Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/50

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JERUSALEM.
43

there are several European establishments, kept by Maltese, and Italians, and Germans, pretty well supplied from London and Paris with ornamental as well as useful and necessary articles of dress; though, as may be anticipated, a large percentage is charged. We met crowds of Moslems, Spanish and German Jews, Bedouins, Greeks, and monks of many orders. I heard my brother greeted and welcomed by name, in various languages, by passers by, for he was well known in the city, where he had passed several years as cancelière in the British Consulate. We made our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and paused in the square court-yard in front of it, to look at its beautiful façade. Two arched doorways, side by side, with deep intricate moldings enriched with ball flowers, are divided by a magnificent cluster of five marble columns. The center and outside columns are green and the others white. The capitals are foliated, and richly carved. There are friezes across the doorways from the spring of the arches. The one to the right, over the door which is bricked up, is of ornamental scroll-work, with boys playfully introduced in arabesque style. The frieze over the left door, which is the only entrance to the church, is a well-carved altorelievo picture of Christ's Entrance into the City, and the Last Supper, not exactly agreeing in character with the other frieze. We then went to the ruins of the Church of the Knights of St. John, near at hand. We passed under a wide low Norman arch, rich with zigzag and dog tooth moldings, marble columns, and carved capitals. We climbed over a dust-heap, where vegetables and dead bodies of dogs and cats were rotting, where flies and fleas were regaling themselves, and half-naked, wretched-looking children were playing and munching melon parings. We crossed a court-yard, full of abominations, assailed by barking and snarling dogs, but tempted on by the strange beauty of this neglected relic of ancient chivalry. We found three high walls of the outer edifice standing, and within them there were divisions which indicated three