began to stretch our necks minutes before we got to the top--but

disappointment always followed:--more stupid hills beyond--more unsightly

landscape--no Holy City.

At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite of wall and

crumbling arches began to line the way--we toiled up one more hill, and

every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!

Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together

and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the sun.

So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four

thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of

thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.

We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sentences, across the

wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those prominent

features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men from their

school days till their death. We could recognize the Tower of Hippicus,

the Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of Olives, the Valley of

Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Garden of Gethsemane--and

dating

from these landmarks could tell very nearly the localities of many others

we were not able to distinguish.

I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even

our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose

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The Innocents Abroad