RUINS OF JF11USALHM. 525 



evening while we remained, in large bowls, and we drank it out of 

 pewter porringers. For this salutary gift the monks positirely 

 refused to accept our offers of compensation, at a time when a few 

 drachms of any kind of tea could with difficulty be procured from 

 the English ships i in the Mediterranean, at the most enormous 

 prices. Persons who have not travelled in these latitudes will per. 

 haps not readily conceive the importance of such an acquisition. 

 The exhaused traveller, reduced by continual fever, and worn by 

 incessant toil, without a hope of any comfortable repose, expe- 

 riences in this infusion the most cooling and balsamic virtues : the 

 heat of his blood abates; his spirits revive; his parched skin re- 

 laxes ; his strength is renovated. As almost all the disorders of 

 the country, and particularly those to which a traveller is most 

 liable, originate in obstructed perspiration, the medicinal properties 

 of tea in this country may perhaps explain the cause of its long ce- 

 lebrity in China. Jerusalem is in the same latitude with Nankin, 

 and it is eight degrees further to the south than Pekin ; the influ- 

 ence of climate and of medicine, in disorders of the body, may 

 therefore, perhaps, be similar. Certain it is, that travellers in 

 China, so long ago as the ninth century, mention an infusion made 

 from the leaves of a certain herb, named Sah, as a cure for all dis- 

 eases ; which is proved to be the same now called tea by European 

 nations. 



In the commotions and changes that have taken place in Jerusa- 

 lem, the convent of St. Salvador has been often plundered and strip- 

 ped of its effects. Still, however, the riches of the treasury are said 

 to be considerable ; but the principal part of its wealth is very pro. 

 perly concealed from all chance of observation. At present, it has 

 a small library, full of books of little value, the writings of pole- 

 mical divines, and stale dissertations upon peculiar points of faith. 

 We examined them carefully, but found nothing so much worth 

 notice as the Oxford edition of Maundrell's Journey. This volume 

 some traveller had left ; the worthy monks were very proud of it, 

 although unable to read a syllable it contained. In the church, as 

 well as in the chambers of the monastery, we noticed several pic. 

 tures : all of these were bad, although some of them appeared to 

 have been copied from originals that possessed greater merit. la 

 the pilgrim's chamber, a printed advertisement, pasted upon a 

 board, is suspended from the wall, giving notice, that * no pilgrim 

 shall be allowed to remain in the convent longer than one month :' 



