After waiting a while, I imagine to enjoy our confusion, one of the Arabs in front took up his parable and said, "Oh! oh! ye Egyptians!" (we wore the Egyptian dress)" what are you doing here, in our country? You are Ibrahim Pasha's men; are you? Say—speak; what reason have ye for being here? for we are Arabs, and the sons of Arabs; and this is our country, and our land?"
"Sir," said the interpreter with profound respect—for he rode first, and four or five guns were pointeddirectly at his breast—"Sir, we are no Egyptians; thy servants are men of peace; we are peaceable Franks, pilgrims from the holy city, and we are only going to bathe in the waters of the Jordan, as all pilgrims do who travel to the Holy Land." "Franks!" quoth the Arab; "I know the Franks; pretty Franks are ye! Franks are the fathers of hats, and do not wear guns or swords, or red caps upon their heads, as you do. We shall soon see whether ye are Franks or not. Ye are Egyptians, and servants of Ibrahim Pasha the Egyptian: but now ye shall find that ye are our servants!"
"Oh Sir," exclaimed I in the best Arabic I could muster, "thy servants are men of peace, travellers, antiquaries all of us. Oh Sir, we are Englishmen, which is a sort of Frank—very harmless and excellent people, desiring no evil. We beg you will be good enough to let us pass." "Franks!" retorted the Arab sheick, "pretty Franks! Franks do not speak Arabic, nor wear the Nizam dress! Ye are men of Ibrahim Pasha's; Egyptians, arrant Cairoites (Misseri) are ye all, every one of ye;" and he and all his followers laughed at us scornfully, for we certainly did look very like Egyptians. "We are Franks, I tell you!" again exclaimed Fathallah: "Ibrahim Pasha, indeed! who is he, I should like to know? we are Franks; and Franks like to see everything. We are going to see the monastery of St. Sabba; we are notEgyptians; what care we for Egyptians? we are English, Franks, every one of us, and we only desire to see the monastery of St. Sabba; that is what we are, O Arab, son of an Arab (Arab beni Arab). We are no less than this, and no more; we are Franks, as you are Arabs."
Upon this there ensued a consultation between this son of an Arab and the other sons of Arabs, and in process of time the worthy gentlemen, knowing that it was impossible for us to escape, agreed to take us to the monastery of St. Sabba, which was not far off, and there to hear what we had to say in our defence.
The sheick waved his arm aloft as a signal to his men to raise the muzzle of their guns, and we were allowed to proceed; some of the Arabs walking unconcernedly before us, and the others skipping like goats from rock to rock above us, and on the other side of the valley. They were ten times as numerous as we were, and we should have had no chance with them even on fair ground; but here we were completely at their mercy. We were escorted in this manner the rest of the way, and in half an hour's time we found ourselves standing before the great square tower of the monastery of St. Sabba. The battlements were lined with Arabs, who had taken possession of this strong place, and after a short parley and a clanging of arms within, a small iron door wasopened in the wall: we dismounted and passed in; our horses, one by one, were pushed through after us. So there we were in the monastery of St Sabba sure enough; but under different circumstances from what we expected when we set out that morning from Jerusalem.
Fathallah had, however, convinced the sheick of the Arabs that we really were Franks, and not followers of Ibrahim Pasha, and before long we not only were relieved from all fear, but became great friends with the noble and illustrious Abou Somebody, who had taken possession of St. Sabba and the defiles leading to it.
This monastery, which is a very ancient foundation, is built upon the edge of the precipice at the bottom of which flows the brook Kedron, which in the rainy season becomes a torrent. The buildings, which are of immense strength, are supported by buttresses so massive that the upper part of each is large enough to contain a small arched chamber; the whole of the rooms in the monastery are vaulted, and are gloomy and imposing in the extreme. The pyramidical-shaped mass of buildings extends half-way down the rocks, and is crowned above by a high and stately square tower, which commands the small iron gate of the principal entrance. Within there are several small irregular courts connected by steep flights of steps and dark arched passages, some of which are carried through the solid rock.
It was in one of the caves in these rocks that the renowned St. Sabba passed his time in the society of a pet lion. He was a famous anchorite, and was made chief of all the monks of Palestine by Sallustius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, about the year 490. He was twice ambassador to Constantinople to propitiate the Emperors Anastasius the Silent and Justinian; moreover he made a vow never to eat apples as long as he lived. He was born at Mutalasca, near Cæsarea of Cappadocia, in 439, and died in 532, in the ninety-fifth year of his age: he is still held in high veneration by both the Greek and Latin churches. He was the founder of the Laura, which was formerly situated among the clefts and crevices of these rocks, the present monastery having been enclosed and fortified at I do not know what period, but long after the decease of the saint.
