JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 321 pleasing tone, "Before you reach Jerusalem you will repent of this!" He galloped on before me, and I had very little doubt he hurried on to put his threat into execution. I prepared my pistols, and pursued my journey with very uncomfortable feelings. Till we entered the Valley of Elah, where Saul defeated the Philistines, I met with nothing to create alarm; but here, from the side of the mountain, a party of men, who appeared waiting for us, made signals to us to stop. I took my pistols from the holsters and prepared for action : they made signs to me to throw down my arms, while they did so with their own, and gave me to understand they were coming in friendship, and meant no violence; the guide assured me of their intentions, so I dropped my pistols into the holsters and awaited the result. In a moment we were surrounded by a score of Abou Goosh's men ; I was well pleased to find they were his people, and not those of his ferocious brother. They behaved civilly; I gave them two dollars, and took three of them with me as a guard to Jerusalem, for which service I was to pay sixty 322 JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. piastres. They struck off the usual path, to avoid the brother of their chief, who, they said, always kept his word; and, after twelve hours' march from Ramah, of no ordinary fatigue, I reached the long desired city of Jerusalem, and was hospitably received in the Latin Convent. LETTER XXXIX. TO EDGAR GARSTON, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR, Alexandria, Oct. 26, 1827. THE traveller who approaches Jerusalem from Jaffa is amply repaid for the toil and peril of the route, by one of the most splendid prospects his eye has ever dwelt upon. He has passed through a scene of sterility, hardly to be equalled, from Ramah to Jerusalem, he has heard of nothing but the desolation of the Holy City, he has read of little in its modern history but of its miserable aspect, and all at once a noble city rises on his view, with stately walls and lofty towers, and studded with glittering domes of mosques and monasteries. It is indeed a glorious sight, and the very Arab who accompanied me greeted the Holy City (for such the Arabs call it) with all the fervour of admiration ; "Quies el cods wallah, quies kitir!" he exclaimed, "How beautiful, oh God, is the Holy City! how very beautiful!" Every pilgrim, let his enthusiasm be ever so different from that of those who profess to visit Jerusalem from the suggestions of piety, or perhaps of superstition, must own there is an atmosphere of melancholy magnificence around the structure of Jerusalem, and a death-like stillness in the streets, which he never before observed in the abodes of the living, and which give an air of sanctity to the site of the Temple, and a soul, as it were, to the religion of the place which enshrines the Sepulchre of Christ. Few travellers, except such as visit Palestine to rail against monastic institutions, who see nothing but the horrors of papacy in the sanctuaries of Jerusalem, and who journey from Jordan to Siloa with a sort of religious monomania which paints nothing on their retina but the informous images of monks, and causes nothing to vibrate on their tympanum but the appalling sounds of the mass-bell; few travellers I say, except such as these, visit the spot which is connected with the history of their religion, LINES WRITTEN IN JERUSALEM. 325 without having their feelings powerfully excited; mine were so, and I gave them words in the form which my mind first presented, and unworthy of the subject as they are I send them to you. LINES WRITTEN IN JERUSALEM. DAUGHTER of Zion! doomed from age to age To prove the truth of the unerring page; "Mournful, oh Zion! are thy ways" indeed, Where is the regal splendour of thy brow? |