362 SKETCHES OF PALESTINE. 



F. Henniker, and almost every other modern traveller, confirm the 

 representation of Dr. Richardson. Mr. Buckingham says: 'The 

 appearance of this celebrated city, independent of the feelings and 

 recollections which the approach to it cannot fail to awaken, was 

 greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly nothing of 

 grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence, about it. It ap- 

 peared like a walled town, of the third or fourth class, having nei- 

 ther towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it in sufficient numbers 

 to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder ; but 

 showing chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornament- 

 ed kind, seated amid rugged hills, on a stony and forbidding soil, 

 with scarcely a picturesque object in the whole compass of the sur- 

 rounding view.' 



Chateaubriand's description is very striking and graphical. After 

 citing the language of the prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations on 

 the desolation of the ancient city, as accurately portraying its pre- 

 sent state, he thus proceeds: 



* When seen from the Mount of Olives, on the other side of the 

 valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, de- 

 scending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with tow- 

 ers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the city all round ; excluding, 

 however, part of Mount Sion, which it formerly enclosed. In the 

 western quarter, and in the centre of the city, the houses stand ve- 

 ry close ; but, in the eastern part, along the brook Kedron, you per- 

 ceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which surrounds the 

 mosque erected on the ruins of the Temple, and the nearly-desert- 

 ed spot where once stood the castle of Antonia and the second pal- 

 ace of Herod. 



' The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very low, 

 without chimneys or windows ; they have flat terraces or domes on 

 the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would ap- 

 pear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the 

 churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cy- 

 presses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. 

 On beholding these stone buildings, encompassed by a stony coun- 

 try, you are ready to inquire if they are not the confused monu- 

 ments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert. 



* Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make amends 

 for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow, 

 unpaved streets ; here going up hill, there going down, from the 

 inequality of the ground ; and you walk among clouds of dust, or 

 loose stones. Canvas stretched from house to house increases the 

 gloom of this labyrinth. Bazars, roofed over, and fraught with 

 infection, completely exclude the light from the desolate city. A 

 few paltry shops expose nothing but wretchedness to view, and 

 even these are frequently shut, from apprehension of the passage 

 of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in the streets, not a creature 

 at the gates, except now and then a peasant gliding through the 

 gloom concealing under his garments the fruits of his labor, 