The word laura, which is often met with in the histories of the first five centuries after Christ, signifies, when applied to monastic institutions, a number of separate cells, each inhabited by a single hermit or anchorite, in contradistinction to a convent or monastery, which was called a cœnobium, where the monks lived together in one building under the rule of a superior. This species of monasticism seems always to have been a peculiar characteristic of the Greek Church, and in the present day these ascetic observances are upheld only by the Greek, Coptic, andAbyssinian Christians, among whom hermits and quietists, such as waste the body for the improvement of the soul, are still to be met with in the clefts of the rocks and in the desert places of Asia and Africa. They are a sort of dissenters as regards their own Church, for, by the mortifications to which they subject themselves, they rebuke the regular priesthood, who do not go so far, although these latter fast in the year above one hundred days, and always rise to midnight prayer. In the dissent, if such it be, of these monks of the desert there is a dignity and self-denying firmness much to be respected. They follow the tenets of their faith and the ordinances of their religion in a manner which is almost sublime. They are in this respect the very opposite to European dissenters, who are as undignified as they are generally snug and cosy in their mode of life. Here, among the followers of St. Anthony, there are no mock heroics, no turning up of the whites of the eyes and drawing down of the corners of the mouth: they form their rule of life from the ascetic writings of the early fathers of the Church: their self-denial is extreme, their devotion heroic; but yet to our eyes it appears puerile and irrational that men should give up their whole lives to a routine of observances which, although they are hard and stern, are yet so trivial that they appear almost ridiculous.
In one of the courts of the monastery there is apalm-tree, said to be endowed with miraculous properties, which was planted by St. Sabba, and is to be numbered among the few now existing in the Holy Land, for at present they are very rarely to be met with, except in the vale of Jericho and the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, in which localities, in consequence of their being so much beneath the level of the rest of the country, the temperature is many degrees higher than it is elsewhere.
The church is rather large and is very solidly built. There are many ancient frescos painted on the walls, and various early Greek pictures are hung round about: many of these are representations of the most famous saints, and on the feast of each his picture is exposed upon a kind of desk before the iconostasis or wooden partition which divides the church from the sanctuary and the altar, and there it receives the kisses and oblations of all the worshippers who enter the sacred edifice on that day.
Theικονοsτασιςis dimly represented in our older churches by the rood-loft and screen which divides the chancel from the nave: it is retained also in Lombardy and in the sees under the Ambrosian rule; but these screens and rood-lofts, which destroy the beauty of a cathedral or any large church, are unknown in the Roman churches. They date their origin from the very earliest ages, when the "discipline of the secret" was observed, and when the ceremonies of thecommunion were held to be of such a sacred and mysterious nature that it was not permitted to the communicants to reveal what then took place—an incomprehensible custom which led to the propagation of many false ideas and strange rumours as to the Christian observances in the third and fourth centuries, and was one of the causes which led to several of the persecutions of the Church, as it was believed by the heathens that the Christians sacrificed children and committed other abominations for which they deserved extermination; and so prone are the vulgar to give credence to such injurious reports, that the Christians in later ages accused the Jews of the very same practices for which they themselves had in former times been held up to execration.
In one part of the church I observed a rickety ladder leaning against the wall, and leading up to a small door about ten feet from the ground. Scrambling up this ladder, I found myself in the library of which I had heard so much. It was a small square room, or rather a large closet, in the upper part of one of the enormous buttresses which supported the walls of the monastery. Here I found about a thousand books, almost all manuscripts, but the whole of them were works of divinity. One volume in the Bulgarian or Servian language was written in uncial letters; the rest were in Greek, and were for the most part of the twelfth century. There were a great many enormousfolios of the works of the fathers, and one MS. of the Octoteuch, or first eight hooks of the Old Testament. It is remarkable how very rarely MSS. of any part of the Old Testament are found in the libraries of Greek monasteries; this was the only MS. of the Octoteuch that I ever met with either before or afterwards in any part of the Levant. There were about a hundred other MSS. on a shelf in the apsis of the church: I was not allowed to examine them, but was assured that they were liturgies and church-books which were used on the various high days during the year.
I was afterwards taken by some of the monks into the vaulted chambers of the great square tower or keep, which stood near the iron door by which we had been admitted. Here there were about a hundred MSS., but all imperfect; I found the 'Iliad' of Homer among them, but it was on paper. Some of these MSS. were beautifully written; they were, however, so imperfect, that in the short time I was there, and pestered as I was by a crowd of gaping Arabs, I was unable to discover what they were.
I was allowed to purchase three MSS., with which the next day I and my companion departed on our way to the Dead Sea, our friend the sheick having, from the moment that he was convinced we were nothing better or worse than Englishmen and sight-seers, treated us with all manner of civility.
On arriving at the Dead Sea I forthwith proceededto bathe in it, in order to prove the celebrated buoyancy of the water, and was nearly drowned in the experiment, for, not being able to swim, my head got much deeper below the water than I intended. Two ignorant pilgrims, who had joined our party for protection, baptized each other in this filthy water, and sang psalms so loudly and discordantly that we asked them what in the name of wonder they were about, when we discovered that they thought this was the Jordan, and were sorely grieved at their disappointment. We found several shells upon the shore and a small dead fish, but perhaps they had been washed down by the waters of the Jordan or the Kedron: I do not know how this may be.
