expense and trouble of undertaking the journey at a later age.  The superior veneration so often excited by objects that are distant and unknown shows not perhaps the wrongheadedness of a man, but rather the transcendent power of his imagination.  However this may be, and whether it is by mere obstinacy that they poke their way through intervening distance, or whether they come by the winged strength of fancy, quite certainly the pilgrims who flock to Palestine from the most remote homes are the people most eager in the enterprise, and in number too they bear a very high proportion to the whole mass.

The great bulk of the pilgrims make their way by sea to the port of Jaffa.  A number of families will charter a vessel amongst them, all bringing their own provisions, which are of the simplest and cheapest kind.  On board every vessel thus freighted there is, I believe, a priest, who helps the people in their religious exercises, and tries (and fails) to maintain something like order and harmony.  The vessels employed in this service are usually Greek brigs or brigantines and schooners, and the number of passengers stowed in them is almost always horribly excessive.  The voyages are sadly protracted, not only by the land-seeking, storm-flying habits of the Greek seamen, but also by their endless schemes and speculations, which are for ever tempting them to touch at the nearest port.  The voyage too must be made in winter, in order that Jerusalem may be reached some weeks before the Greek Easter, and thus by the time they attain to the holy shrines the pilgrims have really and truly undergone a very respectable quantity of suffering.  I once saw one of these pious cargoes put ashore on the coast of Cyprus, where they had touched for the purpose of visiting (not Paphos, but) some Christian sanctuary.  I never saw (no, never even in the most horridly stuffy ballroom) such a discomfortable collection of human beings.  Long huddled together in a pitching and rolling prison, fed on beans, exposed to some real danger and to terrors without end, they had been tumbled about for many wintry weeks in the chopping seas of the Mediterranean.  As soon as they landed they stood upon the beach and chanted a hymn of thanks; the chant was morne and doleful, but really the poor people were looking so miserable, that one could not fairly expect from them any lively outpouring of gratitude.

When the pilgrims have landed at Jaffa they hire camels, horses, mules, or donkeys, and make their way as well as they can to the Holy City.  The space fronting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre soon becomes a kind of bazaar, or rather, perhaps, reminds you of an English fair.  On this spot the pilgrims display their merchandise, and there too the trading residents of the place offer their goods for sale.  I have never, I think, seen elsewhere in Asia so much commercial animation as upon this square of ground by the church door; the “money-changers” seemed to be almost as brisk and lively as if they had been within the temple.