Show PRESIDENT GEO A SMITHS account of Ms journey tourney to pa palestine delivered in the new tabernacle sad sau lake city sunday afternoon brune june 1873 REPORTED BY DAVID W EVANS BP BRETHREN irre N and sisters I 1 am exceedingly cee thankful through the blessings of the lord and your faith and prayers that I 1 have been permitted to perform a lengthy journey and to return and associate with you again to behold your faces and to lift my voice and bear testimony to the things of the kingdom of god in this tabernacle I 1 feel exceedingly thankful to my heavenly father for his preserving mercy and to my brethren and sisters for their prayers and faith and for their kind assistance which was rendered to me enabling me to bear the tho cost of a lengthy and expensive journey bourney the principal object of j journey bourney was to visit the lands in which the events recorded in the bible transpired incidental incidentally anaba w we e visited many an countries and aud had d an opportunity tuni y of a acquiring uil wil g information and ex extending ding actual acquaintances aces into lands which h ch heretofore have been barred against visits from our el elders ders cers as the elders when they went al expressly to preach and ane were frequently prohibited from entering these countries or if it permitted to enter were not allowed to speak of the gospel we having C means to travel of course passed along as other travelers for not being on a mission for preaching we were not interrupted and this enabled us to acquire a knowledge of the laws and customs of the various coun conn tries we visited and a variety cf information that we had heretofore only got by reading and I 1 understand der stand very clearly that a p person erson may read almost any subject and yet a personal inspection will give better and perhaps more extended or di merent different ideas from those gleaned solely from read reading I 1 in n reading books you learn t the he me views thoughts and reflections of the individuals who wrote them modified more or less by a great desire in the human heart to make books readable in order that they may sell it is really true that a great share of the books in the world are written more to be read than to communicate facts it is said that when henry the fourth was on his sick bed his son knowing his father had always been very fond of history proposed to read a little history to him oh said the dying king ng 4 1 llam clam I am too 0 far gone to other bother my ray rains brains with ith romance that showed his opinion of history hig tory As soon as we reached rome we began to find the loca loea locality liti s referred to in scripture it was il it the reign of augustus caesar that obi 01 rist was born at that time judea was a tributary kingdom to rome its king being herod the decree which went forth from augustus csar that all the world should be taxed of course included jerusalem and the entire kingdom of judea which at that time was of considerable extent joseph and mary went to Bethle bethie bethlehem hein heln to be taxed with the house of david and there being no room in the inn th they took up their quarters in a stable tg le and there the savior was born some years after the ascension of jesus jebus st paul went to ro R romme borne o C in U order to t get got a hearing before caesar e r on an appeal case which ha had been adjourned from time to time before the authorities in cesarea P illi ippi in cone consequence quence of his refusal it seems from the reading of the book of acosto acts to furnish the cheesh thinking that pauls friends would pay liberally for bils bis relief misjudges his judges had kept him bound in prison but as the expected bribe was not horth forth forthcoming he was eventually sent to rome on his own appeal and while we were at rome we were shown blaces places where he was said to have been een imprisoned and one room where they said he used to hold meetings and a variety of places and incidents connected either directly or indirectly with the mission of the apostles in the first century in the tho cathedrals of almost all the countries which we visited we were shown relics that had been brought from palestine at pisa there is a burying yard probably y an aero acre and a quarter in extent nine fector feet of earth having been brought from palestine as a covering for this burial place it takes a permit from the pope to be burl buri I 1 in that sacred soil in the cathedral cath edil eoll of san sau lorenzo in genoa they show ed d us the chain with which john the baptist was bound and the casket which they said contained his head and a variety of other relics relies in the church of st mark in venice they showed us the commin coffin of st mark and while there they showed us a casket said to contain the remains of st john the baptist also the marble slab on which his head fell when he was e executed x I 1 ascertained however to my satisfaction that tilis this was a local saint carried by the venetians seven or eight hundred years ago from karsaba Mar saba in palestine where he was recognized as st john of damascus there is so much relic worship that it has been overdone but we commenced when we got to rome nome to tread the ground where the apostles labored we visited a prison in which it is said st peter was