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PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY

FROM THE LIBRARY OF
ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER

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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library

https://archive.org/details/withrussianpilgr00grah_0

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WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS
TO JERUSALEM

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

VANGUARD OF A THOUSAND PILGRIMS GOING DOWN TO THE JORDAN. (See page 189. )

WITH THE

RUSSIAN PILGRIMS
TO JERUSALEM

STEPHEN GRAHAM

AUTHOR OF ‘ A TRAMP’S SKF.TCHF.S ’

WITH 38 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR, AND A MAP

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

i 9 1 3

PREFACE

The journey of the Russian peasants to Jerusalem
has never been described before in any language,
not even in Russian. Yet it is the most significant
thing in the Russian life of to-day. In the story
lies a great national epic.

The adventure of which I tell was unique and
splendid, a thing of a lifetime. Whatever happens
to me on my wanderings over the world in the
coming years, I have little doubt that even when
I am old and gray I shall look back to it as the
most wonderful thing I ever found on the road,
the most extraordinary procession I ever stepped
into. It has also been a great discovery. Jerusalem
is a place of disillusion for the tourist who would
like to feel himself a pilgrim, but here in the peasant
world is a new road and indeed a new Jerusalem.

Portions of this work have appeared serially,
the Prologue in the English Review , the story
of the journey to Jerusalem, and of the Caravan
to the River Jordan in Harpers Magazine. To
the editors of these periodicals I desire to tender
acknowledgment.

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. The Prologue . i

II. The Journey .

1. On the Pilgrim Boat .

2. Who has not been upon the Sea

3. A Strange Boat-Load .

4. The Crusts ....

5. The Gospel of Stupidity

6. Talks with the Pilgrims

7. Jaffa .....

III. Jerusalem attained . . . . . 77

1. The Disguise . 79

2. Jerusalem attained ..... 84

3. The Work of the Russian Palestine Society 96

4. The First Night in the Hostelry . .105

5. Guides and Guide-Books . . . .112

6. At the Church of the Life-giving Grave . 123

IV. The Pilgrims . 135

1. The UncoMxMercial Pilgrim . . . .137

2. Philip . 15 1

3. The Monk Yevgeny . 163

4. Dear old Dyadya . 174

5. On the Banks of the Jordan . . .180

Vll

viii WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS

PAGE

V. The Caravan to Nazareth ..... 203

1. Nazareth ....... 205

2. The Lake of Galilee . v. . . .212

3. A Calamitous Return . . . . .215

4. The Joyful Return . 226

VI. Holy Week . 231

1. The Approach of Holy Week . . . 233

2. Verba and Palm Sunday .... 239

3. Abraham : the Eternal Pilgrim . . . 248

4. In the Hostelries . . . . .257

VII. The Pilgrimage concluded . . . . .271

1. Communion . 273

2. Bringing out the Holy Shroud . . . 277

3. The Sacred Fire ...... 284

4. Easter ........ 292

5. The Archimandrite’s Farewell . . .299

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACE PAGE

i. The Vanguard of a Thousand Pilgrims going down to the

Jordan ....... Frontispiece

2. Mount Athos as seen from the Boat . . . .36

3. The Syrian Girls who caused the Trouble . . .50

4. A Little-Russian Pilgrim in a ten-year-old Sheepskin . 56

5. The Boy from the Top of the Urals .... 68

6. From Island to Island in the Archipelago . . .72

7. Pilgrims on the Road to Jerusalem .... 80

8. Abraham is awaiting a New Batch of Pilgrims . . 92

9. The Russian Cathedral . . . . . .100

10. The Jerusalem Street . . . • . . .114

11. A Service in a Chapel of the Life-giving Grave . . 122

12. Faces at a Pilgrim’s Funeral . . . . .128

13. Liubomudrof, the Comic . . . . . .138

14. A Crowd just out of Church . . . . . .150

15. Father Yevgeny discoursing on the Boat . . . 164

16. Dear old Dyadya. . . . . . . .174

17. Buying his Shroud . . . . . . .180

18. Kissing the Towel-swathed Cross — a fine Back . .188

19. All in their Shrouds on the Banks of the Jordan . .190

20. By the Jordan. Grandma doesn’t remember where she

put her clothes . . . . . . .194

21. Crossing herself in the Stream . . . . .198

22. After the Dip in the Stream : drying his Shroud on a Stick

on his Back ........ 202

x WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS

FA<

23. Inside the Courtyard of the Monastery of St. Guerassim

in the Desert ........

24. The Arrival of the Caravan at the Monastery of St. John

the Baptist in the Desert ......

25. A Pilgrim Woman who died on the Way home from

Jordan .........

26. The Pilgrims arrive within Sight of the Holy City .

27. In the Sepulchre ........

28. A Service for the Remembrance of the Dead .

29. The Dead Pilgrim carried on the Peasants’ Heads on

Palm Sunday ........

30. Abraham, the Eternal Pilgrim, burning Incense in the

Hostelry at Dawn .......

31. At the Oak where the Patriarch Abraham is supposed to

have entertained the Holy Trinity . . . .

32. The Virgin’s Tomb ...*...

33. Washing Shirts in the Hostelry yard at a farthing apiece

34. The Armenian Grandmother who asked me if I had the

tattoo mark on my arm ......

35. Church of the Life-giving Grave : the Entrance to the

Holy Sepulchre .......

36. Carrying the Sacred Fire in a Holy Lantern .

37. Outside the Cathedral Door ......

38. A Priest gives his Blessing ......

Route Map — End of Volume.

PAGE

206

214

224

228

238

246

254

258

262

268

276

280

290

298

302

PROLOGUE

I am a wanderer : I remember well

How once the city I desired to reach lay hid,

When suddenly its spires afar
Flashed through the circling clouds,

Soon the vapours closed again,

But I had seen the city, and one such glance
No darkness could obscure.

Whoever has wished to go has already started on
the pilgrimage. And once you have started, every
step upon the road is a step toward Jerusalem.
Even steps which seem to have no meaning are
taking you by byways and lanes to the high-road.
For the heart guides the steps, and has intentions
too deep for the mind to grasp at once. The true
Christian is necessarily he who has the wishing
heart. Therein is the Christian discerned, that he
seeks a city . Once we have consciously known our¬
selves as pilgrims on the way, then all the people
and the scenes about us have a new significance.
They are seen in their right perspective. Upon the
pilgrims road our imperfect eyes come into focus for
all earthly phenomena.

It is a long time since I wished to go. It is
indeed difficult to say when I did actually begin to
wish. It seems as if I had been predestined from

4 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

my birth to go. For I remember a time when I
wished, but did not understand what it was I wished.
I look back to those tender emotions awakened by
a child’s hymns — only now I know what hymns really
are, songs which the pilgrims sing upon the road
as they are marching to Jerusalem. I understand
now why at church I looked wistfully at the pro¬
cession, and why more readily than to all other
melodies in the world the heart responded to march
music.

In my heart was a little compass-box where an
arrow always pointed steadily to Jerusalem. My
mind did not know, but it knows now, for it has
learned to look inward at last

Yes, long ago I wished to go, and even long ago,
to use the sweet Russian word, I promised. Often
have I despaired since then, and given up, and yet
always renewed the promises.

The pilgrim’s discovery is when he looks into his
own heart and finds a picture of a city there. The
pilgrim’s life is a journeying along the roads of the
world seeking to find the city which corresponds to
that picture. Often indeed he forgets the vision,
and yet ever and again comes the encouraging
picture, like the Comforter which, on leaving this
world, our Saviour promised to His disciples.

I promised, I journeyed, and now to-day I am at
Jerusalem, Jerusalem the earthly, and it seems that
my pilgrimage is over. The peasants feel that when
they have been to Jerusalem the serious occupations

PROLOGUE

of their life are all ended. They take their death-
shrouds to Jordan, and wearing them, bathe in the
sacred river. All in white, on the banks where
John baptized, they look like the awakened dead on
the final Resurrection morning. They spend a night
in the sepulchre of Christ, and receiving the Sacred
Fire, extinguish it with caps that they will wear in
their coffins. They mostly hope to die in the Holy
Land, preferably near the Dead Sea where the Last
Judgment will take place. If indeed they must
return to their native villages in Russia, it will be to
put their affairs in order and await death.

It is seldom that a young pilgrim is seen in
Jerusalem. But I am young and have accomplished
my pilgrimage, yet do not think of dying. What
then ?

The fact is that in the material earthly journey
we do not actually attain to the Jerusalem not built
by hands : the ancient Eastern city above Jaffa,
wonderful and sacred as it is, is for many of the
faithful and for all the spiritually short-sighted a
great disappointment. Jerusalem the earthly is a
pleasure-ground for wealthy sight-seers, a place
where every stone has been commercialised either
by tourist agencies or greedy monks, where the
very candles lit by the pious before the pictures and
the shrines are put out the moment they are lit, and
sold in sheaves to the Jews. The first thought of
the true pilgrim on looking at Jerusalem was ex¬
pressed by a peasant who said to me as we were

6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS

listening to the shrieking populace at the grave on
Palm Sunday, “This is not Jerusalem.” “Of a truth,”
I thought, “he is right; Jerusalem is not here.”

Yet in a sense Jerusalem was there all the time
even among the disgraceful scenes at the Holy of
holies. As a priest delicately forewarned the
pilgrims going down to the muddy little Jordan
river, “ Do not expect anything like the Volga
or the Dwina or the Dnieper. The Jordan is not
grand. Much in the Holy Land wears an ordinary
appearance. Remember that Jesus Himself came,
not clothed in purple, remember that His life
seemed very squalid and ignominious.”

Jerusalem, then, has an existence independent of
material appearance. That at least is the refutation
of one error. Similarly, I remember the ship’s
carpenter on the boat which brought us was a
revolutionary propagandist, and he pointed out to
all and sundry how foolish it was to go pilgrimaging,
told us how the monks would pick our pockets as
we slept at night in the hostelry, — as indeed they
did, — how the monks lived openly with women,
how they had upon occasion taken possession of
poor Russian peasant girls and sold them into the
households of the East, how the monks invented
innumerable fictions about the sacred things and
the objects of our piety in order to get more money
from the pilgrims. Yet most of us understood that
our pilgrimaging was independent of all monkish
ways ; that we, the peasants pilgrimaging, were

PROLOGUE

all right. The holiness of Jerusalem did not take
its rise from the priests and the officials, but from
the actual first peasant pilgrim, Christ Himself, who
was victimised by them.

I have not therefore missed my way ; I have
actually attained unto Jerusalem. But the point
still remains — I am young. I do not think of dying
on Calvary myself, I am not exactly satisfied.
What then ?

Youth or age signify little in the city not made
by hands ; for there, there is no beginning and no
end. The procession to the altar is a rite in the
church ; the pilgrimage is a rite in the larger church
of the world; life itself, the pilgrimage of pilgrimages,
is a rite in the larger church of the universe — we
complete in a symbolic act an eternal journey. In
the mystery of the rite I shall attain unto Calvary
and die there, just as at Communion I partake of the
Body of Christ — or else I have not made the
pilgrimage and have not entered into Communion.
As the words of the mystic remind me : —

The Cross of Golgotha thou lookest to in vain
Unless within thy heart it be set up again.

If the question be asked, “Why do you live in
the rites but not in the realities of life ? ” it is
because the rites are more real. They are earthly
patterns of heavenly things. Our life itself we con¬
fidently understand to be a rite. By virtue of our
mystery we cannot lift a hand to do the most ordinary

8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

thing, but we make thereby mysterious signs and
enter into symbolic relationship with the universe of
the unseen.

The pilgrims all call one another brother ( bi'at ),
father ( atets ), uncle ( dyadya ), or grandfather (dyed) —
according to the relative ages of the one addressing
and the one addressed. There was a dear old
dyadya from Tver province who talked with me.
He had been within earshot of the propagandism of
the ship’s carpenter, so I comforted him — God saw
the peasant and understood. “ Ah, yes,” he rejoined
with affection, though he had never seen me in his
life before, and even then we were speaking in the
dark, “ it cannot but mean much to us that we
journey to the land where God died. He will
certainly soften towards us when we come before
Him, and He remembers that we journeyed to the
grave. . . . And think what He suffered. What
are our sufferings beside His! They point out to
us the hardships of the journey, but our suffering is
little. It is good for us to suffer. I wouldn't take
advantage of comforts. I wouldn’t give up my
share of suffering. . . .”

On that little boat, the Lazarus , scarcely bigger
than a Thames steamer, having accommodation
for only twenty-one first-class passengers, twenty-
seven second, and sixty third, there were, beyond
the usual swarm of Turks, Arabs, and Syrians

PROLOGUE

making short journeys in the Levant, 560 peasant
pilgrims. Four hundred of them slept in the
dark and filthy recesses of the ship’s hold, and
the remainder on the open deck. Fulfilling its
commercial obligations, the vessel took fifteen days
to make the voyage from the Black Sea to Jaffa.
The peasants were mostly in sheepskins, and nearly
all the time the sun blazed down upon them. We
had two sharp storms, and the peasants, most of
whom had never seen the sea before, were terribly
unwell. In one storm, when the masts were broken,
the hold where the peasants rolled over one another
like corpses, or grasped at one another like madmen,
was worse than any imagined pit, the stench there
worse than any fire. For 560 pilgrims there were
three lavatories with doors without bolts. Fitly
was the boat named the Lazarus . I heard a priest
refer to us as the Lazarus communion ; his words
were apt. Yet my dear old dyadya whispered to me
on the morning before our arrival in Jaffa, “ We
must not complain.”

