When all was ready for departure I wrote the teskeri in French and delivered it to Sheik Ali Djoubran, together with the promised baksheish; he was exceedingly grateful, and I parted in a very friendly way from this ragged tribe.

In two or three hours I gained Rihah, a village said to occupy the site of ancient Jericho.  There was one building there which I observed with some emotion, for although it may not have been actually standing in the days of Jericho, it contained at this day a most interesting collection of—­modern loaves.

Some hours after sunset I reached the convent of Santa Saba, and there remained for the night.

CHAPTER XVI—­TERRA SANTA

The enthusiasm that had glowed, or seemed to glow, within me for one blessed moment when I knelt by the shrine of the Virgin at Nazareth, was not rekindled at Jerusalem.  In the stead of the solemn gloom and the deep stillness that of right belonged to the Holy City, there was the hum and the bustle of active life.  It was the “height of the season.”  The Easter ceremonies drew near.  The pilgrims were flocking in from all quarters; and although their objects were partly at least of a religious character, yet their “arrivals” brought as much stir and liveliness to the city as if they had come up to marry their daughters.

The votaries who every year crowd to the Holy Sepulchre are chiefly of the Greek and Armenian Churches.  They are not drawn into Palestine by a mere sentimental longing to stand upon the ground trodden by our Saviour, but rather they perform the pilgrimage as a plain duty strongly inculcated by their religion.  A very great proportion of those who belong to the Greek Church contrive at some time or other in the course of their lives to achieve the enterprise.  Many in their infancy and childhood are brought to the holy sites by their parents, but those who have not had this advantage will often make it the main object of their lives to save money enough for this holy undertaking.

The pilgrims begin to arrive in Palestine some weeks before the Easter festival of the Greek Church.  They come from Egypt, from all parts of Syria, from Armenia and Asia Minor, from Stamboul, from Roumelia, from the provinces of the Danube, and from all the Russias.  Most of these people bring with them some articles of merchandise, but I myself believe (notwithstanding the common taunt against pilgrims) that they do this rather as a mode of paying the expenses of their journey, than from a spirit of mercenary speculation.  They generally travel in families, for the women are of course more ardent than their husbands in undertaking these pious enterprises, and they take care to bring with them all their children, however young; for the efficacy of the rites does not depend upon the age of the votary, so that people whose careful mothers have obtained for them the benefit of the pilgrimage in early life, are saved from the