We wandered about for two or three days in this hot, volcanic, and sunken region, and thence proceeded to Jericho. The mountain of Quarantina, the scene of the forty days' temptation of our Saviour, is pierced all over with the caves excavated by the ancient anchorites, and which look like pigeons' nests. Some of them are in the most extraordinary situations, high up on the face of tremendous precipices. However, I will not attempt to detail the singularities of this wild district; we visited the chief objects of interest, and a big book that I brought from St. Sabba is endeared to my recollections by my having constantly made use of it as a pillow in my tent during our wanderings. It was somewhat hard, undoubtedly;but after a long day's ride it served its purpose very well, and I slept as soundly as if it had been read to me.
At two subsequent periods I visited this region, and purchased seven other MSS. from St Sabba; among them was the Octoteuch of the tenth, if not the ninth, century, which I esteem one of the most rare and precious volumes of my library.
We made a somewhat singular discovery when travelling among the mountains to the east of the Dead Sea, where the ruins of Ammon, Jerash, and Adjeloun well repay the labour and fatigue encountered in visiting them. It was a remarkably hot and sultry day: we were scrambling up the mountain through a thick jungle of bushes and low trees, when I saw before me a fine plum-tree, loaded with fresh blooming plums. I cried out to my fellow-traveller, "Now, then, who will arrive first at the plum-tree?" and as he caught a glimpse of so refreshing an object, we both pressed our horses into a gallop to see which would get the first plum from the branches. We both arrived at the same moment; and, each snatching at a fine ripe plum, put it at once into our mouths; when, on biting it, instead of the cool delicious juicy fruit which we expected, our months were filled with a dry bitter dust, and we sat under the tree upon our horses sputtering, and hemming, and doing all we could to be relieved of the nauseous taste of this strange fruit.We then perceived, and to my great delight, that we had discovered the famous apple of the Dead Sea, the existence of which has been doubted and canvassed since the days of Strabo and Pliny, who first described it. Many travellers have given descriptions of other vegetable productions which bear some analogy to the one described by Pliny; but up to this time no one had met with the thing itself, either upon the spot mentioned by the ancient authors, or elsewhere. I brought several of them to England. They are a kind of gall-nut. I found others afterwards upon the plains of Troy, but there can be no doubt whatever that this is the apple of Sodom to which Strabo and Pliny referred. Some of those which I brought to England were given to the Linnæan Society, who published an engraving of them, and a description of their vegetable peculiarities, in their 'Transactions;' but as they omitted to explain the peculiar interest attached to them in consequence of their having been sought for unsuccessfully for above 1500 years, they excited little attention; though, as the evidence of the truth of what has so long been considered as a vulgar fable, they are fairly to be classed among the most curious productions which have been brought from the Holy Land.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre—Processions of the Copts—The Syrian Maronites and the Greeks—Riotous Behaviour of the Pilgrims—Their immense numbers—The Chant of the Latin Monks—Ibrahim Pasha—The Exhibition of the Sacred Fire—Excitement of the Pilgrims—The Patriarch obtains the Sacred Fire from the Holy Sepulchre—Contest for the Holy Light—Immense sum paid for the privilege of receiving it first—Fatal Effects of the Heat and Smoke—Departure of Ibrahim Pasha—Horrible Catastrophe—Dreadful Loss of Life among the Pilgrims in their endeavours to leave the Church—Battle with the Soldiers—Our Narrow Escape—Shocking Scene in the Court of the Church—Humane Conduct of Ibrahim Pasha—Superstition of the Pilgrims regarding Shrouds—Scallop Shells and Palm Branches—The Dead Muleteer—Moonlight View of the Dead Bodies—The Curse on Jerusalem—Departure from the Holy City.
Itwas on Friday, the 3rd of May, that my companions and myself went, about five o'clock in the evening, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, where we had places assigned us in the gallery of the Latin monks, as well as a good bed-room in their convent. The church was very full, and the numbers kept increasing every moment. We first saw a small procession of the Copts go round the sepulchre, and after them one of the Syrian Maronites. I then went to bed, and at midnight was awakened to see the procession of the Greeks, which was rather grand. By the rules of their Church they are not permittedto carry any images, and therefore to make up for this they bore aloft a piece of brocade, upon which was embroidered a representation of the body of our Saviour. This was placed in the tomb, and, after some short time, brought out again and carried into the chapel of the Greeks, when the ceremonies of the night ended; for there was no procession of the Armenians, as the Armenian Patriarch had made an address to his congregation, and had, it was said, explained the falsity of the miracle of the holy fire; to the excessive astonishment of his hearers, who for centuries have considered an unshakable belief in this yearly wonder as one of the leading articles of their faith. After the Greek procession I went quietly to bed again, and slept soundly till next morning.