After all that we went through, when we arrived
at Jerusalem, I heard not a murmur but of the
words, “ Slava Tebye Gospody ! Slava Tebye ! ”
(Glory be to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee !) With
eyes all wet the mouzhiks crowded into the
monastery for the thanksgiving service, and the
great Bible rested on the heads of the close-pressed
throng — a human lectern, and more than that.
And with what eagerness we pressed in to kiss in

io WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

turn the cross in the abbot’s hand ! As we stood
afterwards, a dozen of us, about the door, a woman
all in laughing tears knelt down and kissed our feet
in turn and asked our forgiveness, seeing that she,
a sinful woman, had reached Jerusalem.

Not only had the pilgrims lived that terrible
voyage, but many of them had walked a thousand
miles and more in Russia before reaching a port of
embarkation. Many who were not there in body
perished by the way.

Though there are many beggars who have no
choice of way it is not usually through lack of means
that the pilgrims have to rough it. The peasants
brought with them rather more money, man for man,
than the tourists in the hotels. To have twenty or
thirty pounds in spare cash was quite common, to
have two or three hundred pounds not uncommon.
You would never dream it to see the pilgrim’s clothes,
but the money is there, deep under the rags, to be
used for God’s purposes. It is only the degenerate
peasant who pays to have himself conveyed to
Jordan, to Nazareth, to Bethlehem. “Oh, what
good is it to come,” I heard a peasant say in the
Dead Sea wilderness, “ if we take no trouble over
it?” He was trudging in birch-bark plaited boots
which he had made in the far North and kept new
to the day when he landed at Jaffa. A simple,
patriarchal figure he was, with long, dense hair cut
round his head by sheep-shears, and long beard and
whiskers encroaching on the sanguine colour of his

i PROLOGUE ii

high cheek-bones and well-scored temples. He
was white from head to foot with the dust of the
desert, even his hair was caked white, and he
walked forward step by step, slowly, equably,
pensively. It was at the well of Guerassim he
uttered these words, a mysterious little oasis, a
warm saltish spring, and over it a loving bush
heavy with rhododendron blossoms.

Thus the peasant pilgrimages. On the road to
Nazareth, whilst the great caravan is on the road
in the third and fourth weeks of Lent, many fall
down dead in the dust. They just go on and on,
all white from the dust of the road, and at a turn
throw up their arms and fall over dead. There is
never a complaint.

I have walked many times down the steep, dark
way from the Praetorium to Golgotha, where the
stumblings of Christ are commemorated, and where,
no matter how steady, the wayfarer is bound to
stumble ; and I have seen thousands of peasants
come down. For want of space the Turks do not
permit the actual rite, but the seeing eye needs not
that to see that the back of the long-suffering Slav
is bowed beneath a heavy cross of wood which he
is carrying down the treacherous and narrow way to
the grave.

Ill

That it should be with the Russian peasants that
I came to Jerusalem is also symbolically true. In

i2 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

the larger pilgrimage of life it is with these simple
people that I have been journeying. It was the
wish of the heart, the genius of seeking, that taught
me to seek Jerusalem through Russia, that brought
me to her simple people living in the great open
spaces, lighting their candles in the little cottages
and temples. At Jerusalem were hundreds of
Englishmen and Americans, and the English
language was as frequent in my ears as Turkish.
I stood next to rich tourists from my own land ;
they hadn’t the remotest idea that I was other than
a Russian peasant, and I thought, “ What luck that
I didn’t come with these ! ” But really it was not
luck, but destiny.

It is hard for any one to realise himself and the
appalling mystery of his steps upon the world. No
matter how truly one describes the others who are
journeying to Jerusalem, it is always, nevertheless,
only one person who is journeying. All that he
sees, however strange and separate, is but a
furnishing of his soul. I remember how, when
night came down upon the steamer, the ship’s
lanterns were lit up, and the electric lights twinkled
high up on the dark masts. Over the pitch-black
wallowing sea the foamy billows leapt like white
wolves, and all unheedingly the boat ground
forward on its straight line passage to the port
which it should reach on the morrow. The first
and second class passengers would be settling down
for the night, the Turks in the third class spreading

PROLOGUE

bright mattresses and quilts on the deck, and
improvising curtains round about their black-veiled
ladies ; but up in the stern would be two hundred
Russian men and women with gleaming candles.
In the midst of them a peasant would be reading,
his deep voice resonant in a general silence, “ Glory
to Thee, God-chosen Mother, Mother of God,
Queen of Heaven and earth, glory to Thee ! ” two
hundred voices responding “ Glory to Thee ! ”
Then the reader again, and after him the chorus,
“Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!” going through the
akathisti. The akathisti ended, there would follow
the singing of sacred hymns and psalms till long
after midnight, -all sitting on the deck, all peaceful,
all intensely happy. At last the singing dies away,
the band disperses, and there is silence ; nought is
heard but the pounding of the engines and the wind
in the cordage. It may be at four o’clock in the
morning you get up to take a look at the sea once
more ; in the east the stars are turning pale, the
silent boat goes forward with the regularity of a
beating heart, and you feel that every one is asleep.
Yet look down into the mysterious hold, go down
the ladder, and step over the sleepers ; away in the
dark corners among the sacks embroidered with
crosses you see little pictures of Jesus are hung up
and candles burn before them, and the unsleeping
pilgrim kneels with his bare white brow on the
dark floor. In a sense it is Russia that is kneeling;
in a sense it is you and I and every one.

i4 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

There went a whisper round the decks one
morning, “ We have a mysterious passenger on
board.” Whether it was because of the man who
said he had been in heaven for twenty-four hours,
or because of some mysterious action of the exalted
fanatic who slept by the carpenter’s bench, or of the
old man who had taken the oath of silence, I know
not. It was a typical peasant rumour with no
explanation but in the words — “ They say . . . .
there is a mysterious passenger on board.” It even
came to the captain’s ears, for I heard him say,
“ There are no Russians without passports ; of that
at any rate I’m quite sure!” as if mystery could be
explained away by a passport.

Often I thought of that rumour after we had
reached Jerusalem. When the man who had been
in heaven began to preach ; when the aged beggar
Abraham, twenty times in Jerusalem, came and
sanctified our wooden beds every morning before
dawn in Holy Week, burning incense in an old tin
can on a stick, and making the sign of the cross
over us with the dense fragrant smoke ; when I
saw the man all in white by the Golden Gate carry¬
ing in all weathers his lighted lamp, I always
thought, “There is a mysterious pilgrim in
Jerusalem.” When I knelt at the Life-giving
Tomb I thought once more, “There is a mysterious
pilgrim in Jerusalem, there is myself. ...”

PROLOGUE

In the press of all the nations in Jerusalem at
Easter it was perhaps difficult to find Jesus.
Perhaps few people really tried to see Him.
There was so much memorial of the sad past, so
little evidence of the living present.

On Easter morning the old monk, Yevgeny,
saluted me with these sad words, “Christ is risen,
yes, and it is Easter, but not like, the Easter when
H e rose! How the sun blazes! All Jerusalem is
dry and will remain dry, but then it was fresh, and
there was rain, such rain. You know there came a
fruitful year after His death. No one had known
such a summer. Everything seemed to yield
double or treble increase, and there was a freshness
that seemed to promise impossible things ” — the
monk’s eye filmed ; he went on, “ And now it is dry
. . . dry ... it has all dried up.” These were
sad words, and perhaps true for the man who said
them. Every man has a first Easter, and the
succeeding ones are anniversaries. What was for
him an anniversary was for me perhaps a first
Easter or a premonition. I for my part was aware
that even at Pilate’s house were fruit trees laden
with blossom.

Yes, Jesus was abroad in the land on Easter day,
but what is more, He was actually walking those
thronged Jerusalem streets in the season of Lent
when I mvself was there.

1 6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

These were certainly aids. Did not the peasants
nurse in their hearts the rumour — There is a
mysterious pilgrim in Jerusalem? There was that
man all in white by Herod’s wall, he had that use in
the symbology of Jerusalem, by him it was easier to
imagine the man in the crowd. Jesus in His day
was the man in the crowd ; the man whom people
clustered round, whom they pressed in to hear, the
man of whom strange words or actions were expected.
Thus stood Jesus silent on the feast day, the in¬
quisitive flocking about Him and scanning His face,
wondering if He would say anything or not, when
all of a sudden His lips opened, and there came
forth the word of God as from the lips of the oracle
. . . “ He stood and cried, saying, ‘ If any man
thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that
believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ ”

I suppose the Russian pilgrims read the gospel
every day in Lent. Those who could read, read
aloud ; and those who could not read, listened.
They lived with the evangel. It was possible to
buy Russian guide-books to Jerusalem in the shops,
but very few pilgrims bought them. They used
their Bibles, and they found the sacred places by
asking one another. It was marvellous how they
found their way through the labyrinth of dark
tunnel-like streets and alleys. And they never
missed any shrine as they went, never passed a
sacred stone without kissing it. With such clear

PROLOGUE

minds as they have, they will easily reconstruct
Jerusalem when they get back to their villages, and
their countrymen, counting them half-holy, pour in
to ask them what it was like.

Jerusalem is bewildering. Tourists are tired out
in three days. Indeed, it is scarcely worth while
going there to be a looker-on. Unless one lives
the life, Jerusalem can mean little or nothing. And
even living the life, it is necessary to have the
placid, receptive soul — the open house of the soul
wishing to be furnished.

We find Jesus really when we cease looking at
Jerusalem and allow the gospel to look into us;
when we cease gazing questioningly at Jerusalem
the earthly, and realise in ourselves Jerusalem the
golden ; when in the pure mirror of the soul is
reflected the living story of Christ. Then at
Bethlehem the babe is born, and over Him the
bright star shines, the shepherds hear the angels
sing, the old kings come travelling through the
night with gifts. The child goes to Nazareth and
to Jerusalem. At Jordan, the strange Greek priest
baptizing by the flowing stream is veritably John.
To him comes the mysterious Pilgrim : did not the
heaven in one’s soul bear witness! Jerusalem holds
a Prophet. In indignation He whips the hawkers
from the Temple ; He says a final No to commercial
Jerusalem and lives thereafter in the purged city,
the city independent of material appearance. He
moves among the souls of men ; He gives forth

1 8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

oracularly the living word of God. At Bethany,
Lazarus once more steps out of the grave and sits
at Martha’s board, and when the pilgrims come on
Palm Sunday, strewing wild flowers as they walk,
and bearing on their shoulders olive branches and
palms, there is truly in the midst of them the
mysterious Pilgrim sitting upon an ass, and they
hymn Him to Jerusalem.

The whole heart is a world, and that world is
a temple. Every step and every movement is
mysterious, every procession is a rite, a word, or a
letter in a word, of the great poem which God reads,
which is man’s life.

Alas ! there are strange doings in the Temple ; the
dark figures that mingle with the white move for¬
ward to dark ends. The Pilgrim sits at supper with
eleven white ones and a dark one ; the dark one
goes out. The Pilgrim goes into a cypress-veiled
garden and prays ; the dark one comes back and
kisses Him. A dark crowd with staves presses in
and the Pilgrim is taken away by them. There is
a choice made between Him and a robber ; there is
a foolish trial. Then comes a symbolism within
the symbolism, like a dream within a dream, for
they put upon the Pilgrim’s head a crown of thorns,
and on His shoulders a purple robe. They lead
Him forth unto death. He carries the heavy cross
down the steep dark way, and stumbles as He
walks. To the same cross He is nailed, and the
cross is set up. It is rooted in the lowest depths,

PROLOGUE

and it rises, into the highest heaven. Upon it
hangs the mysterious One all glistering white, yet
shedding drops of blood. . . . Then all is lost in a
darkness that not till Easter morning will disperse.

A rite scarcely lives as long as it is merely
ecclesiastical, but when it is personal it is altogether
lovely. The swinging of the censer in church one
allows to pass almost unnoticed, but old Abraham
burning incense over us in his old tin can melts one
to tears. On Holy Thursday one looks upon the
washing of the disciples’ feet by the white-handed,
delicate old Patriarch, but it is only a church
pageant and a spectacle — the richly carpeted plat¬
form in the square of the Sepulchre, the monks
each named after an apostle, the table on which
stand the twelve candles, the gentle greybeard with
a silk towel at his girdle washing the spotless feet
with rose- scented water from a silver basin, the
pageantry of the church, its gold crosses and
banners, the crush of sight-seers all about. It is
a different matter when an inspired peasant washes
his fellow-pilgrims’ feet from an old tin pail at the
back of the monastery wall. It is not artistic ; the
feet are very dirty ; it looks coarse and uninspiring,
but it is real, and if you can see beyond material
appearance it is lovely. It has the beauty of
summer which is hidden in the rich black earth.

20 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

Surely the priests have erred by making it into
a dead pageant and letting out the roof of the
Sepulchre in seats for a price. They are not near
to the behest, “Wash ye one another’s feet.” The
office of humility has little in common with gold
crosses and carpets. Even as a picture the rough
peasant’s rite was more like the original. As a
reality there was no comparison, for the peasant
washing the feet was the mysterious Pilgrim.

In the days of old

Cross of wood and bishop of gold,

But now they have altered that law so good
To cross of gold and bishop of wood.

