consists in the large screen and the panelling of the side walls.[1]
On Sundays the Christians of various churches—Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic—hold their services simultaneously, under the dome and in the side chapels which open off it. On one occasion when I was present the Greek patriarch was preaching under the dome of the rotunda, at the east end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre when suddenly the Latins struck up their instrumental music and singing, drowning the preacher's voice. I was prepared to sympathise with the Greeks, when presently they formed a procession and marched round the rotunda, passing right through a little band of Copts who were engaged in their own way of worship at the west end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre. This want of consideration for the members of other churches seemed so calculated to lead to quarrels that I was not surprised to find a hundred Turkish soldiers drawn up in front of the church to keep the peace. This was a fortnight before Easter. At Easter time itself, when the so-called miracle of the "holy fire" is enacted, and Christians of all churches struggle with one another to be the first to light their tapers at the sacred flame, quarrels do actually arise, and the place is a pandemonium. Woe to the owner of the taper first lit; it is snatched from him, and extinguished by having a dozen others thrust into it. Strong men struggle with one another, and even delicate women and old men fight like furies. We may well join with Conder in wishing that the evidence may finally prove Calvary to have been somewhere else.
For some years past a site has been coming into favour, outside the present north wall, not far from the Damascus Gate. Here is a rounded knoll with a precipice on the south side of it, containing a cave known to Christians as Jeremiah's Grotto, from the tradition that Jeremiah lived
- ↑ Conder's "Tent Work."