The behaviour of the pilgrims was riotous in the extreme; the crowd was so great that many persons actually crawled over the heads of others, and some made pyramids of men by standing on each others' shoulders, as I have seen them do at Astley's. At one time, before the church was so full, they made a race-course round the sepulchre; and some, almost in a state of nudity, danced about with frantic gestures, yelling and screaming as if they were possessed.
Altogether it was a scene of disorder and profanation which it is impossible to describe. In consequence of the multitude of people and the quantities of lamps, the heat was excessive, and a steam arose whichprevented your seeing clearly across the church. But every window and cornice, and every place where a man's foot could rest, excepting the gallery—which was reserved for Ibrahim Pasha and ourselves—appeared to be crammed with people; for 17,000 pilgrims were said to be in Jerusalem, almost the whole of whom had come to the Holy City for no other reason than to see the sacred fire.
After the noise, heat, and uproar which I had witnessed from the gallery that overlooked the Holy Sepulchre, the contrast of the calmness and quiet of my room in the Franciscan convent was very pleasing. The room had a small window which opened upon the Latin choir, where, in the evening, the monks chanted the litany of the Virgin: their fine voices and the beautiful simplicity of the ancient chant made a strong impression upon my mind; the orderly solemnity of the Roman Catholic vespers showing to great advantage when compared with the screams and tumult of the fanatic Greeks.
LITANY OF THE VIRGINSung by the Friars of St. Salvador at Jerusalem.LITANY OF THE VIRGIN Sung by the Friars of St. Salvador at Jerusalem.Sancta Maria—Ora pro nobis.Sancta Virgo Virginum—Ora pro nobis.Impeatrix Reginarum—Ora pro nobis.Laus sanctarum animarum—Ora pro nobisVera salutrix earum—Ora pro nobis.
The next morning a way was made through the crowd for Ibrahim Pasha, by the soldiers with the butt-ends of their muskets, and by the Janissaries with their kourbatches and whips made of a quantity of small rope. The Pasha sat in the gallery, on a divan which the monks had made for him between the two columns nearest to the Greek chapel. They had got up a sort of procession to do him honour, the appearance of which did not add to the solemnity of the scene: three monks playing crazy fiddles led the way, then came the choristers with lighted candles, next two Nizam soldiers with muskets and fixed bayonets; a number of doctors, instructors, and officers tumbling over each other's heels, brought up the rear: he was received by the women, of whom there were thousands in the church, with a very peculiar shrill cry, which had a strange unearthly effect. It was the monosyllable la, la, la, uttered in a shrill trembling tone, which I thought much more like pain than rejoicing. The Pasha was dressed in full trousers of dark cloth, a light lilac-coloured jacket, and a red cap without a turban. When he was seated, the monks brought us some sherbet, which was excellently made; and as our seats were very near the great man, we saw everything in an easy and luxurious way; and it being announced that the Mahomedan Pasha was ready, the Christian miracle, which had been waiting for some time, was now on the point of being displayed.
The people were by this time become furious; they were worn out with standing in such a crowd all night, and as the time approached for the exhibition of the holy fire they could not contain themselves for joy. Their excitement increased as the time for the miracle in which all believed drew near. At about one o'clock the Patriarch went into the ante-chapel of the sepulchre, and soon after a magnificent procession moved out of the Greek chapel. It conducted the Patriarch threetimes round the tomb; after which he took off his outer robes of cloth of silver, and went into the sepulchre, the door of which was then closed. The agitation of the pilgrims was now extreme: they screamed aloud; and the dense mass of people shook to and fro, like a field of corn in the wind.
image of a bundle of thin wax-candles enclosed in an iron frame.
There is a round hole in one part of the chapel over the sepulchre, out of which the holy fire is given, and up to this the man who had agreed to pay the highest sum for this honour was conducted by a strong guard of soldiers. There was silence for a minute; and then a light appeared out of the tomb, and the happy pilgrim received the holy fire from the Patriarch within. It consisted of a bundle of thin wax-candles, lit, and enclosed in an iron frame to prevent their being torn asunder and put out in the crowd: for a furious battle commenced immediately; every one being so eager to obtain the holy light, that one man put out the candle of his neighbour in trying to light his own. It is said that as much as ten thousand piasters has been paid for the privilege of first receiving the holy fire, which is believed to ensure eternal salvation. The Copts got eight purses this year for the first candle they gave to a pilgrim of their own persuasion.
This was the whole of the ceremony; there was nosermon or prayers, except a little chanting during the processions, and nothing that could tend to remind you of the awful event which this feast was designed to commemorate.
Soon you saw the lights increasing in all directions, every one having lit his candle from the holy flame: the chapels, the galleries, and every corner where a candle could possibly be displayed, immediately appeared to be in a blaze. The people, in their frenzy, put the bunches of lighted tapers to their faces, hands, and breasts, to purify themselves from their sins. The Patriarch was carried out of the sepulchre in triumph, on the shoulders of the people he had deceived, amid the cries and exclamations of joy which resounded from every nook of the immense pile of buildings. As he appeared in a fainting state, I supposed that he was ill; but I found that it is the uniform custom on these occasions to feign insensibility, that the pilgrims may imagine he is overcome with the glory of the Almighty, from whose immediate presence they believe him to have returned.
