Page:Travels from Aleppo to the city of Jerusalem, and through the Holy Land, in the year 1776.pdf/11

Rh company being a marking themselves.

May 30th, we took horse to go to Bethlehem, about six miles south of Jerusalem, and went out at the west gate, and turning on the left hand, and taking the lower path, we passed along the road that the virgin Mary brought our Saviour when she came to offer him at the temple; and half a mile from the city is the place where the tree Tirabintha grew, which the virgin Mary sat under to gave him suck; but the tree being cut down, the place is encompassed with a wall : On the left hand you see David’s house, whence he spied, Bethsheba washing herself; on the right, a little off the road, is old Simeon’s and Elias’s house; and a quarter of a mile further is the well, where the wise men first saw the star. A little further is the ground where the reapers were at work, when Habbakkuk was going to them with meat, the angel took him up by the hair of the head, and carried him into Babylon to Daniel in the lion’s den: Afterwards we saw Jacob’s house, and a hill like a sugar loaf, where the Franks remained forty years after they were driven out of Jerusalem: Next is a monastery of monks of the order of St Tavola Paula Romans, who, when they die, are buried at a convent in Bethlehem.