et more loudly,
and accompanied by men and boys firing guns into the air and shouting.

Another day a crowd of villagers go by. Their old Sheikh rides in the
midst of them, with his white-and-gold turban, his long gray beard, his
flowing robes of rich silk. He is mounted on a splendid white Arab
horse, with arched neck and flaunting tail; and a beautiful, gaily
dressed little boy rides behind him with both arms clasped around the
old man's waist. They are going up to the city for the Mohammedan rite
of circumcision.

Later in the day a Jewish funeral comes hurrying through the grove: some
twenty or thirty men in flat caps trimmed with fur and gabardines of
cotton velvet, purple, or yellow, or pink, chanting psalms as they
march, with the body of the dead man wrapped in linen cloth and carried
on a rude bier on their shoulders. They seem in haste, (because the hour
is late and the burial must be made before sunset), perhaps a little
indifferent, or almost joyful. Certainly there is no sign of grief in
their looks or their voices; for among them it is counted a fortunate
thing to die in the Holy City and to be buried on the southern slope of
the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where Gabriel is to blow his trumpet for the
resurrection.

III

IN THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM

Outside the gates we ride, for the roads which encircle the city wall
and lead off to the north and south and east and west, are fairly broad
and smooth. But within the gates we walk, for the streets are narrow,
steep and slippery, and to attempt them on horseback is to travel with
an anxious mind.

Through the Jaffa Gate, indeed, you may easily ride, or even drive in
your carriage: not through the gateway itself, which is a close and
crooked alley, but through the great gap in the wall beside it, made for
the German Emperor to pass through at the time of his famous imperial
scouting-expedition in Syria in 1898. Thus following the track of the
great William you come to the entrance of the Grand New Hotel, among
curiosity-shops and tourist-agencies, where a multitude of bootblacks
assure you that you need "a shine," and _valets de place_ press their
services upon you, and ingratiating young merchants try to allure you
into their establishments to purchase photographs or embroidered scarves
or olive-wood souvenirs of the Holy Land.

[Illustration: A Street in Jerusalem.]

Come over to Cook's office, where we get our letters, and stand for a
while on the l