The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and are tolerably crooked—­enough so to make each street appear to close together constantly and come to an end about a hundred yards ahead of a pilgrim as long as he chooses to walk in it.  Projecting from the top of the lower story of many of the houses is a very narrow porch-roof or shed, without supports from below; and I have several times seen cats jump across the street from one shed to the other when they were out calling.  The cats could have jumped double the distance without extraordinary exertion.  I mention these things to give an idea of how narrow the streets are.  Since a cat can jump across them without the least inconvenience, it is hardly necessary to state that such streets are too narrow for carriages.  These vehicles cannot navigate the Holy City.

The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants.  One hundred of the latter sect are all that dwell now in this birthplace of Christianity.  The nice shades of nationality comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by them, are altogether too numerous to mention.  It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem.  Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.  Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—­the eternal “bucksheesh.”  To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda.  Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless.  I would not desire to live here.

One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre.  It is right in the city, near the western gate; it and the place of the Crucifixion, and, in fact, every other place intimately connected with that tremendous event, are ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof—­the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assemblage of beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards—­for Christians of different sects will not only quarrel, but fight, also, in this sacred place, if allowed to do it.  Before you is a marble slab, which covers the Stone of Unction, whereon the Saviour’s body was laid to prepare it for burial.  It was found necessary to conceal the real stone in this way in order to save it from destruction.  Pilgrims were too much given to chipping off pieces of it to carry home.  Near by is a circular railing which marks the spot where the Virgin stood when the Lord’s body was anointed.