Show THE HOLY CITY lights in and around jerusalem the mosque of omar observations abroad dicine by bt a 1 california SMYRNA april 30 1884 A visit to jerusalem is at first d disappointing appointing is and unsatisfactory however well read up upon if ils present condition ona one may be it id is still to the mind an ideal city the sight at first absorbs attention dispelling the ideal and filling its place with the confusion jargon and moral and social debris ot of a hundred oriental cities and crowding ing or cov covering ering the sacred places w with th tho the rains or structures of later ages it is ig not till one has made himself familiar with the sites and defined tho the localities and the accumulations of centuries and s spirited P i r cited away the living populations an and d slowly reconstructed the past that the ideal city rises grand ana and beautiful fu I 1 and sacred before him but it comes slowly comes under fixed well directed sympathetic looking like tho the eight sight of a bright planet in tho the daytime or like the soft strains of sweet enchanting music music across the harsh sounds ot of a thronged thron ged street then the sight eight of jerusalem I 1 ia is rewarding and grand you seo see it and you do not see it you see what was not wh what 4 is you see the sites you reanimate the scene if you cannot do this do not come to jerusalem if you arc are there and do not do it hurry away as soon as possible it is 13 a place of mockeries mock eries and lies to you and can do you no good 1 I am not presumptuous enough to attempt any description of jerus jeru ealem either of the real oi or the ideal city too much has been well written about both and is familar or accessible to make this necessary I 1 shall merely speak of a few points which specially interested me for this eide of the higher associations and emotions us aich w stirred in in me as I 1 thought of the r wondrous ondrous scenes of the past which had been enacted in the very places where I 1 trod I 1 visited what is popularly but erroneously eroneous ly called the mosque of omar tho the real shrine of omar is now supposed to bo be part of the mosque el aksa in front of the reputed mosque of that name and nearer the city wall and the valley of at thelrue the true name of the latter ia is the dome of tho rock this rich and grand grind I 1 I 1 mosque second only to that at I 1 mecca is octagon in form and is built around and over the great circular rock sixty feet long fifty wide and rising seventeen feet high bill at the apex which is now pre pretty ty generally general lv regarded I 1 believed lie d by y the best authorities as es the basis of the altar of solomons temple tho the celebrated dome exactly over it and and I 1 passages cut through the rock and leading to A a tunnel dug through the rock below and leading out ka 0 o the foot of mt ut moriah in the valley are s so 0 ar ranged that the whole could be abundantly flushed with water showing most admirable preparation for cleansing the premises prem isea of the altar and keeping them pure tho the temple itself stood west of the altar this left a very largo large space f for or the courts of the temple between tho court occupied by the altar and the city wall on the casi but a great area arca was necessary inasmuch as the courts of the temple were Q sometimes omet inies thronged thron ged at ahn great annual feasts by the hundreds of thousands of jews who went u up from all parts of the landai landat land at attan attend the sacred rites the vaults under tho the temple area arc something in wonderful there arc are great bembers cEm chambers bers and chambers ambera ch leading into chambers and pas passages sags leading within a yard built up ul to furnish a level for the court above rock also was doubtless taken out for building into the walls and at subsequent times tile clia chambers tubers and passages were utilized for various various purposes under tho the dome of tho rock great living fountains of water we acro r 0 struck tho the source of supplies for the temple thence running through tho the canal to which I 1 have all already eady referred and terminating in ill the pool of siloam there are arc other subterranean excavations cavat ions under tinder the city which astonish one in the tile northwestern part of the city there ia is a small opening under the wall on the outside through which I 1 entered which soon opened out into a it succession of great grea t chambers which seem seeni to ramify under half the area of the city of course groping with a poor por light over the irregular 1 rocks with tha tile mystery of the place and the sound of water dripping into echoing vaults below which I 1 could nob not see was calculated to emphasize tho the r ense of distance but there ii no doubt that the city for one purpose and another is boney honeycombed combed with subterranean vaults