Then also at the temple of Golgotha on Good
Friday, and at the Sepulchre on Easter night, there
were great pageants, and the accomplishment of
rites ecclesiastical and no more, and though it is
expressly to those places and for those times that
the peasant makes his pilgrimage, he is quite con¬
tent to realise the meaning of the time in his own
Russian cathedral in the Russian settlement. The
grave would have to be fifteen times as large as it is
to accommodate the Russians materially: those whose
bodies are not jammed and fixed in that terrible
death-dealing crowd are at least there by faith.
Obviously it is possible to be there in the body and
yet not be there at all — speaking in the language
of the heart. Indeed, for some it is not necessary
to travel to Jerusalem the earthly at all ; they find
the Holy City in the village church on Easter night.

PROLOGUE

The peasant is saved by his personal realisation
of holy things, by the cross which is not only in his
priest’s hands, but hanging from his own neck, by
the ikon not only in the church but in the home, by
his hospitable house and heart, by his hard-tramped
pilgrimage, by his own visions and inspirations.

Thus a pilgrim who made friends with me
when I arrived at Jerusalem asked at once my
name, meaning by that my Christian name, and
took me to the place where my “ angel ” was
stoned. “ Here he stood when they took up
stones ; you see the stones all about, the same
stones .... and here on this rock stood the
Mother of God on tip-toe looking on whilst they
stoned him.” Following him, I knelt down and
kissed the places in turn.

I suppose every man whose life is a going forth
upon divine adventures feels somewhere at the back
of him the supporting faith of a woman. Hilda
looking on, the Master-Builder climbs the scaffold
and does the impossible a second time. Mary
looking on, the first martyr faces his persecutors
with a face catching a radiance from a hidden light.
A man and a woman make one man — he is the
outward limbs battling in the world ; she is his
steady beating heart.

The rough unshorn peasant in his old sheep-skin
had not learned to read, and knew nothing of my
mind or its furnishings, but he brought me there
like a child.

22 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

As I was tramping through the Crimea and along
the Black Sea coast toward the Turkish frontier it
often occurred to me that I was with the wise men,
or one of them, following a star to Bethlehem.
When I reached the Holy Land, Bethlehem was
one of the first places that I visited ; and as if
Providence had smiled on me, it turned out that the
day which saw me there was my own birthday.

I shall always remember the day. The March
wind blew freshly over the trimly rounded stone
hills outside Jerusalem, and seemed to turn over
Bible pages. Every scene was like a living repre¬
sentation of some picture in a religious book at
home. The palm started up into the sky on the
horizon, the dark cypress gloomed beside grey
ancient walls, brown-faced girls came carrying pots
on their heads, Arabs overtook me with trains of
mules. All that was new were the bent peasant
women, trudging down the road with bundles cross-
marked on their backs.

As I looked at the budding spring and the little
children gathering wild flowers, I knew myself in a
place which does not alter, the place where people
are always young, and the world is always fresh and
full of promise. I had indeed reached Bethlehem
on my own birthday.

Some weeks later, on Easter day, as soon as the

PROLOGUE

sun had risen, I came to the Sepulchre, that second
birthplace of Christ, and I measured the way from
Bethlehem.

The old monk Yevgeny was with me, and we
read together the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of
St. John. My friend always carried about with him
a great family Bible wrapped up in newspaper, and
every day he found some one with whom to read
and talk. It was with him that I measured the life
from Bethlehem, the birthplace of the loving human
child bound to be rejected by the world, to the
Sepulchre, birthplace of the celestial child above us,
no longer subject to our powers.

There is a marvellous tenderness revealed by
St. John. One feels the tears, not shed, but in
the words — words surcharged with love and sorrow.
Jesus seems in this last long conversation to discover
His soul, not only to His disciples but to Himself.
Much becomes clear whilst He talks with them, and
that which becomes clear is so poignant. He has
found out the world. He also at the beginning had
nursed golden hopes. He had held humanity to
His breast — humanity that had waited thousands of
years for His coming, for His loving, for His
redeeming. I do not speak at all doctrinally —
loving is redeeming : even the lowest of lost souls
is saved when some one has seen, understood, and
given a personal love. I think that only at moments
Jesus realised his dark worldly course, and that in
the intervening spaces He toiled onward as we do,

24 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS i

nursing those hopes which in the long-run are only
vessels of tears. He averted His eyes from the
cross and looked at the faces of men. At last the
road became so strait that little but cross remained
to look upon. He eased His bursting heart a little
with those whom in all the world He had really
reached and found — His own disciples. It was
only a little. Even they could not be His confidants,
not one of them. They were children : to Him
utterly lovable, but children, not men. Jesus reached
His succouring arms down to all the world, but
there was not a man alive to whom He could reach
up His arms, not a human neck to stand above
Him for His own soft arms to twine round. He
could empty His heart only to God, and shed His
tears only in the bosom of the Father. What He
said none can know. The life which He lived in
communion with His Father, the life of His visions,
the life which He realised in the mystery of His
own soul, He carried away with Him beyond the
cross. He carried it away to the City not made by
hands, Jerusalem the heavenly. And why was He
so sad, saying, “ If the world hateth you, ye know
that it hated Me before it hated you ” ? He realised
that the same hard road that He had trod was the
way of all pilgrims.

When the sun went down in majesty on Easter
eve, as if answering the behest, “ Father, glorify
Thy Name/' there came a whisper to my ears, “ I
have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

PROLOGUE

Easter eve is a sunset, but Easter morning is a
celestial sunrise.

“The story was fresh, fresh,” said Yevgeny,
turning over the leaves of St. John dreamily, “but
now it is dry, dry as a mummy. Once it was very
real ; we must not forget that.”

For me, however, it was fresh and real now, for
in myself the first pilgrim had just reached the
City.

THE JOURNEY

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

It was in the harbour at Constantinople that I
found the pilgrim boat with 560 Russian peasants
on board for Jaffa, an ugly ship, black as a
collier, flying the yellow quarantine flag and
the Russian tricolour. A Turkish boatman rowed
me to the vessel over the glimmering green
water of the port, and as I clambered up the gang¬
way fifty or sixty Russians in bright blouses and
old sheepskins looked down at me smiling, for they
thought they recognised a fellow-countryman and a
fellow-pilgrim. For I myself was in an ancient
blue blouse looking like the discarded wear of an
engine-driver, and on my back was all my luggage
— a burden like that under which Christian is seen
labouring in illustrated copies of the Pilgrims
Progress.

At a step I left Turkey, with its gay-coloured
and noisy peoples, its bazaars and mosques, and
was in Russia again, as in a populous Russian
village on a market day when all the people are in
the streets. All about me clustered and chattered

3o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

mouzhiks and babas , village men and village women,
stariks and staruskkas, grey-bearded grandfathers
and wizened old grandmothers — all in their every¬
day attire. They looked as if they had left their
native fields and hurried to the boat without
changing a garment or washing a limb.

They were nearly all in deeply-wadded over¬
coats ( touloopi ), or fur-lined jackets ( poluskubi ), and
wore heavy, long-haired sheepskin caps or peak
hats ; and the women wore bundles of four or five
petticoats, and who knows how many layers of
thick homespun linen over their upper parts, and
with thick grey shawls over their heads. For most
of the pilgrims came from the cold interior of Russia
and had little notion of the changing of climate.

A cluster of the curious crowded round me to
question, and an aged peasant became spokesman.

“ Hail, friend ! ”

“ Hail ! ”

“From what province, raba-Bozhik (God’s
slave) ? ”

“ I come from the Don, but am not a Russian
subject.”

“ Orthodox ? ”

“ Orthodox.”

“ Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! (Thanks be to Thee,
O Lord !) ”

“ What’s your occupation ? ”

“ Brody aga (wanderer).”

“ Any money ? ”

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

“ Enough.”

“ Are you going to the Holy Grad of Jerusalem ? ”

“If God grant.”

“ Thanks be to Thee, O Lord ! Oh, what a
nice young man he is, what a soft voice he has.
Young man, young man, give me something for the
love of God to help me to Jerusalem. I am
seventy-six years and I have only two roubles (four
shillings) to take me to Jerusalem and back again.
I had thirty roubles (three guineas), but it has been
spent ; twenty-four roubles, of course, I paid for my
return ticket and something more went for pass¬
port.”

“ More shame to you, old man,” said several
women. “You must have known you couldn’t live
on two roubles, and that you’d have to beg.”

I gave him twenty copecks. “ Here, grand¬
father, here’s sixpence. I’m sorry it’s not Turkish
money, but somebody ’ll change it for you.”

The gentle patriarch took the coin and crossed
himself and blessed me. Twenty copecks was
much more than he expected. He was so happy
and so surprised that he kept pointing me out for
the rest of the journey as the man who had given
him a whole twenty-copeck bit, the man whom he
remembered in his prayers each night. His begging
of me directly I came on board would have been
a very disgusting action if he had been a more
ordinary type of humanity. But he was an honour¬
able old pilgrim who, without a thought of his

32 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

poverty, had promised God that he would make the
pilgrimage. He was seventy-six years of age, as
his beard, faded from grey back to rich straw-colour,
testified ; he was loving, by his soft eyes. He came
from the province of Tobolsk, and had tramped
some three or four thousand miles to Kiev ; there,
fearing to be late for Easter at Jerusalem, he had
prayed the guard to make him a hare ( zayatchik ), i.e.
to allow him for a few coppers to crawl under a
seat and lie hid without a ticket for the rest of the
journey to Odessa. I had a round ten pounds in
my purse, ’twould have been a shame to refuse him.
As it was, wherever I met him afterwards, in the
Monastery yards, in the Jerusalem streets, or on the
banks of Jordan, he always stopped short, lifted off
his hat and blessed me.

I passed muster as a pilgrim and was free of the
ship. We unladed sugar all day, and laded house¬
hold goods destined for Mount Athos, the island of
the Greek monks ; and from two coal barges, one
on each side of us, some forty Arab navvies worked
rhythmically and filthily, scooping wet coal-slack
into our coal bunkers with little two-pound baskets.
The hot sun poured down upon us, and from all
around came the skirling and shrieking of steam
syrens, worked for the most part by passenger
steamers crowded with suburban Turks in European
attire reading their newspapers, going to Galata,
or returning to Stamboul. They looked like the
passengers on a Thames steamboat except for the

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

fact that on every head was a fez, and as I looked
at the crowd of red caps I involuntarily thought of
cricket teams and college outings.

Some pilgrims went into the town under the
guidance of monks who had come from the shore,
and they were conducted to the shrine of the
prophet Elijah and to the Cathedral of St. Sophia,
once the first church of Christendom, but now only
a mosque. They saw how the frescoes of the
Romans, though at one time painted out by the
Saracen, had re-asserted themselves, being done in
better paint. And it was a pleasant augury that
Christianity should at last outlive Mahomedanism.
‘‘God grant we Russians shall take Tsargrad
(Constantinople) at last, and then Sophia will be no
more a mosque and the pilgrims be no longer
persecuted,” said an antiquated peasant to me. He
had in his eyes the fervour of the Crusades.

Our decks were swarming with Turks ready to
sell anything to the pilgrims, from improper post¬
cards to bottles of the Virgin’s tears. Old rogues
were displaying hand-worked (sic) peacock curtains
to incredulous dames who beat down their prices
from ten shillings (five roubles) to ten pence (forty
copecks). Other rogues were selling lumps of
frankincense which had the appearance of granite
or of half-smelted ore. They broke it with a coal
hammer and invited all and sundry to smell it and
judge. There were hawkers with oranges, figs,
dates, raisins, locust nuts, honey, Turkish delight,

34 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

sour milk, khalva, spring onions ; hawkers of knives,
scissors, pocket-books, watches, field-glasses, carpets,
trousers, rugs. There was not a thing sold in the
booths of the bazaars of the mainland that did not
turn up in the sacks and barrows of the anxious
vendors. And they all shouted at once in broken
Russian :

“ Money, hot money ! ” (Dengy goratchy, dengy goratchy !)

“ Cheap, cheap ! ” (Dosheva, dosheva !)

“To whom incense?” (Komu laddan?)

“ Smell, smell ! ” (Nuki, nuki !)

“ To whom watches ? ” (Komu chassi ?)

And above all, two cobblers up in the bows struck
their hammers upon the decks as they sat, business¬
like, anvil between their knees, and called out in pat
phrase, “ Komu lokkia ruka na po-chin ? Komu
lokkia ruka na po-chin ? ” (Who’s in need of a light
hand at the mend ? Who’s in need of a light hand
at the mend ?)

The 560 Russians owned the boat There were
first and second class passengers, and in the third
some Arabs, Albanians, Greeks, Jews, but none of
these counted. The peasant pilgrims were every¬
where.

Four hundred were accommodated in the parts of
the hold unoccupied by cargo. I went down the
dark ladders into the bowels of the ship and saw
how they lived there. I had not as yet found a
place for myself and cold nights were in prospect.
The hold was something never to be forgotten for
the crush there, the darkness, the foulness, and

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

the smell. There was first a wilderness of linen
packs, hand - embroidered with crosses, with the
word Jerusalem, with bears clutching sticks, with
grey wolves following one another’s tails round and
round. Among the sacks men and women were
lying, combing out their hair or examining their
underclothing. As far as eye could see looking into
the dark depths of the hold were bundles and
pilgrims, bundles and pilgrims to the last rat-gnawn
timbers where were ikons and holy pictures be¬
fore which gleamed little lighted candles. Here
in the most noisome recesses were the ill, the very
feeble, the blind and the maimed, the sea-sick —
all those who had either no power or no wish to
get up and feel the air and sunshine above board.
I reflected that it would in any case be impossible
for me to spend the night there, even if I found
room.