imprisoned we ve saw the spot where he is said to have escaped from his enemies and was about to flee but the savior called to him and asked him if he was afraid to die so says tradition they show the print that peters foot made when he lie heard beard the saviors voice volee that is on a spot outside of rome they built a church on that place and it contains a sta tue of st peter the toes of one of the feet have been worn onn off we were told by kis his kissing sing gIng and their place supplied with bronze they snowed us the stairs brought from jerusalem which they say led up to judgment seat we saw a great many people crawling up and down them on their knees knee aj weeping and wailing walling and kissin kissing 0 every step As we steamed towards the east we passed the isle of candia the crete of scripture and were reminded by various places that we saw of the incidents of st pauls ship wieck before leaving london we made arrangements with the firm of thomas cook son to supply us with railroad facilities hotel coupons steamboat conveyance and transportation from london to palestine for one hundred and thirty days terminating at trieste in austria via constantinople stantin ople and athens by this means much of the annoyance of traveling in countries where we did not understand the languages and manners and customs was avoided we reached egypt and landed at alexandria on february ath we were met on board our steamer by mr alexander howard a dragoman of cooke co he took charge of our effects assisted us in passing the custom house and conducted us to the hotel db deu u rope giving us choice rooms where we had a magnificent view and furnishing us all the information necessary to make our sojourn in egypt pleasant and profitable egypt in n egypt we were still on scriptural tu ral rai ground egypt after the days of constantine until those of the saracena saracens Sara cens was a christian country in the seventh century it was conquered by the saracens saracena Sara cens or mabom edans alexandria is supposed to have contained inhabitants when it was conquered by amru all the world has been horrified by the decision of omar caliph of medina that the library of alexandria said to be the tile largest collection of books and manuscripts in the world should be consigned to the flames after a siege of fourteen months amru also called amer took it and in his letter to the caliph omar he informed him of the conquest aest he had made saying that lie he had found there palaces a like number of baths places of am amusement and gardens and that one quarter alone was waa occupied by jews it is said that the books and manuscripts of that library for warming those baths for some four months there is in egypt a sect of christians called copts coats or the coptic church they are descendants of the inhabitants of egypt that were conquered by the saracens saracena Sara cens at cairo we visited one of their churches and were shown the place where they said the savior his mother and joseph resided during their stay there when they fled from the wrath of herod and the basin they washed in ani and and we saw many persons who had come there to be healed in consequence of the holiness of this place this class of christians the copts coats have maintained their identity through the reign of power turkish and arabic down to the present time there is probably a million of them perhaps more in egypt and aby abyssinia sinia sinla thele thole is alo algo the oriental greek church in egypt they showed us some holy places we went to visit or the city of on I 1 have taken a great ireat interest in family matters believing el ieving leving in the doctrine of baptism for the dead and I 1 went to because I 1 had good reason to believe that joseph who was sold into egypt married his wife there asenath daughter of poti phar priest of on is believed to be the on of that day and was the great college at which all the leading men of egypt were educated probably moses received his education there there is a needle or obelisk some sixty feet out of the ground at containing inscriptions from top to bottom how far it goes into the ground I 1 know not but the inscriptions on that needle if rightly interpreted by egyptian scholars indicate that it was probably there there when joseph went to egypt the city and all its temples have gone to decay other needles of the same kind which were there have been carried away away one of them stands in constantinople the ground is in a state of cultivation though the ruins of the city of on are to be seen scattered about and anc when we were there there was on the ground a luxuriant crop of sugar cane showing that the soil was very rich everything that grows in egypt has to be irrigated from the river nile there is little in fact no other water except that which comes from the nile I 1 say there is no other water but a little below the city of on thero there there is a very old tree a sycamore I 1 believe under which the copts coats believe that joseph mary and jesus camped while they remained in egypt during their flight from herod A great number of the branches have been carried away and portions of the tree but its boughs are still very wide spread the owner of the tree has put around it a very decent picket fence of pine lumber I 1 do not know