernatural piety
and industry Of the German and other
Christian colonists And the olive groves
trast with the surrounding wilderness
Compared with ones recollection of an
English ial{ saa OF. orchard they are desolation It
looking, and through the foliage the
stony ground shows its dismal gray. The
railway goes rafting on till the outskirts
Germans are left behind and then there
Is nothing but the blazing blue sky over
mead and the gray wilderness all around,
till brown. bare mountains shut in the
Not a sign of life for miles, not house
nor ploW nor patch Of cultivated
ground; nothing but, sand and stones and
lime Gust. Here and there comes a little
agricultural patch, which better even
than the desert proclaims the poverty and
nakedness Of the land. for the Syrian
rags and their wretchedness how poor
is the reward of their patient toll Then
the desolate. plain is left behind, and the
railway begins TO climb among the still
more desoiate mountains of Judea
The orthodox endeavors to comfort his
belief by attributing all this appalling
oarrenness to the Turk
These Valleys" he says "once stood
80 thick with corn that they laughed and
sang: sang The hills that are now great bare
rocks were once once densely wooded: But the
land. laid impossible burdens on Industry,
put impossible taxes on olive trees and
see see the result: The land went out Of
the olive trees were cut down for fire
wood, with the natural and inevitable re-
suit iia that ,,t the rainfall ,dwindled and
that the fruitful soil became sterile, or
was buried under crumbling rocks It has
been going on thus for centuries. It IS
the paralyZing hand of the Moslem."
That may be wholly or partly true, but
It requires very strong faith to believe
1t. It Is quite impossible unless you want
very badly to believe otherwise, to reject
the. uncompromising story of those bare
rocks. or to think that anything ever
grew here from the beginning of geo
logica. time Nor has the landscape any
masses or Infinite distances. Except for
the beauty Of the clear light and the blue
sky, there is nothing but a dreary, de-
pressing monotony Of uginess.
AT last, as the train goes picking its
way among powders, climbing all the
time. you turn corner and come by the
side OF another narrow. stony valley,
which only differs from g hundred Others
IN the respect that dotted about 1t are
little detached houses of European fash
lon standing amid patches of cultivation
You have come to another German colo
ny. the one on the outskirts Of Jerusalem
There is a road which has been made by
the simple plan OF clearing a narrow
track Of some Of the loose stones and
IN 1T III
There are even felds-little fields which
are marked by high walls of piled stones,
removed from the surface. But the Very
large stones. granite rocks too heavy for
ings like Csledonian rubbing stones And
the small stones remain. too, for the
simple reason that they and the powdered
dust among which they lie are the fruit
ful soil-all that there is OF 1t.
Then another sweep around a gray hill
side, and brown mass on the top OF a
tower, comes into view. and you feel your
blood throbbiug. you do not quite know
why That Is your first view of Jerusa-
lem The other bare hill. with the white
building on the top. Is the Mount Of
Olives.
You cannot help being disappointed The
distant view reveals no shining points of
gold, no clothing verdure, no graceful,
luxuriant palms. The impression of peace
and rest, of balm for troubled feelings,
Of holy calm of which you have in some
the first glimpse of the holy city, are
strangely absent. At distance Jerusa--
lem looks simply commonplace. 1t Will
be better perhaps at closer view
The train rumbes on into a dirty, mean
little station, where a fat Turkish sta
ton master In uniform and q crowd OF
shouting, wrangling Arab porters IN rags
and dirt occupy the platform. You de-
scend and climb into a rickety, broken
carriage. whose pitiful decrepitude you
feel almost ashamed to impose upon. ana
look around for the Jerusalem of yoIr
dreams. You find yourself in desolauon
a hill opposite to that upon which the
railway ends, and the road from the sta
ton winds down a steep road into the
valley between and then drags up the
have is dust There Is nothing to be seen
or felt or perceived but dust. Clouds Of
dust arise from beneath the rckety. rum
bling carriage. The thin, stunted trees,
roadside are white with dust. The rag
ged. frowsy beggars who line the road
sit In dust and are covered with dust.
And through the dust you see dimly ON
top, high battlemented wall terminat-
ing at the point of the mountain a heavy
sonlber stone fortress-the Tower OF Da-
vid At the top of the hill there Is a
q right-angled bend in 1t like gas pipe
joint.
This is the Jaffa gate. But fortunately.
the rich men no longer need pass tnHnugn
the section OF the wall which stretched
from the gate house TO the tower, has
been removed and q decent roadway
made In here you drive and ind your
self In a fairly open little street III wlicn
on. And In the street are donkeys. boys.
priests mostly Greek and Armenian.
looking rogues,n,L.urNls,n rog5,o,.t ,,, soldiers