In a short time the smoke of the candles obscured everything in the place, and I could see it rolling in great volumes out at the aperture at the top of the dome. The smell was terrible; and three unhappy wretches, overcome by heat and bad air, fell from the upper range of galleries, and were dashed to pieces on the heads of the people below. One poor Armenianlady, seventeen years of age, died where she sat, of heat, thirst, and fatigue.
After a while, when he had seen all that was to be seen, Ibrahim Pasha got up and went away, his numerous guards making a line for him by main force through the dense mass of people which filled the body of the church. As the crowd was so immense, we waited for a little while, and then set out all together to return to our convent. I went first and my friends followed me, the soldiers making way for us across the church. I got as far as the place where the Virgin is said to have stood during the crucifixion, when I saw a number of people lying one on another all about this part of the church, and as far as I could see towards the door. I made my way between them as well as I could, till they were so thick that there was actually a great heap of bodies on which I trod. It then suddenly struck me they were all dead! I had not perceived this at first, for I thought they were only very much fatigued with the ceremonies and had lain down to rest themselves there; but when I came to so great a heap of bodies I looked down at them, and saw that sharp, hard appearance of the face which is never to be mistaken. Many of them were quite black with suffocation, and farther on were others all bloody and covered with the brains and entrails of those who had been trodden to pieces by the crowd.
At this time there was no crowd in this part of thechurch; but a little farther on, round the corner towards the great door, the people, who were quite panic-struck, continued to press forward, and every one was doing his utmost to escape. The guards outside, frightened at the rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers with their bayonets killed numbers of fainting wretches, and the walls were spattered with blood and brains of men who had been felled, like oxen, with the butt-ends of the soldiers' muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself or to get away, and in the mêlée all who fell were immediately trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and savage did the fight become, that even the panic-struck and frightened pilgrims appear at last to have been more intent upon the destruction of each other than desirous to save themselves.
For my part, as soon as I perceived the danger I had cried out to my companions to turn back, which they had done; but I myself was carried on by the press till I came near the door, where all were fighting for their lives. Here, seeing certain destruction before me, I made every endeavour to get back. An officer of the Pasha's, who by his star was a colonel or bin bashee, equally alarmed with myself, was also trying to return: he caught hold of my cloak, or bournouse, and pulled me down on the body of an old man who was breathing out his last sigh. As the officer was pressingme to the ground we wrestled together among the dying and the dead with the energy of despair. I struggled with this man till I pulled him down, and happily got again upon my legs—(I afterwards found that he never rose again)—and scrambling over a pile of corpses, I made my way back into the body of the church, where I found my friends, and we succeeded in reaching the sacristy of the Catholics, and thence the room which had been assigned to us by the monks. The dead were lying in heaps, even upon the stone of unction; and I saw full four hundred wretched people, dead and living, heaped promiscuously one upon another, in some places above five feet high. Ibrahim Pasha had left the church only a few minutes before me, and very narrowly escaped with his life; he was so pressed upon by the crowd on all sides, and it was said attacked by several of them, that it was only by the greatest exertions of his suite, several of whom were killed, that he gained the outer court. He fainted more than once in the struggle, and I was told that some of his attendants at last had to cut a way for him with their swords through the dense ranks of the frantic pilgrims. He remained outside, giving orders for the removal of the corpses, and making his men drag out the bodies of those who appeared to be still alive from the heaps of the dead. He sent word to us to remain in the convent till all the dead bodies had been removed,and that when we could come out in safety he would again send to us.
We stayed in our room two hours before we ventured to make another attempt to escape from this scene of horror; and then walking close together, with all our servants round us, we made a bold push and got out of the door of the church. By this time most of the bodies were removed; but twenty or thirty were still lying in distorted attitudes at the foot of Mount Calvary; and fragments of clothes, turbans, shoes, and handkerchiefs, clotted with blood and dirt, were strewed all over the pavement.
In the court in the front of the church, the sight was pitiable: mothers weeping over their children—the sons bending over the dead bodies of their fathers—and one poor woman was clinging to the hand of her husband, whose body was fearfully mangled. Most of the sufferers were pilgrims and strangers. The Pasha was greatly moved by this scene of woe; and he again and again commanded his officers to give the poor people every assistance in their power, and very many by his humane efforts were rescued from death.
I was much struck by the sight of two old men with white beards, who had been seeking for each other among the dead; they met as I was passing by, and it was affecting to see them kiss and shake hands, and congratulate each other on having escaped from death.