where he got it and any man who will give him a franc he will lend him a knife and lie he may cut his name on the fence but I 1 if he will not give him a franc he must not do that and he must not carry away any of the tile tree I 1 did not care about cutting my ray name on the fence so I 1 saved my ray franc but there was a spring or well close by and the water was drawn up by a mule on a kind of rudely constructed ted wheel with a number of harthern ear thern vessels tied to the ends of its arms they told me that the spring was in ancient times brackish and unfit to drink but when mary came there she bathed in it and it became sweet and good I 1 drank some of the water and found it so tasting very much like the bi big biz spring ring at st george I 1 remarked to 0 the 1 man I 1 really wished she had made it cold while slie she was about it for far a drink of cold water would have been very refreshing just then this cost me one otio franc I 1 am not designing however to follow the incidents of my journey any further than they relate more or less jess to the history of those countries mentioned either directly or by tradition inthe in the bible incarno in carlo cario we were shown josephs well and we were told by our guides that it was made by and called after joseph who was sold into in to egypt but on investigation we found foun that when saladin caliph of egypt undertook to select a place for a citadel in his new city of cairo he be hung up meat in differ different ent parts around and lie he found that fresh meat would keep longer at that boint point than any other in the neighborhood bo and he came to the conclusion that that was the healthiest place and he be had the ground cleared for a citadel and in doing that they discovered a well filled with sand the sand was cleared out and as one of the names af the caliphs was yoosef it was called joseph josephs well so it may be that J joseph oseph who was sold into egypt m made ade it and it may not its present name however I 1 believe comes from the sultan yoosef salah ed deen caliph of el egypt agypt in the century a nian man known to fame the wat wamer water r of the well is brackish and is chiefly used for laying the dust we all felt more or less interest in the locality anciently called tile land of goshen gosh en but as nobody could tell precisely rethe land laud of goshen was it was necessarily a matter of guesswork but the streams of water must run now borne bonne somewhere where near the same as they tiley did then and we followed the course of a fresh freshwater wafer water canal which has aly been turned from the nile and which is some bome one hundred and fifty miles nilles In length to suez and the red sea this canal canni passes near kagazig Zaga zig which is probably in the vicinity of the land of goshen and when the children of israel i started for canaan they had to follow this route in order to secure themselves the necessary amount of water from that old fresh water canal which is now known ana and an d identified as having run very nearly on the same ground as the present one which has been made within a few years and which the railroad follows there is a good deal of speculation as to where the children of israel crossed the red sea but the most reasonable conclusion I 1 can arrive at so far as I 1 have been able to investigate the matter is that they followed this fresh water canal and that they camped near its terminus on sealand crossed over to the peninsula ot of Sinai after which they were miraculously supplied with water food and clothing through the deserts of arabia we passed over that portion of the suez canal between ismaila and port said the suez canal is certainly a very grand enterprise port said receives its fresh water from the nile it has got pipes over fifty miles in length to bring that water from the canal at ismaila ismalia to supply the town port pod said is considerable of a place and there is a good deal of enterprise there on the evening of february 22 21 we sailed from port said on the pesta vesta one of the tile steamers belonging to the austrian lloyds the next morning we came in sight of jafra jaffa the joppa of the scriptures jatta jaffa is a kind of promontory or headland projecting into the sea the anchorage is simply an open roadstead and landing is sometimes very difficult if we had had an unfavorable wind and been carried by that port it would have cost us considerable time and expense but when we reached there the day was pleasa pleasant fht fit and the sea smooth and we landed without difficulty at jafrate jaffa we were met by the before named mr howard who conducted us to the turkish customhouse officer who I 1 believe examined only one passport and passed us and we went directly to our tents which were pitched not far from the seaside near the burial place they were very nice wall wal tents well carpeted with all the outfit necessary ready for use and we at once commenced keeping house this joppa is the place where king solomon landed the cedars that he got from hiram king ring of tyre for the building of his temple I 1 am of the opinion that the place has undergone some physical changes since that time although ra I 1 of course could not determine to what extent in tiie tile vicinity of this city is a colony of about six hundred |