It was eventually on the carpenter’s bench that I
made my nightly couch. The day’s work done, and
the boat steaming placidly over the white gleaming
waters of the Sea of Marmora, the carpenter had
put up his tools and descended to the mess-room,
there to tope and sing before turning in ; and I
cleared his work-bench of shavings and made my¬
self a clean berth of planed boards, much to the
astonishment of less fortunate pilgrims who had
ensconced themselves on top of the provision
chests, along the tops of the chicken-boxes, on
the warm but sooty roof of the engine room, in

36 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS ir

the canvas under the bell-stand, and so on . . .
where not ? I expected to be turned off sooner
or later, but fortune was with me, for I occupied
that clean if comfortless place each and all of the
twelve nights spent on the sea before reaching
Jaffa.

All night long the pilgrims prayed aloud and sang
— they had their watches of prayer as the ship had
its nautical watch, and even in the witching hours,
the ikons in the hold were not without their votive
pilgrims prostrating themselves and singing unto
God. In the stern about two hundred of them read
and sang with a priest till midnight, and after they
had dispersed and each had gone to his own, there
was still to be heard the pleasant, deep-bass prayers
of the slaves of God.

We made the grand mountain of Athos on the
morrow, and though the weather was blustering
and most of the pilgrims sick, there was a grand
turn out above deck even of the halt, the maimed, and
the blind out of the dark depths of the hold, ready
to bow to the sacred mountain where the Blessed
Virgin was wrecked. The mountain rises like a
great buffalo-back out of the green and blue tossing
Higean, and is of the awesome contour that must
make it a place of legends and wonders in all ages.
We all stood peering over one another’s heads,
holding on to the ropes, climbing to places of
vantage, and staring at the cliff as if we expected a
sign or a miracle. The Russians’ eyes were wet

MOUNT ATHOS AS SEEN FROM THE BOAT.

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

and glistening, for they looked at a place they had
heard of all their lives and of which they had seen
thousands of pictures — a place to which every
orthodox man had wished to pilgrimage, as had
his father before him. Even the women looked
on with exalted countenances, though Old Athos
is forbidden to them, — the Greek monks assert
that no woman has ever set foot on the island but
the Virgin Mary, and of course they accept no
women pilgrims. It was noticeable, however, that
the monks who boarded us at the island to sell stones
and relics “ for a blessing ” paid much more attention
to the women than to the men. One monk whom I
watched addressed quite a score of peasant women
in the same manner : —

“ What is your province ? ”

“Tambofsky, Moskovsky, Saratofsky, Kost-
romsky . . they would answer according to their
district.

“ What is your Christian name ? ”

“ Tania,” or “ Maria,” or “ Akulina,” or “ Daria,”
would be the answer.

“ The same as that of my blessed mother, now
dead,” the unblushing monk replied. “Ah, how I
loved her ; if you could only know how I loved her !
And she was very like you, dear ; the same sort of
look about the eyes, the same chin, the same sort of
shape when she was young. I remember when I
first came from Afon (Athos) I brought her a string
of praying beads, this sort ; I took them as a gift

38 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

from an old monk, and I gave him fifty copecks to
pray for my soul. It was his prayers that made
God give me the vision. You know I had a vision —
an angel came to me one night and said, ‘ Forswear
the world, my son, and repair to Mount Athos. It
is the wish of the holy Mother of God.’ And I
went. I have been a monk ever since.”

“And how much do the chotki (praying-beads)
cost, father ? ”

“Nothing, my dear; we take nothing whatever.
But of course we have a big establishment to keep
up, and if you give me anything voluntarily I shall
pray for your soul.”

The baba would solemnly take the beads and give
fifty copecks without a murmur.

The day after leaving Athos we were at Salonica,
and it was very pleasant to make this lazy journey
under the hot Spring sun, fanned by the fresh
Spring breeze. The boat was ours. We sat in
groups and read the Bible aloud, those who could
read — or listened, those who could not. We told
stories, we sang songs and hymns ; we read one
another’s sacred booklets ; we found out the names
of the islands of the Archipelago and their scriptural
references ; we wrote up our diaries and made the
solemnest of reflections in thick pencil on thumb-
marked dirty paper, thus, “It is a lie, the Black
Sea is not black.” “The Turks are an impudent
people, thank God they are being beaten ! ” All
went very merrily and happily. But there came a

ON THE PILGRIM BOAT

time when all this was changed, a day, three days of
storm and sickness and terror. There came such a
tempest over the Mediterranean as we had never
dreamed of in the squalls and occasional unpleasant¬
nesses of the Aegean.

WHO HAS NOT BEEN UPON THE SEA

“ Who has not been upon the sea has never prayed to
God,” says the Russian proverb which I heard most
frequently on the pilgrim boat. When the wind
blew up at the issue of the Dardanelles, fully eighty
per cent of the pilgrims were sick. The remainder,
or a portion of them, a few brave spirits, sat up on
the wave -swept decks eating oranges one after
another with passionate credulity, thumbing their
praying-beads feverishly and whispering to God,
Gospody pomilui ! Gospody pomilui ! (O Lord have
mercy ! O Lord have mercy ! )

What the packed and filthy hold was like at that
time I dare not imagine. It was bad enough
at my end of the ship where never less than fifty
pilgrims were waiting in front of the three boltless
lavatory doors — for all the six or seven hundred
passengers only these three lavatories were provided.
All day the people were unhappy, all day the sailors
swore. Yet it was not a bad storm, and in the
evening God heard the prayers of His “ faithful
slaves,” and the tumult of the waters died gradually

UPON THE SEA

away, the wind dropped and there was perfect calm.
“ God has saved us,” said one of my neighbours, and
I smiled though I did not contradict. There was
for all of us one battle yet untried, and it was to
reduce many, including my neighbour, to a doubting
of God’s providence.

As we steamed out of the Gulf of Smyrna and I
lay looking out at the sea from the carpenter’s bench,
the full moon rose like a blood-red lantern out of the
East; she changed to gold and then to silver. In
the hold there was singing ; above deck there was
that pleasant contentment that comes after a long
day in the sun when every one is settling down to
sleep. No one paid any attention to the tumultuous-
looking, jagged-peaked cloud bank in the West;
only now and then a sailor would ejaculate, “ There
is trouble coming ; now there is weather, but soon
there will be no weather at all.”

About midnight, when we turned south between
Chios and the mainland, the wind at the force of a
hurricane leapt upon us out of the clouds, and tore
along our decks with a noise as of the stampeding
of thousands of wild beasts. In a moment the
improvised canvas shelters, rigged up over the
cover of the hold, were ripped up and torn to ribbons
as a sheet would be if put up for a sail on a boat.
The sea, which had been rising and tossing for
about an hour, writhed under the onslaught of the
gale, and rose after it as if hurrying to revenge.
The boat began to pitch. Those pilgrims who had

42 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

fallen asleep waked to pray ; those who had been
praying all the while ceased their devotions and
tried to go to sleep. I stuck my foot in the vice of
the bench and tried to avoid being thrown against
the oily engine of the crane confronting me.

At Chios we dropped two anchors, took one
passenger, and waited three hours. The gale raged
unabatedly the whole night, indeed whilst we waited
at anchor it increased. It roared. I left my bench
and climbed up to the look-out deck just to see what
it felt like, but there was no facing it, and the waves
leaped over the sides of the ship like white tigers.
At dawn we steamed south to Samos, Cos, and
Rhodes, pitching all day and blown by a headwind
that no pilgrim could face. There were about four
hundred women on board, and every single one of
them was sick, and there were not fifty men who
had not suffered. At Rhodes the wind moderated,
but as we issued from the Higean to the Mediter¬
ranean the whole movement of the ship altered from
a diving and shuddering to rolling and tumbling.
We were making eastward for Mersina and the Gulf
of Iskenderoon in the very angle of the Levant.
All night we rolled. The bags and baskets rolled,
the utensils in the kitchens rolled and clattered, the
pilgrims rolled and prayed, and moaned and shrieked.
Even the crew, a Russian one, was ill. And no
mercy was vouchsafed. All next day we rolled on
a tumultuous heavy swell. It was an enigma to me
why we took so long to reach Mersina.

UPON THE SEA

“ Are we not thirty-six hours late ? ” I said to the
second officer. “Why do we spend so much time
in these little bays ? ”

“That’s because it’s rough/’ said he. “When¬
ever the sea gets up we go in close to the shore so
as to be near land in case of any eventuality. The
vessel is not new. It is very reliable, but it dates
i860. Now if the weather were calm we might
venture out at sea a little and make a straight
course.”

We were coasting a grand shore where the cliffs,
though sub-tropical at their base, were snow-crested
at their summits. It was more barren, more desolate,
more awe-inspiring than anything on the Black Sea,
even on the Caucasian and Crimean coasts. For
hundreds of miles there was not a town, not even a
large village, not a creek, not a pier, and we watched
the high seas hurl themselves in majesty on an end¬
less succession of rocks. It seemed to me we should
stand little chance if the storm got the better of our
ship and we were forced to take to our three little
boats.

Next night the wind rose again, our masts broke,
the seas washed over us and soaked us to the skin.
In the hold, where many of the peasants raved
like maniacs, there was a considerable quantity of
sea- water. The waves leaped over the funnels, they
smashed the glass roof of the second-class cabin,
they washed one of the boats away. We seemed
to be making no progress, to be even at times going

44 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

astern. At last I heard a sailor say, “ It’s not in our
hands any longer.” The captain, who was a simple-
minded Russian, asked the pilgrims to pray for the
safety of the ship. Then a priest had a happy
thought, and asked the captain for permission to
invite the pilgrims to subscribe for an ikon of
St. Nicholas the Wonder-worker. The distressed
captain started the fund with a rouble, and the priest
borrowed the metal slop-basin of a samovar and set
off on his wonderful mission.

“ The captain says we are going to the bottom
in a quarter of an hour,” said the priest, “ but I have
prayed to willing St. Nicholas and promised him a
rich ikon if we get safely to land once more. What
will you give ? ”

The peasants put in ten-rouble bits, and twenty-
hve-rouble notes, and bags full of silver and copper.
They put in fifties and hundreds of roubles, all that
they had. “ What is money beside life ? ” they said.
“ Take all that we have ! ”

Then the priest, who was quick-witted enough,
saw that such a collection would be an impossibility
to hold should the storm die down, and he returned
and gave back the money, taking only sixpence from
each. “If the storm abates you will be in as bad a
plight as ever if you have no money,” said he.
Despite even that many pilgrims stuffed notes into
his pockets unobserved.

When he had collected sixpence all round he held
a service and said prayers. The pilgrims became

UPON THE SEA

strangely calm, and it seemed as if indeed St. Nicholas
had intervened. The wind was as strong and the
sea as heavy, but somehow the ship seemed to have
more mastery. The captain bawled orders through
the megaphone : evidently all hope was not lost.
Next morning the wind went down, and though the
rolling of the ship was terrible the pilgrims believed
that their prayers had been answered. At
four knots an hour, we crawled to the green
harbour of Mersina, where we remained till there
was calm once more. The pilgrims thanked God.
They recovered from their sickness. They crept
out into the sunshine and smiled again like little
children. They chuckled over the story they would
carry back to all their stay-at-home neighbours in
their native villages. Yes, truly, he who has not
been upon the sea has never prayed to God.

Ill

A STRANGE BOAT-LOAD

We were a strange boat-load over and above the
fifty respectable first and second class passengers
and the pilgrims. At Mount Athos we took aboard
a bound madman. He lay roped in his bed on the
open deck, and gibbered, cursed, spat, stared into
vacancy with protruding bloodshot eyes, and followed
with terror-struck gaze imaginary phantasms floating
in the air about him. He attracted attention by his
terrible hoarse shouts. When you came up to him
you were aware of a raving maniac. He bawled,
he foamed ; a wave of light passed over his face and
its aspect changed from the rage of a fiend to the
placidity of a little child, a baby. In a moment the
devil had him again and his eyes glazed in frantic
preoccupation. He began to live in a noonday
nightmare ; his lips parted in wonder, his eyes
lighted as if he were about to receive the prize of
the earth ; on his lips hung an amorous smile, tears
of joy rolled down his cheek ; he opened his mouth
wider, wider, wider ; his dream failed him, his jaw
dropped, his eyes followed some fiend invisible to

A STRANGE BOAT LOAD

us carrying away his happiness ; his whole strong
body shook and strained in a paroxysm, and from
the depths of his wide-opened mouth his tongue
sought to spit. He cursed and bawled and foamed,
went into querulous sobbing, and then again fell into
a preoccupation, remote, mysterious, interior, and
pallid. It was a terrible and even, I may say, a
dangerous spectacle, a burden to the ship, a burden
to us all. The pilgrims stared at him stupidly and
crossed themselves, or were afeard of him and hid
away in other parts of the ship.

We were rid of him at Smyrna, but there came
on in his place a Greek-Jew showman with a barrel-
organ, three apes, and a bull with two mouths. The
bull was crowned about the brows with blue beads
and tiger shells, and was a veritable reality, having
an ordinary mouth, from the lower jaw of which hung
a horrible second with long yellow teeth all decayed.
The bull had long horns and was very vicious.
There was not much in favour of the apes or against
them, except that their unwashed owner allowed
them to walk about the deck and borrow food of
the pilgrims, and to climb up the rigging scattering
vermin the while. As for the barrel-organ, it was
set going on Sunday and played very secular airs,
including the Merry Widow waltz and two or three
jangling Turkish dances, to the distaste of many
pilgrims.

