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Wheeling Times And Advertiser
Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia
What is this article about?
A recent traveler describes the area around Jerusalem as a dreary, barren waste with rocky terrain and little soil. The city, once magnificent, now appears desolate and cursed, with few poor inhabitants, no suburbs, and minimal activity, evoking its ancient glory amid current misery.
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JERUSALEM:
The country immediately around Jerusalem, (says a recent traveller,) especially to the West and North, is the most dreary and barren waste that I ever beheld. It seems overlaid with immense masses of rocks and stones, with scarcely soil enough to allow anything to take root and grow. The city itself, once, beyond a doubt, the most magnificent and splendid on earth, now presents a melancholy contrast to its former greatness and glory. You cannot walk about Sion and go round about her, as of old, and tell the towers thereof, mark her bulwarks and consider her palaces. The city sits solitary and forlorn; forsaken of God, and evidently lying under his curse. All who have been in Jerusalem must have felt this. The inhabitants few and, with the exception of the Turks—if indeed they are an exception—poor, oppressed, and extremely miserable. No suburbs, no surrounding busy population, none of the usual activity of enterprising life is to be witnessed; but only one rude scene of melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory of Judea bows her widowed head in desolation. A few goats and sheep, scattered about the rocks which overhang the shattered remains of the village of Siloam; a few swarthy shepherds plying their listless occupation with here and there a fierce armed Bedouin, from the surrounding fastnesses, and now and then a cowled monk or wandering pilgrim steal in upon the picture; and except it be the sound of the muezzin from the minarets, proclaiming the hour of prayer to the followers of the false prophet, you may sit on the hill slopes, on either side, for an hour together, and not hear the vibration of a human voice from that spot which once echoed to the strains of sacred song, and royal triumph, and national glory, and the busy din and tumult of two millions of people.
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Foreign News Details
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Jerusalem
Event Details
The country immediately around Jerusalem, especially to the West and North, is the most dreary and barren waste that I ever beheld. It seems overlaid with immense masses of rocks and stones, with scarcely soil enough to allow anything to take root and grow. The city itself, once, beyond a doubt, the most magnificent and splendid on earth, now presents a melancholy contrast to its former greatness and glory. You cannot walk about Sion and go round about her, as of old, and tell the towers thereof, mark her bulwarks and consider her palaces. The city sits solitary and forlorn; forsaken of God, and evidently lying under his curse. All who have been in Jerusalem must have felt this. The inhabitants few and, with the exception of the Turks—if indeed they are an exception—poor, oppressed, and extremely miserable. No suburbs, no surrounding busy population, none of the usual activity of enterprising life is to be witnessed; but only one rude scene of melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory of Judea bows her widowed head in desolation. A few goats and sheep, scattered about the rocks which overhang the shattered remains of the village of Siloam; a few swarthy shepherds plying their listless occupation with here and there a fierce armed Bedouin, from the surrounding fastnesses, and now and then a cowled monk or wandering pilgrim steal in upon the picture; and except it be the sound of the muezzin from the minarets, proclaiming the hour of prayer to the followers of the false prophet, you may sit on the hill slopes, on either side, for an hour together, and not hear the vibration of a human voice from that spot which once echoed to the strains of sacred song, and royal triumph, and national glory, and the busy din and tumult of two millions of people.