When the bodies were removed many were discovered standing upright, quite dead; and near the church door one of the soldiers was found thus standing, with his musket shouldered, among the bodies which reached nearly as high as his head; this was in a corner near the great door on the right side as you come in. It seems that this door had been shut, so that many who stood near it were suffocated in the crowd; and when it was opened, the rush was so great that numbers were thrown down and never rose again, being trampled to death by the press behind them. The whole court before the entrance of the church was covered with bodies laid in rows, by the Pasha's orders, so that their friends might find them and carry them away. As we walked home we saw numbers of people carried out, some dead, some horribly wounded and in a dying state, for they had fought with their heavy silver inkstands and daggers.
In the evening I was not sorry to retire early to rest in the low vaulted room in the strangers' house attached to the monastery of St. Salvador. I was weary and depressed after the agitating scenes of the morning, and my lodging was not rendered more cheerful by there being a number of corpses laid out in their shrouds in the stone court beneath its window. It is thought by these superstitious people that a shroud washed in the fountain of Siloam and blessed at the tomb of our Saviour forms a complete suit ofarmour for the body of a sinner deceased in the faith, and that clad in this invulnerable panoply he may defy the devil and all his angels. For this reason every pilgrim when journeying has his shroud with him, with all its different parts and bandages complete; and to many they became useful sooner than they expected. A holy candle also forms part of a pilgrim's accoutrements. It has some sovereign virtue, but I do not exactly know what; and they were all provided with several long thin tapers, and a rosary or two, and sundry rosaries and ornaments made of pearl oyster-shells—all which are defences against the powers of darkness. These pearl oyster-shells are, I imagine, the scallop-shell of romance, for there are no scallops to be found here. My companion was very anxious to obtain some genuine scallop-shells, as they form part of his arms; but they, as well as the palm branches, carried home by all palmers on their return from the Holy Land, are as rare here as they are in England. This is the more remarkable, as the medal struck by Vespasian on the subjection of this country represents a woman in an attitude of mourning seated under a palm-tree with the legend "Judæa capta;" so there may have been palms in those days. I was going to say theremusthave been: but on second thoughts it does not follow that there should have been palms in Judæa, because the Romans put them on a medal, any more than that there should beunicorns in England because we represent them on our coins. However, all this is a digression: we must return to our dead men. There were sixteen or seventeen of them, all stiff and stark, lying in the court, nicely wrapped up in their shrouds, like parcels ready to be sent off to the other world: but at the end of the row lay one man in a brown dress; he was one of the lower class—a muleteer, perhaps, a strong, well-made man; but he was not in a shroud. He had died fighting, and there he lay with his knees drawn up, his right arm above his head, and in his hand the jacket of another man, which could not now be released from his grasp, so tightly had his strong hand been clenched in the death-struggle. This figure took a strong hold on my imagination; there was something wild and ghastly in its appearance, different from the quiet attitude of the other victims of the fight in which I also had been engaged. It put me in mind of all manner of horrible old stories of ghosts and goblins with which my memory was well stored; and I went to bed with my head so occupied by these traditions of gloom and ignorance that I could not sleep, or if I did for awhile, I woke up again and still went on thinking of the old woman of Berkeley, and the fire-king, and the stories in Scott's 'Discovery of Witchcraft,' and the 'Hierarchy of the Blessed Aungelles,' and Caxton's 'Golden Legende'—all books wherein I delighted to pore, till I could not help gettingout of bed again to have another look at the ghastly regiment in the court below.
I leant against the heavy stone mullions of the window, which was barred, but without glass, and gazed I know not how long. There they all were, still and quiet; some in the full moonlight, and some half obscured by the shadow of the buildings. In the morning I had walked with them, living men, such as I was myself, and now how changed they were! Some of them I had spoken to, as they lived in the same court with me, and I had taken an interest in their occupations: now I would not willingly have touched them, and even to look at them was terrible! What little difference there is in appearance between the same men asleep and dead! and yet what a fearful difference in fact, not to themselves only, but to those who still remained alive to look upon them! Whilst I was musing upon these things the wind suddenly arose, the doors and shutters of the half-uninhabited monastery slammed and grated upon their hinges; and as the moon, which had been obscured, again shone clearly on the court below, I saw the dead muleteer with the jacket which he held waving in the air, the grimmest figure I ever looked upon. His face was black from the violence of his death, and he seemed like an evil spirit waving on his ghastly crew; and as the wind increased, the shrouds of some of the dead men fluttered in the night air as if they responded tohis call. The clouds, passing rapidly over the moon, east such shadows on the corpses in their shrouds, that I could almost have fancied they were alive again. I returned to bed, and thanked God that I was not also laid out with them in the court below.
In the morning I awoke at a late hour and looked out into the court; the muleteer and most of the other bodies were removed, and people were going about their business as if nothing had occurred, excepting that every now and then I heard the wail of women lamenting for the dead. Three hundred was the number reported to have been carried out of the gates to their burial-places that morning; two hundred more were badly wounded, many of whom probably died, for there were no physicians or surgeons to attend them, and it was supposed that others were buried in the courts and gardens of the city by their surviving friends; so that the precise number of those who perished was not known.