At Alexandretti we shipped twenty-nine head of
cows for Port Said, where they would be trans-shipped

48 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

for Italy. It was not a great number of cattle, but
it added greatly to our multifariousness, especially
as there was no room for them in the hold and they
had to be accommodated on the deck. At the same
calm port in the beautiful Gulf of Iskenderoon we
took twenty new passengers — Russian fishermen
with their nets, very rough and uncouth, but speak¬
ing Turkish like the Turks themselves, exiles who
many years since had deserted a band of pilgrims
and their native land in order to escape military
service. They were all fine figures, swarthy, hairy,
hard and daring, worth any three Turks apiece
physically. Already they were speaking Russian
badly, and, as I understood, they all had Syrian
wives, some of them two or three wives, and had
settled down to Syrian life, and were generally with¬
out regrets, vodka being cheap.

For the rest we changed our Easterns at every
port. The T urks looked very funny figures beside the
peasants, they in heelless slippers, the others in high
jack-boots, or rags and felt roped to the knee.
The typical Turkish passenger is a slim young man
in voluminous brown pants over which is tied a
soiled white apron, fastened at the waist with a
gaudy belt ; over apron and pants is a light, greeny-
grey summer overcoat ; on his head a black-tasselled
fez jauntily cocked. At Constantinople we had fifty
or so of such Turks, mostly with their veiled women
and with straw pallets, gaudy mattresses and quilts
on which to accommodate their families. As

A STRANGE BOAT-LOAD

we drew south to Rhodes and Iskenderoon and
Syria the dresses became more bizarre, and the
peasants saw stove-black Bedouin Arabs to their
great astonishment ; fuzzy-wuzzy Egyptian Arabs ;
Syrian women in baggy trousers (sharivari ) ; women
black as Dinah the cook, goggle-eyed, heavy ear-
ringed, thick lipped, enveloped in a spotless white
robe which covered the face and came down to the
ankles ; saucy unveiled Syrian women ; women
without stockings, but with gold rings on their big
toes, heavy silver serpents on their ankles, and
bracelets at their knees ; women with nails all dyed
carmine ; then, turbaned men robed from head to
foot in Cambridge blue, men with saffron-coloured
shirts and scarlet belts, men in white, in cream, in
apparently old carpets and hearthrugs, with fancy
towels swathed round their brows and their middles.
And it was the season of the spring onion, and every
Eastern carried an onion in his hand.

One morning after a stormy night there were a
dozen or so people up in the prow taking the sun.
I was having my breakfast, a monk with a black
rosary was saying his prayers, and about me were
pilgrims and Turks looking round aimlessly. Up
there came two Syrian girls who had got soaked the
night before, and began to undress and put their
wet clothes up to dry. They squatted down on the
deck, removed their sloppy slippers, peeled from
their white legs their clinging open-work stockings,
stood up and dropped their wet skirts — without any

50 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

modesty certainly. One of them was pretty, as
young Syrian girls usually are, and she was very free
indeed, sitting in a short white cotton petticoat which
flapped in the wind, and showing more of her legs
than was nice or proper. I was enjoying their ways
as part of the morning, when suddenly up rose the
monk who had been saying his prayers, raised a
denunciatory finger against the pretty girl and
snorted out the word “ Diavol,” tramping away past
her in indignation.

An Albanian standing by said to me, “ Is it the
marushka he calls ‘Devil’?” I thought that it was.
The girl, however, seemed unconscious of the rebuke
or insult, whatever such a denunciation might be
taken to be in these parts, and calmly went on
removing her blouse and letting her tempestuous
petticoat jump about to its heart’s delight. The
old monk cried out to the peasants to beware of her
and seek strength against temptation. The peasants
looked quite indifferent, however ; they were mostly
grandfathers. Nakedness was nothing to them.
The Turks standing about grinned. The girl, still
paying no attention, sat down again and holding a
pair of dry, brown cashmere stockings embroidered
with open-work flowers, began putting them on very
laboriously, fitting her little damp toes into them and
drawing them over her feet. The monk came right
up to her and bade her “ Begone, devil, evil-smelling
one, shameless ! ” Some under-garments were hang¬
ing on the ropes of the mast to dry ; he pointed to

rHE SYRIAN GIRLS WHO CAUSED THE TROUBLE.

i I

A STRANGE BOAT-LOAD

these, and spat upon the deck many times, crying out,
“ Tfu ! Vonuchy (evil-smelling), Tfu, Diavol \ Tfu ! ”
He came over to me and said, “ She shows her legs,
all that a man wants to see, oh Tfu ! ”

The girl looked over at me and smiled, and
despite the appeal of the old monk I smiled back.
For she was pretty, and I couldn’t side with the old
Puritan. There was no further development. Both
girls went downstairs for five minutes and returned
with more clothes on ; but the pretty one again sat
on deck and proceeded to remove her stockings,
this time to change into a pink pair. She smiled
saucily, and the monk paid no more attention for
the time being. However, while she had been
below, a gust of wind had gained possession of her
wet under-garments, and taken them rhythmically
along the taut rope up to the mast-head, where they
veritably shrieked in the wind. The captain very
irritably gave an order to a sailor, and the next
moment the latter was gingerly climbing the rope-
ladder to bring down the guilty apparel. The
pretty girl received it with arch smiles.

Presently a third sister appeared, and she made a
great square couch up in the prow with blankets
and quilts and mattresses, and the three girls lay
there in a voluptuous-looking heap all day. They
were hospitable damsels. The pretty one smiled to
me, and stretching out a plump white arm, on which
there was for ornament a heavy silver bracelet like
a serviette ring, offered me a glass of wine which I

52 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

was fain to take. The monk, seeing me in such
proximity to danger, suddenly came up, and taking
me by the arm beguiled me away.

Next day the girls found some male friends, and
I saw them very gaily disposed upon their mattresses
in a snug corner below, and the boys of the buffet
were kept busily going to and fro with trays of
glasses and bottles of beer.

THE CRUSTS

A strange sight on bright days were the piles of
black bread gone mouldy, exposed in the sunshine
to air. Almost every pilgrim brought with him ten
to twenty pounds of his native black bread — not in
a block or in loaves, as might be expected, but in
waste ends and crusts saved through past months
from the cottage table, in some cases through past
years. Each beggar-pilgrim had an inordinate
supply of this sukharee as it is called, for when a man
begs his way from village to village he gathers more
crusts than coppers. It is only in the towns that
money is offered him.

At ten o’clock in the morning scrubby-looking
peasants would emerge from the holds with their
sacks, and finding a sunny, dry spot on the deck,
empty out their crusts, run their brown fingers
through them, and then squatting beside them begin
to select especially mouldy ones and pare them with
their old knives. It amazed me to think that they
could eat such stuff, as indeed it amazed many of
their richer fellow-pilgrims. Yet not only were such

54 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

husks eaten ; they actually formed the staple article
of diet.

Hot water and salt added to these green crusts
was called cabbage-soup ( borzh ) ! When wood-oil
and black olives were added, and the cook allowed
the pilgrim’s pot to simmer on his stove, it was
already prazdnitchny (a festival diet). I have seen
peasants struggling to eat the bread unsoftened, a
spring onion in one hand, a great crust in the other,
but as the bread was hard as brick this was a difficult
matter. Commonly it was necessary to make tea
and let the sukharee soak in the tumbler for five
minutes or so.

Many pilgrims provided for their whole time in
Jerusalem in this way. They pinned their faith on
rye bread even when it was green outside and yellow
within. Perhaps their action was rather superfluous,
as their meals were fairly well looked after by the
Russian authorities in the Holy City, but not every
one could afford the twopence a head charged for
dinner at the hostelry.

The richer peasants fared better for food. They
brought their sacks of beans and potatoes from
Odessa and cooked them on board, bought fast-soup
at fourpence a plate from the kitchen man specially
employed to cook it. They made themselves
porridge, bought oranges and locust nuts galore,
honey, figs, dates.

Yet for all of us the great Lenten fast, precluding
not only flesh, but milk products and eggs, was a

THE CRUSTS

severe trial. But for the wood-oil, which was
unpalatable, not a drop of fat was allowed into the
food. Bread was eaten without butter, without even
dripping, nothing could be cooked for us in butter
or fat, cheese was not permitted, neither were curds,
cakes and biscuits were out of the question. When
I think of the miles we tramped in the Holy Land,
and the heat of the sun that beat down upon us, I
wonder that anything of our bodies beyond skin and
bone remained to take back to Russia.

Fasting, however, induces a mood which is very
fit for the spiritual experiences of Jerusalem. Its
greatest test and trial probably lies, not so much in
the poverty of the mouzhik’s food diet, he is ever used
to that, but in the denial during seven weeks of
tobacco and vodka. On all my journey to Jerusalem
I saw not one man touch beer or spirits, and not
one with a cigarette in his mouth. Yet many
of the pilgrims were drunkards by their own
admission. I don’t think their wills were strong,
but certainly their beliefs were very strong, since
they enabled the peasants to say “ No ” to Turkish
gin and cognac offered them at half the price they
would have had to pay for it in Russia. At every port
the temptation offered, and Turks and Arabs not only
proffered the bottles, but pestered the pilgrims with
them. ; The pilgrims would say “ Go away ; it is a sin.
We may not drink it.” The Turk would go away
and come back again next minute. Then, perhaps
after long haggling, the pilgrim would buy the liquor

56 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

and put it hastily at the bottom of his sack, there to
lie till the end of the fast and his homeward journey
from Jerusalem. Perhaps in some cases such a
pilgrim would succumb to temptation and have a
little drink on the quiet. I can’t say, not having
seen, though certainly I saw one or two pilgrims
in an inebriated condition at Jerusalem in Holy
Week itself. These had anticipated the feast of
Easter.

A LITTLE-RUSSIAN PILGRIM IN A TEN-YEAR-OLD SHEEPSKIN

He reminded me of Carlyle as painted 1 jy Whistler.

THE GOSPEL OF STUPIDITY

The voyage was full of incident and interest. At
every port some of the pilgrims descended to the
ferry boats, and they had extraordinary rows with
Turkish boatmen who tried to charge extortionate
sums for rowing them to the mainland. The peasants
were interested in every sight and sound, and didn’t
fail to make comparisons with their native land,
commenting on the size of the buildings and the
state of trade. When they saw the motor-omnibuses
at Constantinople and the electric trams at Salonica
they were somewhat surprised, more surprised still
at the cheapness of German and English manufac¬
tured goods, most surprised of all at the cheapness
of their own Russian sugar, sold at a penny per
pound less in Turkey than in their native land.
We strolled heavily through the bazaars of Smyrna,
looking curiously at the veiled women, more curiously
still at the dark beauties who were unveiled, the
modern Turkish ladies dressed out in the height of
fashion. We stopped and haggled at the stalls, we
were not shy to crowd into the booths where gentle

58 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

craftsmen were making the wooden parts of guitars
and viols, or beady-eyed smiths were setting stones
in sword hilts. We tried to question the carpet
weavers. We blocked up the doorway of a hat¬
ironing shop where scores of rusty fezes were fixed
on copper hat-trees, until at last a coffee-coloured
Arab busy ironing howled to us to be gone.

On board there was always some new develop¬
ment to the fore. Thus one day the peasant women
discovered that there was hot water ad libitum at
their disposal, and they had a washing day. They
not only washed their linen, but their bodies and
their skirts and blouses, and their husbands’ shirts.
That afternoon there was not a free square yard of
deck where one could stand and not have wet
shirt-tails flapping in the eyes. The crew were
extremely wrathful, but as they had orders to make
things as comfortable for the pilgrims as possible
they could not very well interfere.

Other days were given up entirely to prayers
and devotions. All the peasants were in groups
reading the Bible, praying and singing together.
Other days similar groups were engaged telling
stories or listening to them.

One day Father Yevgeny, the monk who raised
the scandal over the Syrian girls, drew a crowd of
peasants round him as he sat and discoursed on the
Gospels up at the prow. He was rather an Iliodor
type, an extremely interesting phenomenon in
modern Russia, the monk with a mission and the

THE GOSPEL OF STUPIDITY 59

fervour of a prophet of the early Church. “ Forgive
me, brothers,” I heard him say, “ I am only malo-
gramotni (little-learned), but I speak from the soul.”
He beat his breast.

“ I am one of you. I was an ordinary soldier
in the Turkish war of 1876. I had a vision and
promised myself to God. I was wounded, and
when I recovered I went into a monastery. I’ve
been a monk thirty years now, glory be to God !

“ Read your Gospels, dear muzhichoks, and your
Psalter, and the history of the Church, but have
nothing to do with contemporary 1 writing. The
Gospels gather you together in love, but the other
writings force you apart. You know the one to be
eternal truth, but the other you will be unable to
deal with, to get right with. Remember Adam
was of the earth, but Christ is of heaven ! ” He
pointed down his open throat, signifying that the
heaven he meant was the kingdom of God within.
“Christ said, ‘I am the Light.’ As long as you
hold to your Gospels you dwell in the light and live.
They tell you wonderful things about the English
and the Americans and the French, but in so far as
these nations have departed from Christ they dwell
in darkness. The French, for instance, have
thrown over the Church and monasticism, and
there in France now Satan is at work doing the

1 The Russian language being much purer than the English, long words
like “contemporary” are just compounds of simple Russian words, and are
understood of all the people. Thus “contemporary” in Russian is so-
vrctricny (“ with-the-time ”).

6o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

most terrible things in the dark. Oh, I wouldn’t
live in France. . . .”

The monk gesticulated wildly.

