Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/329

322 and took the seat in front prepared for me, and looked down on to the strange scene below. In the center of the extensive area of the Rotunda rises the carved and decorated marble shrine over what is supposed to be the tomb of Christ. The top of it was on a level with us. Wild-looking men, with their clothes disordered, and their caps and tarbûshes torn off—some with their long hair streaming, others with their shaven heads exposed—were performing a sort of gallopade round it. They jumped, they climbed on each other's shoulders, they tossed their arms into the air, dancing a frantic dance, that would have suited some Indian festival. Sometimes this revelry was arrested for a moment, only to commence in another form.

The actors, whose numbers had been continually augmenting, stood in groups, in little circles, tossing their heads and arms backward and forward to a monotonous cry, which grew louder and louder every minute, as the movements of heads and arms became more rapid. They kept this up till they looked mad with excitement, and they beat themselves and each other fearfully. Then they broke up the separate circles, and ran round and round the sepulcher again, with frightful rapidity, heedless of trampling one another under foot. Here and there a priest was giving himself up to the frenzy of the people, and, to gain a reputation for sanctity, he allowed himself to be most unceremoniously handled. His cap was torn off, and he himself was lifted up and carried in triumph round and round the shrine. The pilgrims believe that the fire would never come down on the tomb unless bands of the faithful thus encircled it.

In the mean time I had a pleasant chat with the Baroness. She had been six months on the Nile. She said, "My husband is dead, and I have no son; my daughter and I are alone in the world. We travel everywhere together, and alone; we have seen every people of Europe." The Abbé Ratisbon directed our attention to