When we reflect in what place and to commemorate what event the great multitude of Christian pilgrims had thus assembled from all parts of the world, the fearful visitation which came upon them appears more dreadful than if it had occurred under other circumstances. They had entered the sacred walls to celebrate the most joyful event which is recorded in the Scriptures. By the resurrection of our Saviour was proved not only his triumph over the grave, but thetruth of the religion which He taught; and the anniversary of that event has been kept in all succeeding ages as the great festival of the Church. On the morning of this hallowed day throughout the Christian world the bells rang merrily, the altars were decked with flowers, and all men gave way to feelings of exultation and joy; in an hour everything was turned to mourning, lamentation, and woe!
There was a time when Jerusalem was the most prosperous and favoured city of the world; then "all her ways were pleasantness, and all her paths were peace;" "plenteousness was in her palaces;" and "Jerusalem was the joy of the whole earth."
But since the awful crime which was committed there, the Lord has poured out the vials of his wrath upon the once chosen city; dire and fearful have been the calamities which have befallen her in terrible succession for eighteen hundred years. Fury and desolation, hand in hand, have stalked round the precincts of the guilty spot; and Jerusalem has been given up to the spoiler and the oppressor.
The day following the occurrences which have been related, I had a long interview with Ibrahim Pasha, and the conversation turned naturally on the blasphemous impositions of the Greek and Armenian patriarchs, who, for the purposes of worldly gain, had deluded their ignorant followers with the performance of a trick in relighting the candles which had been extinguished onGood Friday with fire which they affirmed to have been sent down from heaven in answer to their prayers. The Pasha was quite aware of the evident absurdity which I brought to his notice, of the performance of a Christian miracle being put off for some time, and being kept in waiting for the convenience of a Mahometan prince. It was debated what punishment was to be awarded to the Greek patriarch for the misfortunes which had been the consequence of his jugglery, and a number of the purses which he had received from the unlucky pilgrims passed into the coffers of the Pasha's treasury. I was sorry that the falsity of this imposture was not publicly exposed, as it was a good opportunity of so doing. It seems wonderful that so barefaced a trick should continue to be practised every year in these enlightened times; but it has its parallel in the blood of St. Januarius, which is still liquefied whenever anything is to be gained by the exhibition of that astonishing act of priestly impertinence. If Ibrahim Pasha had been a Christian, probably this would have been the last Easter of the lighting of the holy fire; but from the fact of his religion being opposed to that of the monks, he could not follow the example of Louis XIV., who having put a stop to some clumsy imposition which was at that time bringing scandal on the Church, a paper was found nailed upon the door of the sacred edifice the day afterwards, on which the words were read—"De part du roi, défense à DieuDe faire miracle en ce lieu."
The interference of a Mahometan in such a case as this would only have been held as another persecution of the Christians; and the miracle of the holy fire has continued to be exhibited every year with great applause, and luckily without the unfortunate results which accompanied it on this occasion.
Ibrahim Pasha, though by no means the equal of Mehemet Ali in talents or attainments, was an enlightened man for a Turk. Though bold in battle, he was kind to those who were about him; and the cruelties practised by his troops in the Greek and Syrian wars are to be ascribed more to the system of Eastern warfare than to the savage disposition of their commander.
He was born at Cavalla, in Roumelia, in the year 1789, and died at Alexandria on the 10th of November, 1848. He was the son, according to some, of Mehemet Ali, but, according to others, of the wife of the great Viceroy of Egypt by a former husband. At the age of seventeen he joined his father's army, and in 1816 he commanded the expedition against the Wahabees—a sect who maintained that nothing but the Koran was to be held in any estimation by Mahometans, to the exclusion of all notes, explanations, and commentaries, which have in many cases usurped the authority of the text. They called themselves reformers, and, likeKing Henry VIII., took possession of the golden water-spouts and other ornaments of the Kaaba, burned the books and destroyed the colleges of the Arabian theologians, and carried off everything they could lay hold of, on religious principles. An eye-witness told me that some of the followers of Abd el Wahab had found a good-sized looking-glass in a house at Sanaa, which they were carrying away with great difficulty through the desert, the porters being guarded by a multitude of half-naked warriors, who had neglected all other plunder in the supposition that they had got hold of the diamond of Jemshid, a pre-Adamite monarch famous in the annals of Arabian history. Some more of these wild people found several bags of doubloons at Mocha, which they conceived to be dollars that had been spoiled somehow, and had turned yellow, for they had never seen any before. A "smart" captain of an American vessel at Jedda, who was consulted on the occasion, kindly gave them one real white dollar for four yellow ones—an arrangement which perfectly satisfied both parties. After three years' campaign, Ibrahim Pasha retook the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; and in December, 1819, he made his triumphant entry into Cairo, when he was invested with the title of Vizir and made Pasha of the Hedjaz by the Sultan—a dignity more exalted than that of the Pasha of Egypt.