“ There, as you know, is the headquarters of the
Freemasons and they operate upon England.
Already England thinks of throwing over the
Church. And nowadays French books and English
books are being translated and thrown broadcast
over Russia. You, dear muzhichoks, some of
whom have learned to read, are in danger. But
be advised by me. Never look at anything foreign
or modern. Truth has no need to be modern. It
is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and
you find it in your Gospels. You know what is good
from what is bad ; that is your salvation. Stick to
it. Modern people say everything good is a little
bit bad, and everything bad has a little bit of good
in it. But you know when you thresh the corn and
you lift the grain shovel, the good seed remains,
whiff goes the chaff.”

The peasants all smiled and chortled, and the
monk enjoyed a triumph, but went on forcefully : —

“When people come to you with new ideas,
have nothing to do with them. Just answer, ‘ I’m a
simple mouzhik ; I’m far too stupid to understand it ! ’
Don’t you mind being stupid. The devil is the
cleverest spirit in heaven and earth, much cleverer
than God, but not wise, not wise. ... If Eve had
been a little stupider, oh, if she’d only been a little
stupider and failed to understand the devil !

ii THE GOSPEL OF STUPIDITY 61

Muzhichoks dear, when they come to you tempting
you with new ideas, just say, ‘ It’s all beyond me,
I’m only a poor, stupid, simple moujik, and I can’t
understand,’ and then you go and read a chapter
from your Gospel and you’ll be all right.”

The monk went on, enlarging on his theme and
haranguing his patient and affectionate hearers,
coming ever and anon to the same conclusion. He
was preaching a gospel which is probably heard
nowhere in the world but among the Russians, a
gospel of stupidity, of dulness, in opposition to
cleverness, of faith in wisdom.

• ••••••

And all the while the monk was preaching this
true-blue sermon of Russian conservatism up above,
the ship’s carpenter was preaching red-hot social
democracy below. Strange to say, there was not a
single sailor on this pilgrim boat who did not laugh
at the pilgrims, did not think them fools. The
crew might have been thought to be revolutionary
conspirators to judge by their serious conversa¬
tion. They never missed a chance to propagandise
among the peasants, trying to engender hate of
the Tsar and disbelief in the Church. Luckily
most of the pilgrims regarded this as a sort of
religious experience and testing, part of the cross
they had to bear, a sort of temptation which God
had permitted in order to test their worthiness.

Scores of times I overheard such words as “ It’s
all moshenstvo (knavery). It’s all a great exploitation.

62 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

The monks take your money and get drunk. You
pay them to pray for your soul and they keep
mistresses. You buy on Easter eve a fat candle
costing a rouble, you light it, the monks immediately
blow it out and sell it to some one else for another
rouble. One candle is sold to twenty or thirty people.
And the miracle of receiving the Holy Fire, it’s all
a fraud. The monks put a chemical powder in a cleft
of the stone, and when the sun gets warm enough
the powder bursts into flame of its own account like
phosphorus. It pays the monks to have the miracle;
thousands of roubles are paid for seats to look on at
it. You’ll see when you go to the sacred places the
monks will chase you into cellars, where you’ll find
yourselves all alone, and there they’ll demand all
the money you have. They’ll make you give them
a list of every soul alive or dead in your native
village in Russia, and pay at the rate of a shilling
each for prayers for them. If you are a young
woman, take care ; they’ll persuade you to enter a
nunnery, they’ll sell you into the Turkish harems,
or do worse still, marry you themselves. . . .

“ Why didn’t you remain in Russia and put the
money in the bank, or buy books and learn what is
going on in the world ? Why do you waste your
time making this long journey when you might be
earning good money in the fields and the towns ? ”

Then a peasant would answer : “ I don’t know.
You speak too fast. It seems God didn’t make
man only to work and earn money, like a horse or

ii THE GOSPEL OF STUPIDITY 63

a cow. And did not God live and die in the land
that we are going to? If the Greek monks are
evil, are there not Russian ones ? We will go to
the Russian ones. If all are evil, the land at least
is holy. It is the places that we are going to, not
the people. The priests in Russia often oppress us,
are often very drunken and very evil. But that
doesn’t make God less holy. Priests even say to
us covetously, ‘Why go to Jerusalem? Jerusalem
is here at home. You wish God’s forgiveness?
Buy a twenty rouble ikon for the church and pay
for prayers.’ But we know such advice is evil.”

The propagandist would dismiss the pilgrim
with a sneer, and the latter would be left wondering
how it was the sailor thought him a durak (block¬
head), and why the sailor should not be convinced
by his answer.

On the other hand, the revolutionary sailors did
have their successes, their two per cent who got
infected by the modern talk, generally peasants
whose minds had been infected by the ideas of land
insurrectionism at home.

The peasants were of too antique a type to be
good ground for propagandism. They were be¬
lievers. What is more, they were in the full
sobriety of Mid-Lent fasting, and not disposed to
fire-eating. They were also honest, saving peasants
who, in a lean year, had found money to go all this
way. Had they been waverers from the faith it
had been different — drunkards who sought not to

64 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

blame themselves for their country’s evils, spend¬
thrifts who wished to say the talents were spent in
paying the taxes, or Jews who grudge every penny
not given to commercial development. The
hostelries of Jerusalem might then have been
infernos, and the sacred places scenes of riot.

No, it was the gospel of the monk and not that
of the carpenter that prevailed. The monk’s
gospel, be it said, is the only one allowed to be
heard effectively among the Russian peasantry.
And only on board ship, far from the police, could
such socialistic artillery as that of the ship’s car¬
penter be brought to bear on the peasants : if such
were allowed in Russia among the people already
infected with such ideas, the day of the success
of social democracy 1 would be strangely hastened.

As it is, the monk’s word remains, “When they
come to you tempting you with new ideas, say
‘ It’s all beyond me, I’m only a poor, stupid, simple
mouzhik, and I can’t understand. I’m far too stupid
to understand it.’ Then you read a chapter from
your Gospel and you’ll be all right.”

1 By social democracy I mean here the programme of the Social Democratic
Party, the Russian revolutionaries.

TALKS WITH THE PILGRIMS

Day crept on from dawn to dusk in converse. We
became a large family, or rather a series of families.
We all became known to one another and strangely
intimate. The intimacy was strange because none
of us had met in our lives before, and we came
from the ends of the Russian earth. It was com¬
paratively unusual for two peasants to find one
another belonging to the same province, and a
province in Russia has sometimes the extent of a
kingdom in Western Europe. We each had our
special story to give — something not familiar to our
fellow - pilgrims. Thus the man from the Car¬
pathian frontier talked with the man from the
Urals, the Archangel mouzhik with the peasant
from the Caucasian steppes, the pilgrim from the
Dneiper with the pilgrim from the Petchora, he of
old Novgorodian Russia with the Siberian from
beyond Baikal. One might multiply examples.
All the Russias were there, and I was glad to find
myself in the midst of them.

We had homely things to tell — thus, that beef

65 F

66 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

was five copecks (a penny farthing) a pound in
Samarsk Government, and potatoes fifteen copecks
a pood (forty pounds) ; that the Baptists were
increasing on the Don steppes, and bought
their converts at a hundred roubles apiece, the
pastors waiting at the railway stations and making
each drunkard sign a paper that he had renounced
orthodoxy and received a hundred roubles in ex¬
change ; that the Molokans had been trampling on
the ikons in a monastery, and had therefore been
flogged ; that a monk in Viatka Government had
prophesied the end of the world ; that plague con¬
tinued in Astrakhan ; that the snow had been late
in Little Russia this winter, and the crops might be
spoiled. A peasant from Kostroma told how thirty
were frozen to death on a wedding party lost in the
snow. A man from above Perm told how he had
been with a search party looking for a lost convict,
and had come upon him kneeling in the snow as if
praying, but frozen to death and stiff as a post.

There were women doing embroidery and gossip¬
ing about stitches ; and veterans of the Turkish
wars, one of the Crimean War, telling how they
got their wounds ; old pilgrims who had been to
Jerusalem many times telling stories of the Sacred
Fire. There was a great discussion as to whether
a pilgrim sent by his village, and on behalf of his
village, having only the money subscribed by the
village, could really pray for his own soul at Jeru¬
salem. Would he not have to give his whole

ii TALKS WITH THE PILGRIMS 67

devotions to his village ? A rather absurd dis¬
cussion, for he could easily pray for each man and
woman in turn including himself.

It wasn’t taken very friendly to read books all
by oneself, and once an old dame took a book out
of my hand, saying, “ Don’t read so much or God
will make a saint of you and take you from us.
Tell us about yourself. (Kako'i guberny?) Which
government do you come from ? ” And I was
obliged to talk like the rest.

One of my most intimate acquaintances, and
one I talked much to, was a young man from the
‘‘top” of the Ural, 500 versts north of Orenburg.
He had left in January and tramped the rest of the
winter. His village, he said, was surrounded by
forest. One year in four nothing at all would grow
in the fields, not even grass and weeds. A contrast
to the black-earth districts, where year after year,
without any manuring, or any rest and fallowness,
the land goes on rendering abundantly.

This boy, for he was not more than twenty years
old, was a handsome, open-faced fellow, strong and
straight, a really beautiful figure. He had not shaved
yet and never would. The little brown hairs
glistened on his sunburnt cheeks. He was dressed
in an ancient, rusty looking overcoat (a touloop ) from
his shoulder to his ankles. He had slept in it on the
mountains and among the forests ; every night on the
steamer he slept in it up at the “ nose ” of the prow
in the freshest, coldest place, and the Mediterranean

68 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

dews were nothing to him. When he reached the
Holy Land he made all his journeys up country, to
Nazareth, to Jordan, to Abraham’s oak, and the
rest on foot, and whenever I met him he seemed
radiantly happy and well. I noticed at Jordan,
when he stripped and got into his grave garments,
that his body was clean and white like that of a
child.

It was strange to see a young fellow of twenty
in the midst of so many greybeards, and I rather
wondered how Russia could spare him from the
fields.

“ Why did you decide to make the pilgrimage ? ”
I asked him.

He blushed somewhat awkwardly as he answered,
“ I took cold, and whilst I was ill I promised God
that I would go to the Holy Sepulchre, and that I
would eat no meat and drink no wine till I reached

• , a

it.

“ But surely you come from a famine district ;
how could you find money to pay the passage on
the steamer ? ”

He waved his hand, deprecating the notion that
anything like want of money could stand in the way
of the pilgrimage. Yet his answer made matters
clearer.

“ It’s not money we lack, unfortunately. We
had to sell all our horses because we had nothing to
feed them with.”

“ And you sold them well ? ” I queried.

THE BOY FROM THE TOP OF THE URAES.

ii TALKS WITH THE PILGRIMS 69

“Well at first, but badly afterwards. At last we
sold them merely for the value of their hides. We
kept our cows because they gave us milk, but at
last we had to sell them also. We sold them at
ridiculous prices. When we had sold everything
the Government stepped in and supplied us with
new cattle free of charge, and gave us daily rations
of bread and fodder.”

“ Did many of you die ? ”

“ Many babies and old people,” he answered
with a smile. “ Some of the young ones got ill as I
did, but none of my acquaintance died. It would
take much more than that to kill us.”

“ And what sort of people are you ? ”

He replied that they were a peaceful people.

“ Any robbers ? ”

“ None. And won’t be till the railway comes.
I don’t remember hearing of a robbery in our
village. Our neighbours are the Kirghiz, and they
are gentle and hospitable. The officials do not
trouble us much ; we are so far away. It is not so
long ago that they discovered us. Twenty years
ago no one knew anything about our settlement ;
Russian pioneers had founded the colony fifty years
or more ago, and they grew their own fruits and
made their own tools without any intercourse with
the rest of Russia either to buy or to sell. We
didn’t serve in the Russian army, paid no taxes.
We built our own church, but we had no priest.”

“ How did you manage ? ”

70 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

“We just used the church, and sang and prayed
there as if there were a priest, ” he answered. “ Even
when you have a priest it often turns out he is
drunk, or cannot take the service for some other
reason.”

• ••••••

This is a typical example of the account each
peasant gave of himself as he entered into con¬
versation with his neighbour on the boat. I shall
not recount all the stories seriatim. Suffice it that
I got to know a score of them quite intimately, and
we carried the common life enjoyed on the steam¬
boat over to the life in the hostelries, at the monas¬
teries, and at the shrines. W e met again and again,
and talked of our doings and our prospects, took
advice of one another and blessings.

There remains one little amusing incident to
record here. An old crone found me out one day.
I was sitting on a heap of canvas scribbling down
a story I had just heard. An ancient pilgrim
lady came up to me and peered under the brim of
my hat, saying, “ Lend me a pencil, please, I have
lost mine or some one has stolen it. I also am a
poet.”

VII

JAFFA

When it became generally known that we were
taking a fortnight to make a voyage that other
vessels did in four days there was a certain amount
of complaint ; and complaint seemed very justifiable
when we had experienced one storm, and feared
every evening another. Yet what a journey was
ours ! I for one would not have shortened it,
uncomfortable as I was.

From the stepping on board at Odessa, or Sevas¬
topol, or Batum, to the stepping off at Jaffa, each
pilgrim was living and seeing each day things that
most ordinary mortals miss all their lives. For
they not only journeyed to the Holy Land, they
visited the whole Levant on the way.

