The little convent and church are both situated near the town, and are built on the spot where the Saviour was born.  The whole is surrounded by a strong fortress-wall, a very low, narrow gate forming the entrance.  In front of this fortress extends a handsome well-paved area.  So soon as we have passed through the little gate, we find ourselves in the courtyard, or rather in the nave of the church, which is unfortunately more than half destroyed, but must once have been eminent both for its size and beauty.  Some traces of mosaic can still be detected on the walls.  Two rows of high handsome pillars, forty-eight in number, intersect the interior; and the beam-work, said to be of cedar-wood from Lebanon, looks almost new.  Beneath the high altar of this great church is the grotto in which Christ was born.  Two staircases lead downwards to it.  One of the staircases belongs to the Armenians, the other to the Greeks; the Catholics have none at all.  Both the walls and the floor are covered with marble slabs.  A marble tablet, with the inscription,

“Hic de VIRGINE Maria Jesus CHRISTUS NATUS EST,”

marks the spot whence the true Light shone abroad over the world.  A figure of a beaming sun, which receives its light from numerous lamps kept continually burning, is placed in the back-ground of this tablet.

The spot where our Saviour was shewn to the worshipping Magi is but few paces distant.  An altar is erected opposite, on the place where the manger stood in which the shepherds found our Lord.  The manger itself is deposited in the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome.  This altar belongs to the Roman Catholics.  A little door, quite in the background of the grotto, leads to a subterranean passage communicating with the convent and the Catholic chapel.  In this passage another altar has been erected to the memory of the innocents slaughtered and buried here.  Proceeding along the passage we come upon the grave of St. Paula and her daughter Eustachia on one side, and that of St. Hieronymus on the other.  The body of the latter is, however, deposited at Rome.

Like the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, this great church at Bethlehem belongs at once to the Catholics, the Armenians, and the Greeks.  Each of these sects has built for itself a little convent adjoining the church.

After spending at least a couple of hours here, we rode two miles farther, towards Mount Hebron.  At the foot of this mountain we turned off to the left towards the three cisterns of Solomon.  These reservoirs are very wide and deep, hewn out of the rock, and still partially covered with a kind of cement resembling marble in its consistency and polish.  We descended into the third of these cisterns; it was about five hundred paces long, four hundred broad, and a hundred deep.

Not one of these cisterns now contains water; the aqueducts which once communicated with them have entirely vanished.  A single rivulet, across which one may easily step, flows beside these giant reservoirs.  The region around is barren in the extreme.