nor ia is jerusalem singular in this respect palestine and syria ia is s laud land of caves eaves and excavations I 1 ic n no ono particular have bave I 1 been mo nion re surprised than in the signs that the inhabitants of this land from the timo time of fluxed habitations have been cave dwell ers after they gave up tents and a nomadic life they burrowed in the rocks there are many natural caves eaves and where these did not exist or were too small the soft chalking limestone rock which und underlies blics or crowns the whole vl iole country could be easily cut into dwellings and the scarcity of timber and materials or brick made this the easiest thing to do the rock could indeed bo be easily cut out hali regular blocks and there was no want of surface loose stones to be erected into houses and houses were often built in this way but they were caverns cavern still caves eaves above ground and made by human hands they were dark windowless window lees one story low the roofs hat flat and cov ered with gray lime limestone stone earth which was packed rolled and dried in the sun stin and had bad but a single opening which served as door wins win dow and chimney this looked like another rock on the ground only a little more regular a hollow rock or protuberant cave the cave was the tile type and they hugged the ground and sometimes crept halfway half way into it eo so as to look as much like a cave as possible we shall not be able to reproduce the old inhabitant of palestine till w we a receive receive of him as substantially a burrower in the rocks a cave dweller he not only had his big home in the rocks but he sought natural crypts or chiseled artificial ones in in them for resting places for his dead and he be dug deep wells through the s same am e ma material aerial an and a co constructed ns long tunnels through cliffis and hills for aqueducts jerusalem was not alone in its subterranean activity and life the pool of bethesda is not outs out side of the city but inside not far from tho northeast corner of the temple area which is about 1600 1500 feet long and 1000 wide it is now a large deep hollow or pit upwards of 60 feet deep wide and long at the top and but 30 or 40 across at the bottom it lias has sometimes surface water but aa as isa I 1 saw aw it there was nothing but mud and filth in it it seems to be a receptacle of neighborhood city waste and was anything but an attractive sight the pools of gihon gih on are simply reservoirs in the valley of hierom made by excavating 0 the earth and running a dam ac across ross below for the storage odthe of the water like a reservoir in the mining regions of california from the mount of olives one gets edathe the view lem that can be had from any 0 one ne point from the minaret of the tile mosque which stands stand smi on alio summit miti could see and trace very dia dis the great natural outline of the city 1 binm I am standing feet above the city at its high est point right below my feet is the valley of the keydron running r here nearly due so south uth above it its s steep northern bank rises rim the inas give sive and high city wall just over the wall is mount moriah the temple area ou on the left hand eastern corner of which is the broad and spacious mosque el aksa on the central and western portion the grand and imposing mosque tho the dome of the kock rock known as the mosque of f omar beyond the tem teni pie area is the depression which was once a deep ravine running nearly south called the above this to the northwest rises mount zion quite a bi high 1 h and steep eminence from which agich to any other part of the cita within the walls is a very or perceptible descent except the IY large ge area of the temple which covers about one sixth of the whole city within the walls the rest is one compact undulating mass of buildings having winding or irregular scams bet between veeh them hero here and there marking the supposed course of streets and broken here and by domes and min abets and aud towers and the imposing roofs of churches I 1 see it all under my eye over on the side hill yonder it is a stirring spectacle not altogether beautiful not wholly ead sad it is a spectacle whose deepest in teretA is hinted by two facts christ looking upon it and christ weeping over ver 0 it but as I 1 turn round and look in the other direction my emotions are less ining I 1 led there is only the bildne wild band majesty and beauty of nature I 1 look down blown into the deep valley of the jordan feet below me ami and seo see the dead sea stretching out now as a mirror of glass and nn on the other bide fido the dark mountains of moab and mount nebo and close to me on the south the green fields of judoll covered with flowers jo no other sight have bave I 1 seen of such iiii i aled bledan and contrasting interest id iliac illy life as from the top odthe of the mount ol 01 olives |