I take my mind back now, retrospectively, over

the whole fortnight. I did not join the pilgrims till

Constantinople, but I picture very vividly their

voyage thither across the Black Sea, the warm

February noon ; the snouted porpoises rushing to

meet the vessel, brown-backed, yellow-bellied ; the

strong gulls hovering above the masts ; all the

72 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

overcast afternoon and evening the pilgrims watch¬
ing their boat ploughing its way over the vapour-
coloured water desert. The night calm, and at
twelve the ship at a standstill at the entrance to
the Bosphorus, where the Turkish officers came on
board to see whether there were weapons stowed
away in the hold. The pilgrims awake and astir
before dawn saw the grandest sight in the world :
the magenta-coloured waters of the strait, mist-
shrouded before sunrise ; the soft, dark, romantic
cliffs raising themselves up stupendously on either
hand ; the old towers and castles scarcely visible, so
high are they perched, so wan is the colour of their
walls. The boat steamed up the historic water, and
the sun shone through mists on to dark cypress
woods and ancient cemeteries. Brown geese were
swimming down below ; up above, the clouds were
flying. The strait is no broader than a great river,
and from each bank high white and yellow houses
stare across the water with uncurtained windows.

We stood at anchor on the vast stage of
Constantinople harbour, and it seemed we had
entered the capital of the world. The vessels of all
the nations stood about us, and we listened in be¬
wilderment to the roll of the traffic in the town and
the desolating howls of the syrens.

Next morning, with a stiff breeze in our faces,
we were driving along the fresh and foaming
Hellespont, green hills and mountains on each side
of us, ancient ruins and modern Turkish earthworks.

FROM ISLAND TO ISLAND IN THE ARCHIPELAGO.

ii JAFFA 73

We issued through the Dardanelles, as it were out
of an open mouth, and were delivered to the wild,
foam -crested Hlgean. We passed many a little
island and barren rock as we lifted ourselves over to
Mount Athos. At the Holy island in the evening
the sea gained peace, and we journeyed placidly
through the night from island to island to Salonica,
the dim stars looking down on us.

We had to thank the highly irrelevant commercial
business of the ship for two or three extra days in
the Archipelago. All one day we had Mount Athos
a shadow on one side and two black pyramids of rock
on the other. It was the balmy south, the air was
moist and warm, the water waveless, the sky grey.
We slipped from islet to islet along snowy-crested
rocks and grey - breasted uplands. All day the
peasants crossed themselves to the black shadow of
the Holy mountain.

Next morning we were in the quiet Gulf of
Smyrna, in view of the green hills and the gay
white town. Most of us went out to see the town,
to pay reverence to the relics of St. George, and to
see the arena where early Christians were given to
the beasts. We passed by ancient Ephesus, or
rather the site of it, and wondered at the silence that
had crept over the mouths of those who praised
Diana.

We rode on the storm waves past hundreds of
islands, one of them Patmos, to the ancient walled
city of Rhodes. We were all too shaken to pay

74 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

much attention to the scenery, but those of us who
were not sick saw the snowy ranges of Adalia
and Adana, and wondered. On our weather side
we saw the great black cliffs of Cyprus some
fifty miles away, and on the lee the overwhelming
snow - crowned cliffs of what was once Cilicia.
I shall remember Mersina in the early morning
— a settlement of lowr dwellings at the feet of
blue hills, by a blue sea. A silver crescent moon
was looking out of the dawn sky. The sunrise
came white and glistering, and lit up the line o i
white houses which comprise the town, showing the
few cattle on the heath beyond it, the blue hills
beyond the heath, and the great snow range beyond
them all. In the noontide the water turned a soft
emerald green.

We steamed up the Gulf of Iskenderoon to
Alexandretti, another line of wThite houses with
spear-shaped mosques and a mission house, all low
down at the very toes of high green hills. At sunset
the water was black-blue, and high above the green
hills there came into view crystal glittering snow
peaks shining with a light that was unearthly.

“ God has made the sea calm and the earth
beautiful,” said a peasant. “It is because we are
nearing the Holy Land.”

And we turned south along the beautiful Syrian
coast to the amphitheatre-shaped city of Beyrout.
Then in the sight of the mountains of Lebanon we
ploughed the waves to the site of the ancient and

ii JAFFA 75

impregnable port of Tyre, past Acre and Mount
Carmel, to the city of Japhet.

As we neared Jaffa the excitement of the pilgrims
was tremendous; their hearts beat feverishly. We
left the Jewish town of Kaifa before sunrise one
morning, and as Jaffa was the next port there was
extraordinary upheaval and noise in every part of
the ship. The pilgrims were all attiring themselves
in clean shirts, and many were putting on new boots,
for they counted it a sin to face in stained garments
the land where the Author of their religion was born,
or to tread upon it in old boots — albeit many had
no choice of gear in this matter.

Eastern Jaffa, oldest city of the world, stood before
us at noon with its clambering yellow houses and its
blue water foaming over the many sunken rocks in
the harbour. The ferry-boats swarmed about us,
and Turks and Arabs in garish attire all yelled at
the passengers at once. A burly nigger in a Turkey
red jersey, on which was printed “ Cook’s boatman,”
took charge of the boat on which my party was
landed — we were about seventy. It was amusing
to hear the boatman addressing a German in the
first class, “ Da yer waant a boat, sar ? Over thar.
A’right, a’right ! ” There were eight or nine boat¬
loads of us, and we were rowed in across the rolling
foam to the Customs, from which, without any
parley or question about things to declare, we were
hurried along to a Greek monastery on a cliff

Arab boys ran alongside as we filed into the

76 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS n

cloisters, and they shouted in Russian “ Moskof
khorosh , moskof khorosh ! (The Muscovites are
good, the Muscovites are fine !) ” Supercilious
looking, mouldy-green camels snuffed down at us
condescendingly. Greek monks hurried up to us
affably with general congratulations. The money¬
changers rattled their boxes. The trembling,
shivering beggars whimpered and gurgled round our
knees. The orange and nut-cake hawkers besieged
us. Yes, after many callings we had at last landed
definitively, and we had reached Palestine at last.
Henceforth our journeying would be on land.

Ill

JERUSALEM ATTAINED

THE DISGUISE

I travelled in disguise as one of the pilgrims
themselves, and I very rarely admitted my foreign
origin to any one, for I wished to hear and see just
what the peasants said and just what they did — to
know what they were. On the steamer, with its
disarranged and bewildering life, my part was easy.
There was no one in authority to say to the pilgrims
that I was perhaps a dangerous character, one to
avoid ; and the pilgrims themselves took me for
granted, because they saw me every morning, noon,
and eve in converse with one of their neighbours.

Now that we had come to Jaffa the position was
different. I should have to pass muster as a peasant
pilgrim in the presence of Russian priests and
monks, the Consul, and no doubt other officials.
Soon I should be among pilgrims who had arrived
before us, and who were unfamiliar with my
countenance. I felt a considerable amount ot
trepidation, and in imagination saw myself singled
out of the crowd of pilgrims, given an honourable
lodging apart, or expelled as a rogue and a vagabond

8o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

— in any case removed from my friends and com¬
panions of the boat. And I wished to pass right
through with the pilgrims to the very end and
accomplishment of the pilgrimage.

It was some relief to observe that the Greek
monks at Jaffa knew a great deal less Russian than
I did, that no passports were demanded, and that
we were all given the simple hospitality of the
monastery without question or reserve. The lay
brethren spread clean straw pallets over the stone
floors of the cells ; there was hot water at our
disposal, and we could make ourselves tea ; for the
rest, there were Arab hawkers with freshly pickled
gherkins and new loaves. It was not difficult to
make a meal and feel comfortable for the night.
The cells were mostly windowless, but high and
dry, and if cold, yet airy. We looked at the sun
setting beyond the rollers in the harbour, and felt
ourselves in a pleasant refuge after long issue with
the unfriendly waves.

As we had nearly all of us Russian money we
were pestered by well - dressed money - changers
wanting to give us piastres for ten-copeck bits — a
disadvantageous exchange, which the peasants
nevertheless were generally ready to make. As
it turned out, there was little need to change
Russian silver at all, for it is taken quite cheerfully
by the Arabs, who are ready to quote a price for
their wares in any currency, and to change francs,
shillings, roubles, liras, what you like.

PILGRIMS ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM.

Ill

THE DISGUISE

8 1

Next day we were going to Jerusalem, and
railway tickets for that journey were distributed,
many of the pilgrims taking advantage of that
convenience of civilisation, the more fastidious and
the poorer going on foot. Meanwhile, we hoped for
a good night’s rest, as we were most of us pretty
low in health as a result of the arduous voyage.
We heard a long vesper service in the open courts
below, and lit innumerable candles before the ikons
there, the monk, Yevgeny, making himself very
prominent, threading the crowd and gathering in
the candles of the worshippers who couldn’t get
through, and lighting them in front himself. I, for
my part, watched the pilgrims, did as they did,
and felt that still, as on the boat, I was taken for

When we arrived at Jerusalem we were met on

the Jaffa road by a giant Montenegrin guide in the

magnificent uniform of the Russian Palestine Society

— scarlet and cream cloak and riding knickers — and

conducted in a huge irregular procession through

the Jerusalem streets to the Russian cathedral. The

heat seemed to be terrible, we were dusty and worn

and over-bundled. Arab beggars, almost naked, and

ugly beyond words, howled for coppers in our way,

impertinent Turks clawed our bundles from our

backs to carry them for a price, hawkers surrounded

us with their wares. It was a difficult progress ;

the weak pilgrims were very hard-pressed, and

many of the stronger ones took their baggage for

82 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iii

them and carried it as well as their own. I think
we all felt a strange affection for one another coming
to the surface as we actually came in sight of the
ancient walls of the Holy City.

I still, however, thought somewhat diffidently of
my chances of being received with the pilgrims, and
it was some satisfaction to see a German tourist who
levelled his kodak at me, and ran alongside of the
procession to get me into focus, at length snapshot
me. I showed no more interest in his action than a
cow would, and I am sure he shows my photograph
to his friends as that of a typical and even splendid
pilgrim.

But not to delay suspense, let me say that I was
actually accepted at Jerusalem. I even obtained a
place in the general hostel, and slept a night or two
there before I took an official into my confidence
and told him my secret. By that time I had seen
the life in the hostel, and I understood the whole
arrangement of the peasants’ time for the rest of
Lent. Even if the officials thought it was very
dangerous to have an Englishman living among the
pilgrims — the priests and monks, unfortunately,
identify England with “free thought” and advanced
ideas — and if they decided I must be housed apart
I knew what the pilgrims were going to do, and
could manage to be with them as before. Had I
not many friends, my companions on the boat ?
But by good fortune I obtained permission to
occupy the berth I found in the hostelry up till

Ill

THE DISGUISE

Palm Sunday, and later, up till Easter itself. It
was also hospitality of an unusual sort. The
Roman Catholics, for instance, extend the hospitality
of their Jerusalem hostels only to the members of
their own Church.

JERUSALEM ATTAINED

All whispering prayers to ourselves and making
religious exclamations, we flocked after one another
through the Jerusalem streets ; in outward appearance
jaded, woe-begone, and beaten, following one
another’s backs like cattle that have been driven
from far ; but in reality excited, feverish, and
fluttering like so many children that have been kept
up far too late to meet their father come home from
long travel.

When we came to the green grass plots and the
gravel paths outside the monastery, halted, and
disposed our burdens on the ground, our eyes all
shone ; our hearts were on our sleeves. Old grey¬
beards, crooked and bent, straightened themselves
out, as if tasting for a moment the spirit of youth,
and they began to skip, almost to dance ; ancient
grandmothers also, none the less exalted and
feverish, fussed about and chattered like maids on a
festival day. We looked at one another more
cordially and more lovingly than men in a crowd

generally look ; we were affectionate to one another,

m JERUSALEM ATTAINED 85

like so many brothers or so many fathers and sons.
We were in a marvellous way equalled and made a
family by the fact that we had come to Jerusalem
together. And there was no feeling of comparison,
of superiority, among any of us, though some were
rich, some poor ; some lettered, some illiterate ;
some with clean bodies, new clothes, and naked feet,
feeling it was necessary to take off their boots for
the ground whereon they trod was holy ; others
who had not the idea even to wash their faces.
There was no self-pride. It gave me the idea that
after death, when, after life’s pilgrimage the Russians
come to the judgment seat, there will be such a
feeling of brotherhood and affection that to condemn
one and reward another will be an impossibility.
Truly, when we love one another all our sins are
forgiven.

Pleasant -faced Russian monks came out and
greeted us, one of them asking me from what province
I came, and rejoicing because it turned out we were
from the same part of Russia. We all were glad to
meet these voluntary holy exiles of Jerusalem, and
to let loose the eager words of joy, and the fluttering
happy irrelevancies that rushed to our lips. We
crowded in at the monastery door, buying sheaves
of candles and hurrying to light them before the
symbols of our faith. It was wonderful to see the
crowds and crowds of great round backs, of dense¬
haired heads, all pressing up toward the ikonastasis.
When the immense Bible was brought to the monk

86 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

who should read, it rested on these heads, and those
to whom the privilege fell shed tears of joy. God’s
faithful happy slaves ! We sang together the
“ Mnogia Lieta ” ; we prayed and gave thanks to
God ; we came individually to a priest, kissed the
cross in his hand, and were blessed.

And all these different hearts felt each its own
particular joy. Each peasant, though in sheepskins,
throbbed and glowed in the temple. Not only he,
but the village for which he stood, and the family
for which he stood, had reached Jerusalem. Each
had brought an obscure life into the open — a prosaic,
perhaps ugly and vicious everyday life into the
presence of the Holy of holies. Every village has
its saints and its sinners, its beauties and its cripples,
its loving ones and its murderers, its peculiar stories
of peculiar lives ; and the peasant entering Jerusalem
with his prayers brought all these with him. A
mighty chorus went up to God of the voices of the
human heart, a music not heard by the ear. It was
the voice of a great nation in the presence of God.

