The Mount of Olives is a steep and rugged hill, dominating over the city and the surrounding heights.  It is still covered with olive orchards, and planted with patches of grain, which do not thrive well on the stony soil.  On the summit is a mosque, with a minaret attached, which affords a grand panoramic view.  As we reached it, the Chief of the College of Dervishes, in the court of the Mosque of Omar, came out with a number of attendants.  He saluted us courteously, which would not have been the case had he been the Superior of the Latin Convent, and we Greek Monks.  There were some Turkish ladies in the interior of the mosque, so that we could not gain admittance, and therefore did not see the rock containing the foot-prints of Christ, who, according to Moslem tradition, ascended to heaven from this spot.  The Mohammedans, it may not be generally known, accept the history of Christ, except his crucifixion, believing that he passed to heaven without death, another person being crucified in his stead.  They call him the Roh-Allah, or Spirit of God, and consider him, after Mahomet, as the holiest of the Prophets.

We ascended to the gallery of the minaret.  The city lay opposite, so fairly spread out to our view that almost every house might be separately distinguished.  It is a mass of gray buildings, with dome-roofs, and but for the mosques of Omar and El Aksa, with the courts and galleries around them, would be exceedingly tame in appearance.  The only other prominent points are the towers of the Holy Sepulchre, the citadel, enclosing Herod’s Tower, and the mosque on mount Zion.  The Turkish wall, with its sharp angles, its square bastions, and the long, embrasured lines of its parapet, is the most striking feature of the view.  Stony hills stretch away from the city on all sides, at present cheered with tracts of springing wheat, but later in the season, brown and desolate.  In the south, the convent of St. Elias is visible, and part of the little town of Bethlehem.  I passed to the eastern side of the gallery, and looking thence, deep down among the sterile mountains, beheld a long sheet of blue water, its southern extremity vanishing in a hot, sulphury haze.  The mountains of Ammon and Moab, which formed the background of my first view of Jerusalem, leaned like a vast wall against the sky, beyond the mysterious sea and the broad valley of the Jordan.  The great depression of this valley below the level of the Mediterranean gives it a most remarkable character.  It appears even deeper than is actually the case, and resembles an enormous chasm or moat, separating two different regions of the earth.  The khamseen was blowing from the south, from out the deserts of Edom, and threw its veil of fiery vapor over the landscape.  The muezzin pointed out to me the location of Jericho, of Kerak in Moab, and Es-Salt in the country of Ammon.  Ere long the shadow of the minaret denoted noon, and, placing his hands on both sides of his mouth, he cried out, first on the South side, towards Mecca, and then to the West, and North, and East:  “God is great:  there is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet!  Let us prostrate ourselves before Him:  and to Him alone be the glory!”