At eleven o’clock the German priest, Father Paul, visited me, in order to explain the domestic arrangements to me.  Dinner is eaten at twelve o’clock, and supper at seven.  At breakfast we get coffee without sugar or milk; for dinner, mutton-broth, a piece of roast kid, pastry prepared with oil or a dish of cucumbers, and, as a concluding course, roast or spiced mutton.  Twice in the week, namely on Fridays and Saturdays, we have fast-day fare; but if the feast of a particular saint falls during the week, a thing that frequently occurs, we hold three fast-days, the one of the saint’s day being kept as a time of abstinence.  The fare on fast-days consists of a dish of lentils, an omelette, and two dishes of salt fish, one hot and the other cold.  Bread and wine, as also these provisions, are doled out in sufficient quantities.  But every thing is very indifferently cooked, and it takes a long time for a stranger to accustom himself to the ever-recurring dishes of mutton.  In Syria oxen and calves are not killed during the summer season; so that from the 19th of May until my journey to Egypt in the beginning of September, I could get neither beef-soup nor beef.

In this convent no charge is made either for board or lodging, and every visitor may stay there for a whole month.  At most it is customary to give a voluntary subscription towards the masses; but no one asks if a traveller has given much, little, or nothing at all, or whether he is a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, or a votary of any other religion.  In this respect the Franciscan order is much to be commended.  The priests are mostly Spaniards and Italians; very few of them belong to other nations.

Father Paul was kind enough to offer his services as my guide, and to-day I visited several of the holy places in company with him.

We began with the Via Dolorosa, the road which our Lord is said to have trodden when for the last time he wandered as God-man on earth, bowed down by the weight of the cross, on his way to Golgotha.  The spots where Christ sank exhausted are marked by fragments of the pillars which St. Helena caused to be attached to the houses on either side of the way.  Further on we reach the “Zwerchgasse,” the place whither the Virgin Mary is said to have come in haste to see her beloved Son for the last time.

Next we visited Pilate’s house, which is partly a ruin, the remaining portion serving as a barrack for Turkish soldiers.  I was shewn the spot where the “holy stairs” stood, up which our Lord is said to have walked.  On my return, I saw these stairs in the church of S. Giovanni di Laterani.  They also pretend to show the place where the Saviour was brought out before the multitude by Pilate.  A little distance off, in the midst of a dark vault, they shew the traveller the stone to which Jesus was bound when “they scourged Him.”