Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/66

Rh women carried away their provisions in the corners of their linen vails, but the men and boys put their loaves of bread in the bosom of their open shirts, their girdles supporting the burden.

On meeting my brother we went, guided by one of the Latin monks, to the Church of the Nativity, built by the Empress Helena, in A.D. 327. It is said to be the oldest monument of Christian architecture in the world. The shafts of the forty columns which support the fine architrave and decaying roof are each of a single piece of marble, more than two feet in diameter, about sixteen feet in hight, and surmounted by elaborately-carved capitals. These may have formed a part of some more ancient building. It has been suggested that they were brought from the ruins of the Temple at Jerusalem. The upper part of these columns are frescoed with Greek and Byzantine figures of saints and martyrs, while lower down are some curious sketches and monograms, by crusaders perhaps, or pilgrims of the Middle Ages. Above the columns and on the walls there are remains of ancient mosaic pictures of glass, and stone, and metal. I could make out groups of figures, views of cities, strange devices, and ornamental borders. They had been recently discovered under plaster-work, and were being ruthlessly scraped away, when an English traveler put a stop to the destruction by pointing out to the Superior the value and interest of these relics.

Here the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians have their several shrines and services, and they sometimes have very fierce conflicts about them. We went down into the Grotto of the Nativity, so well known through dioramic and other pictures, with its silver lamps, its fumes of incense, silken tapestries, and gilded saints. On the floor in front of the altar a star marks the spot said by tradition to show the very place where Christ was born; but I was not moved with mysterious awe; it was not here that I realized the scene in the manger; and surrounded as I was