road. Cheerful-looking women and children and stern-browed men strained their eyes, looking out of the light into the darkness, to try to see us as we passed—the clattering of our horses' feet over the stones having broken the stillness of the place. We came again to an open terrace, and could see the hill-side above and below dotted with houses, on the flat roofs of which many families were already sleeping. From the unglazed windows flickering lights were shining. Clusters of trees grow here and there throughout the town. The Church of the Nativity, surrounded by convent buildings, rises like some baronial castle, gloomily and grandly, on the steepest side of the hill.
We passed under a deep arched way, which led us into the Convent Court, where we alighted, and were kindly welcomed by the Latin recluses, who were expecting us. The Spanish Consul of Jerusalem and his wife were there; with them and the Superior, and a few well-educated Spanish and Italian monks, we passed the evening pleasantly in the divaned reception-room. After an excellent supper we were shown to our several apartments. The Superior led me to a large, vaulted, gloomy chamber, in which I felt quite lost, when the heavy door closed upon me and I was alone. There were eight closely-curtained iron bedsteads in the room, and I peeped rather timidly into every one. A small lamp of red clay, like a deep saucer, with a lip on one side shaped to support the lighted wick, stood in a little niche; but its feeble red glow was almost lost in a stream of moonlight which fell from the grated, unglazed window above the door, glancing on the walls and the white curtains, and throwing a patch of checkered light on the stone floor. I was a martyr to musketoes that night, and as soon as daylight appeared through the grated window I rose, and wandered about the corridors, meeting the monks on their way to morning prayer, and witnessing the distribution of bread to the poor convent pensioners who crowded to the gates. The
