at intervals. The sun has come
out, luckily, and looking up we can see a very narrow strip of blue sky,
but down below it is very dark. You slip and nearly come full length on
the pavement because of the old cabbage leaves, bits of orange peel, and
other messy remnants of food left about, and then I, in my turn, go
almost headlong over a bundle of rags lying on a door-step. Immediately
a shrivelled hand shoots out and a long melancholy cry which curdles our
blood comes from the heap. It is a woman, so wrapped up in rags that she
looks like nothing human. A small coin dropped in her hand brings down
what we must suppose are blessings on us in her own tongue.

The wee strip of blue sky is cut across here and there by iron bars,
high over our heads; these are "camel-bars" put to prevent camels
passing through this way, though the donkeys and people can get along
underneath. Then we turn a corner and pass into a slightly wider
thoroughfare, though it is still merely a passage in comparison with any
streets in our western towns. Swaying high above us is the head of a
camel whose squashy feet come down almost upon us as we hastily tumble
back into our entry, while the great bales on his back brush the walls
as he goes on his lordly way. Women selling vegetables crowd the more
open spaces at the crossing of the narrow streets. Men in red fezes and
flowing garments like dressing-gowns stride along; brown-faced boys run
in and out, and the din, the confusion, and the smell are very trying.
We begin to wonder when we shall get out into the real streets and we
ask the dragoman. He tells us at once that we _are_ in a street, one of
the principal ones, that, in fact, they are all like this, and no
wheeled vehicle can pass in any part of Jerusalem! This is so
bewildering that we feel as if we were in a labyrinth, and huddle close
up to the guide anxious not to lose sight of him for a moment.

[Illustration: A BEGGAR, JERUSALEM.]

Overhead there are arches sometimes spanning the narrow space, and at
others we cross over curious little open bridges joining one house to
another, then we plunge into a cellar and walk right through it and out
on the other side. Everyone seems to be doing the same; it is a regular
passage-way, and yet people live in that cellar, for we see them
crouching over a red fire in the cavernous dark, and we wonder how they
like strangers to make a highway of their home.

[Illustration: A JEW.]

All the way we