In 1824 he commanded the armies of the Sultan,which were sent to put down the rebellion of the Greeks: he sailed from Alexandria with a fleet of 163 vessels, 16,000 infantry, 700 cavalry, and four regiments of artillery. Numerous captives were made in the Morea, and the slave-markets were stocked with Greek women and children who had been captured by the soldiers of the Turkish army. The battle of Navarino, in 1827, ended in the destruction of the Mahometan fleets; and thousands of slaves, who were forced to fight against their intended deliverers, being chained to their guns, sunk with the ships which were destroyed by the cannon of the allied forces of England, France, and Russia.
In 1831 Mehemet Ali undertook to wrest Syria from the Sultan his master. Ibrahim Pasha commanded his army of about 30,000 men, under the tuition, however, of a Frenchman, Colonel Sève, who had denied the Christian faith on Christmas-day, and was afterwards known as Suleiman Pasha. The Egyptian troops soon became masters of the Holy Land; Gaza, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Acre fell before their victorious arms; and on the 22nd of December, 1832, Ibrahim Pasha, with an army of 30,000 men, defeated 60,000 Turks at Koniah, who had been sent against him by Sultan Mahmoud, under the command of Reschid Pasha.
Ibrahim had advanced as far as Kutayeh, on his way to Constantinople, when his march was stopped bythe interference of European diplomacy. The Sultan, having made another effort to recover his dominions in Syria, sent an army against Ibrahim, which was utterly routed at the battle of Negib, on the 24th of June, 1839.
This defeat was principally owing to the Seraskier (the Turkish general) refusing to follow the counsels of Jochmus Pasha, a German officer, who, in distinguished contrast to the unhappy Suleiman, retained the religion of his fathers and the esteem of honest men.
His career was again checked by European policy, which, if it had any right to interfere at all, would have benefited the cause of humanity more by doing so before Egypt was drained of nearly all its able-bodied men, and Syria given up to the horrors of a long and cruel war.
The great powers of England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia now combined to restore the wasted provinces of Syria to the Porte; a fleet menaced the shores of the Holy Land; Acre was attacked, and taken in four hours by the accidental explosion of a powder-magazine, which almost destroyed what remained from former sieges of the habitable portion of the town. Ibrahim Pasha evacuated Syria, and retired to Egypt, where he amused himself with agriculture, and planting trees, always his favourite pursuit: the trees which he had planted near Cairo have already reduced the temperature in their vicinity several degrees.
In 1846 he went to Europe for the benefit of his health, and extended his tour to England, where he was much struck with the industry that pervaded all classes, and its superiority in railways and works of utility to the other countries of Europe. "Yes," said he to me at Mivart's Hotel; "in France there is more fantasia; in England there is more roast beef." I observed that he was surprised at the wealth displayed at one or two parties in some great houses in London at which he was present. Whether he had lost his memory in any degree at that time, I do not know; but on my recalling to him the great danger he had been in at Jerusalem, of which he entertained a very lively recollection, he could not remember the name of the Bey who was killed there, although he was the only person of any rank in his suite, with the exception of Selim Bey Selicdar, his swordbearer, with whom I afterwards became acquainted in Egypt.
In consequence of the infirmities of Mehemet Ali, whose great mind had become unsettled in his old age, Ibrahim was promoted by the present Sultan to the Vice-royalty of Egypt, on the 1st of September, 1848. His constitution, which had long been undermined by hardship, excess, and want of care, gave way at length, and on the 10th of November of the same year his body was carried to the tomb which his father had prepared for his family near Cairo, little thinking at the time that he should live to survive hissons Toussoun, Ismail, and Ibrahim, who have all descended before him to their last abode.
In personal appearance Ibrahim Pasha was a short, broad-shouldered man, with a red face, small eyes, and a heavy though cunning expression of countenance. He was as brave as a lion; his habits and ideas were rough and coarse; he had but little refinement in his composition; but, although I have often seen him abused for his cruelty in European newspapers, I never heard any well-authenticated anecdote of his cruelty, and do not believe that he was by any means of a savage disposition, nor that his troops rivalled in any way the horrors committed in Algeria by the civilized and fraternising French. He was a bold, determined soldier. He had that reverence and respect for his father which is so much to be admired in the patriarchal customs of the East; and it is not every one who has lived for years in the enjoyment of absolute power uncontrolled by the admonitions of a Christian's conscience that could get out of the scrape so well, or leave a better name upon the page of history than that of Ibrahim Pasha.
After the fearful catastrophe in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the whole host of pilgrims seem to have become panic struck, and every one was anxious to escape from the city. There was a report, too, that the plague had broken out, and we with the rest made instant preparation for our departure. Inconsequence of the numbers who had perished, there was no difficulty in hiring baggage-horses; and we immediately procured as many as we wanted: tents were loaded on some; beds and packages of all sorts and sizes were tied on others, with but slight regard to balance and compactness; and on the afternoon of the 6th of May we rejoiced to find ourselves once more out of the walls of Jerusalem, and riding at our leisure along the pleasant fields fresh with the flowers of spring, a season charming in all countries, but especially delightful in the sultry climate of the Holy Land.