But these are deeper matters; I am only trying to suggest a sort of silhouette of the crowd like the similar silhouette of the city, a profile or outline of the heads and hats, like the profile of the towers and spires.  The tower that makes the Greek priest look like a walking catafalque is by no means alone among the horns thus fantastically exalted.  There is the peaked hood of the Armenian priest, for instance; the stately survival of that strange Monophysite heresy which perpetuated itself in pomp and pride mainly through the sublime accident of the Crusades.  That black cone also rises above the crowd with something of the immemorial majesty of a pyramid; and rightly so, for it is typical of the prehistoric poetry by which these places live that some say it is a surviving memory of Ararat and the Ark.

Again the high white headgear of the Bethlehem women, or to speak more strictly of the Bethlehem wives, has already been noted in another connection; but it is well to remark it again among the colours of the crowd, because this at least has a significance essential to all criticism of such a crowd.  Most travellers from the West regard such an Eastern city far too much as a Moslem city, like the lady whom Mr. Maurice Baring met who travelled all over Russia, and thought all the churches were mosques.  But in truth it is very hard to generalise about Jerusalem, precisely because it contains everything, and its contrasts are real contrasts.  And anybody who doubts that its Christianity is Christian, a thing fighting for our own culture and morals on the borders of Asia, need only consider the concrete fact of these women of Bethlehem and their costume.  There is no need to sneer in any unsympathetic fashion at all the domestic institutions of Islam; the sexes are never quite so stupid as some feminists represent; and I dare say a woman often has her own way in a harem as well as in a household.  But the broad difference does remain.  And if there be one thing, I think, that can safely be said about all Asia and all oriental tribes, it is this; that if a married woman wears any distinctive mark, it is always meant to prevent her from receiving the admiration or even the notice of strange men.  Often it is only made to disguise her; sometimes it is made to disfigure her.  It may be the masking of the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head as among the Jews; it may, I believe, be the blackening of the teeth and other queer expedients among the people of the Far East.  But is never meant to make her look magnificent in public; and the Bethlehem wife is made to look magnificent in public.  She not only shows all the beauty of her face; and she is often very beautiful.  She also wears a towering erection which is as unmistakably meant to give her consequence as the triple tiara of the Pope.  A woman wearing such a crown, and wearing it without a veil, does stand, and can only conceivably stand, for what we call the Western view of women, but should rather call the Christian view of women.  This is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from some vague memory of chivalry.  The woman may or may not be, as the legend says, a lineal descendant of a Crusader.  But whether or no she is his daughter, she is certainly his heiress.