great door on
the right side as you come in. It seems that this door had been shut, so
that many who stood near it were suffocated in the crowd; and when it
was opened, the rush was so great that numbers were thrown down and
never rose again, being trampled to death by the press behind them. The
whole court before the entrance of the church was covered with bodies
laid in rows, by the Pasha's orders, so that their friends might find
them and carry them away. As we walked home we saw numbers of people
carried out, some dead, some horribly wounded and in a dying state, for
they had fought with their heavy silver inkstands and daggers.

In the evening I was not sorry to retire early to rest in the low
vaulted room in the strangers' house attached to the monastery of St.
Salvador. I was weary and depressed after the agitating scenes of the
morning, and my lodging was not rendered more cheerful by there being a
number of corpses laid out in their shrouds in the stone court beneath
its window. It is thought by these superstitious people that a shroud
washed in the fountain of Siloam and blessed at the tomb of our Saviour
forms a complete suit of armour for the body of a sinner deceased in
the faith, and that clad in this invulnerable panoply he may defy the
devil and all his angels. For this reason every pilgrim when journeying
has his shroud with him, with all its different parts and bandages
complete; and to many they became useful sooner than they expected. A
holy candle also forms part of a pilgrim's accoutrements. It has some
sovereign virtue, but I do not exactly know what; and they were all
provided with several long thin tapers, and a rosary or two, and sundry
rosaries and ornaments made of pearl oyster-shells--all which are
defences against the powers of darkness. These pearl oyster-shells are,
I imagine, the scallop-shell of romance, for there are no scallops to be
found here. My companion was very anxious to obtain some genuine
scallop-shells, as they form part of his arms; but they, as well as the
palm branches, carried home by all palmers on their return from the Holy
Land, are as rare here as they are in England. This is the more
remarkable, as the medal struck by Vespasian on the subjection of this
country represents a woman in an attitude of mourning seated under a
palm-tree with the legend "Judaea capta;" so there may have been palms in
those days. I was going to say there _must_ have been: but on second
thou