All the year round, in twenties and fifties, the
pilgrims trickle to Jerusalem, and every year at
Christmas and in Lent they come in great numbers.
Every year this chorus of Russia goes up to God
at the shrines of Jerusalem, and it will be repeated
year after year into the centuries, or until the
peasantry is no more. It must be remembered it is
entirely a matter of the peasants : there are no clean
middle or upper class people there at all. Fortu-

iii JERUSALEM ATTAINED 87

nately the dirt, the hardship, and the strict Lenten
fare are an insuperable obstacle for the sightseers
and the merely curious. Those Russians who do
come as the European and American tourists come,
go to the hotels, talk in French, and are quite cut
off from the peasant communion.

But why does the peasant make the pilgrimage ?
What sets him moving toward Jerusalem in the
first place? To answer that question fully is to go
very deep into the intentions of the human soul ; it
is a matter of profound psychology. When I have
said all I can say on the question there will still
remain enough unthought, unwritten matter as
would fill every page of a Bible made blank for the
purpose.

It is not that the priests bid them go. The
Russian clergy have no passion towards the see of
Jerusalem any more than the English had towards
the see of Rome — there are multitudinous exceptions
to this generalisation, but it must be generally
agreed they don’t like to see money taken out of
their own parishes to be spent for religious uses
elsewhere. It is not an infection. Great numbers
of pilgrims do not go from one district ; they arrive
all together at Jerusalem because the boats are not
many, and they meet at the ports of embarkation.
For the rest they come singly, and at most in twos
and threes, and often from the most forlorn and
distant points of the Tsar’s unfrequented empire.
Why do they come ? They promise on the bed of

88 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

sickness ; they promise in unhappiness ; they go to
save the dying or the wicked ; they go to expiate
their own and others’ sins. But I asked many
pilgrims the question and some could not answer,
some would not. Not one pilgrim gave an answer
that covered his action. They knew not why they
came, some force deep in them urged them — a force
much deeper than their power of articulation, which
in most cases communed only with their superficial
selves, their outer leaves. A paragraph of Dostoi¬
evsky is illuminating. I take it from Mrs. Garnett’s
translation of The Brothers Karamazof'. —

“ There is a remarkable picture by the painter
Kramskoi, called ‘ Contemplation.’ There is a forest
in winter, and on a roadway through the forest, in
absolute stillness, stands a peasant in torn kaftan
and bark boots. He stands, as it were, lost in
thought. Yet he is not thinking; he is ‘contem¬
plating.’ If any one touched him he would start and
look at one as though awakening and bewildered.
It is true he would come to himself immediately ;
but if he were asked what he had been thinking
about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably
he has hidden within himself the impression which
had dominated him during the period of contempla¬
tion. Those impressions are dear to him, and no
doubt he hoards them imperceptibly and even un¬
consciously. How and why, of course, he does not
know either. He may suddenly, after hoarding
impressions for many years, abandon everything and

in JERUSALEM ATTAINED 89

go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul’s
salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his
native village, and perhaps do both. There are a
good many ‘ contemplatives ’ among the peasantry.”

Nietzsche, who was a great student of Russia
through the eyes of Dostoievsky, “ that profound
man,” noted what he called “an excess of will in
Russia.” The Russians are volcanoes, either extinct,
quiescent, or in eruption. Below the surface even of
the quietest and stupidest lies a vein of racial energy,
an access to the inner fire and mystery of the spirit
of man. When the spirit moves in the depths then
the ways of the outward man seem strange.

The incurable drunkard of the village picks him¬
self up out of the mire one afternoon, renounces drink¬
ing, and starts off for Jerusalem. The avaricious old
mouzhik, who has been hoarding for half a century,
wakens up one morning, gives all his money to
some one, and sets off begging his way to a far-off
shrine. The reserved and silent peasant, who has
hidden his thoughts from those who loved him all
his days, meets an utter stranger one afternoon, and
with tears tells the story of his life, and reveals to
him the secret of his heart ; he also perchance starts
on a pilgrimage. In Russia, as nowhere else in the
world, it is the unexpected and mysterious which
happens.

And what of the pilgrim who goes again and again
to Jerusalem? There were many who had been
three, four, five, six, as many as ten times — there was

9o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

one who had been twenty times to Jerusalem. Let
me quote the words of Vassily Nikolaevitch Khitrof,
who has been called “ the eternal pilgrim ” : —

“ Is it possible, you imagine, that what forces the
pilgrim to go from village to village, from monastery
to monastery, traversing not seldom the whole great
width of Holy Russia, bearing cold and hunger, is no
more than a passion towards suffering ? I am deeply
convinced you are altogether mistaken. Every
man, however coarse and rude, has his own ideal, and
also a struggle towards the achievement of that
ideal, the achievement being, however, unattainable.
The pilgrim’s ideal is a sweet feeling of the heart
in prayer. Follow his life from birth and you will
find these sweet feelings began in the village church
when he was a child. Ordinary life dulled them,
caused their repetition to be infrequent, and he
began, without knowing why perhaps, to visit neigh¬
bouring monasteries. There he caught his sweet
vision again. But the ordinary things of life defeated
him again, and even at the monasteries he felt seldom.
So he went further afield. He went to far shrines,
to Solovetsk, to St. Seraphim. He left home and
went from village to village, and from monastery to
monastery, ever further and further till he reached
the holiest place on earth — the Holy City and
Golgotha, where the redemption of mankind was
accomplished. Further on the earth there was no-
whither ; it seemed that the soul had found what it
wished — though it had not. Satisfied for the time

in JERUSALEM ATTAINED 91

he returns to his native land, but again in a little
while appears once more the unconquerable wish to
go to that place where were experienced such sweet
minutes. In that, it seems to me, is contained the
psychology of the Russian pilgrimage. In order to
be convinced, it is only necessary to stand among
the Russian pilgrims at the Sepulchre, at the cradle
at Bethlehem, and other sacred places. ... I have
seen many people who have not been to the Holy
Land, but I have never seen one who has been once
who did not wish to go again.” Which in a way is
a confirmation of the thought indicated in the pro¬
logue, that the pilgrimage is a rite like the procession
in church, and it may be repeated many times.

But apart from this, it is true that when the
peasant first felt that sweet sensation that was to
lead him to Jerusalem he was really on the way.
As old grandfather Jeremy said, “ Directly you have
wished to go, you are already on the road.” When
that wish first appears, what shape it takes, and
whence it springs, God alone knows. Some babes
smiling in their cradles are already destined to the
Holy City ; all babes, of every age, it seems to me,
have some choice in the matter.

As we came out of the Cathedral a young peasant
woman, with laughing, tear-streaming face, prostrated
herself at our feet, washing them with her tears, and
she asked our forgiveness that she had reached the
city. The peasants were all like that, though this
one spoke it out.

92 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

As we filed along to the refectory where we were
to be entertained free at dinner, we were met by an
ancient pilgrim, half-saint, Abraham, twenty times
at Jerusalem, recognised with joy by all who also
had been there before. A comical figure he looked
with his fine old grey head, wrinkled brows, blue
spectacles, and woman-gossip’s countenance. He was
bare-headed and he held a heavy staff in his hand.
Standing first on one foot and then on the other, he
called out in a sing-song, slobbery voice : “ This
way old ones, this way new ones.” And every
woman as she passed he kissed, sometimes ecstatic¬
ally, and all over the face, other times circumspectly
and soberly, according to his whims or fancy.

We passed into the refectory, a church-shaped
room on whose walls and ceiling were painted life-
size pictures of Bible incidents. There was not a
square foot of wall or ceiling unpainted. At the
head of the east wing was a glorious ikon stand with
ikons framed in precious metals, ikon lamps gleaming
and tapers burning. In front of the ikons was a
long platform for kneeling. The pilgrims all clam¬
bered in to prostrate themselves.

The dinner waiting for us was not a banquet,
nothing European, nothing from the tables of the
masters, from the upper classes ; it was simply an
ordinary Russian village dinner of the time of the
year — cabbage soup, kasha , i.e. boiled grain, and
bread. Lack of variety was made up for by quantity,
and second and third helpings were frequent. Each

ABRAHAM IS AWAITING A NEW BATCH OF PILGRIMS.

hi JERUSALEM ATTAINED 93

plateful of soup had in it some twenty or thirty green-
black olives instead of meat With the kasha were
mugs of kvass, tasting and looking like flat stout. I
don’t think there were any complaints ; I heard none.
We had forgotten all the hardships even of the boat.
The peasants certainly were enjoying their realisation
of the conception of arriving at heaven. I’m sure
some of them expect to be treated just in the same
way when they get to heaven — to be given cabbage
soup and kasha, and kvass and immense slices of
bread. For I ought to say that having said thanks
to God and rising from the table to file out and
make way for others, the peasants all carried in their
hands, of the superfluity of the feast, their half-eaten
chunks of bread. It felt like some living tableau
of the bringing in of the twelve basketfuls of the
fragments after the miracle of feeding the five
thousand. On the wall, of course, one of the pictures
was of this miracle, and that accounts in part for the
suggestiveness of the mouzhiks’ action.

As we left the refectory we were told in a loud
voice what we had to do on the morrow, and where
we were now to go. I suppose some one led us
out. We at the back followed other people’s backs
onward to the hostelry.

We picked up our bundles again as we went out,
and went forward in an irregular crowd to the place
of our housing. If we had arrived earlier in the
year we should have been put into rooms each
accommodating four or six persons, but now there

94 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

being some thousands at Jerusalem already we were
accorded immense general rooms holding three to
five hundred pilgrims. I went to the St. Katherine
hostel and took my chance in the crowd. We went
into the general room, and the overseer pointed out
places to some of us : others had to find places for
themselves. It was an immense glass house, with
the walls and room practically all of glass — damp in
winter and hot in summer, and that was obvious at
a glance. The pilgrims were disposed in six long
series of overhead, and on-the-ground pigeon-hole
beds. It was like an exaggerated railway cloak¬
room, only where in the cloak-room would repose a
portmanteau or a trunk, here would be a human
being. But there were not many partitions ; the
pilgrims would all lie side by side in the night,
touching one another if they liked with their arms
or their feet, and there were no beds, no bedding.
Over the unvarnished, unpainted wood was spread
a rather muddy straw pallet, one for each pilgrim.
Many pilgrims were there before us ; we were not
ushered into an empty room. A great ikon hung
on the wall, but also little ikons were set up on the
posts where the earlier pilgrims had their resting-
places. On the floors was a considerable amount of
dirt and refuse, orange peel and locust nut ends. It
certainly was a dirty place, but the great amount of
light in it rather gave the idea that it was not so
bad as it looked. But what did that question matter
to the mouzhiks — they were bred in dirt ; to a great

hi JERUSALEM ATTAINED 95

extent they themselves were dirt, no one disturbs
them out of that belief.

A peasant came forward, one of those who had
been installed for some time, and attracted, I suppose,
by something unusual in me, asked me to share his
abode. He had ringed round his square of bare
wood and straw pallet a red print curtain, and it
seemed I was particularly fortunate. The peasant,
however, was a very peculiar person.

Ill

THE WORK OF THE RUSSIAN
PALESTINE SOCIETY

In former years the pilgrims went by sailing vessels
from Odessa, Sevastopol, and Taganrog ; and a
great number also went on foot with poor Armenian
pilgrims right through the Caucasus and Trans-
Caucasia via Karse through Asiatic Turkey to Syria.
Those in ships were often tossed about for thirty
days or more, and those on land suffered incredible
hardships. The Mahomedans even in the Caucasus
to day persecute Christian wayfarers. In the days
preceding the Crimean War it is marvellous how
many poor Russians the Turks and Arabs murdered
or put to the torture. The Russian Government
did not go to war with Turkey to defend its
Christian subjects, but on that score alone it
might have justified itself in the eyes of Europe.
Not more than fifty per cent of those who set
out tramping through Asia Minor ever came
back to tell their tale. To set out for the Holy
Land was the last thing in life, and it didn’t
really matter if you were killed on the way — “you

hi RUSSIAN PALESTINE SOCIETY 97

reached Jerusalem all the sooner,” as Father Jeremy
said.1

But now all that is altered. The sailing vessel is
superseded, the journey has been cheapened to the
standard even of the beggar’s pocket, and no one
thinks of making the journey by foot through Asia
Minor. It is sufficient to tramp from the native
villages to the port of embarkation. Many pilgrims
do not even make the foot journey in Russia, but
come in the fourth-class train. Some are even so
degenerate as to travel third class, but then they
generally do so as “ hares ” — under the seat and
without a ticket as my old friend of Tobolsk Province
had done. The consequence is that where there
were once scores of pilgrims in the Holy Land
there are now thousands. The journey having
been so facilitated, almost every pilgrim who sets
out for Palestine reaches his destination and wins
safe home again, though it must be remembered
that a certain type of pilgrim takes years over the
journey, wandering from forest to forest and shrine
to shrine, building himself a hut upon occasion, and
being a hermit for a season, dawdling and praying
at monasteries, passing as a half-saint, “stupid to
the point of sanctity ” as the Russians say, hardly
ever confessing his real destiny to anybody. Many
of this type die of cold and hunger or of old age in
Russia. But, as I said, there are now thousands
where there were scores. The quantity has in-

1 See “The Old Pilgrim’s Story” in A Tramp's Sketches.

98 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

creased, and as some aver, the quality has gone
down. The pilgrims are not so austere as they
were, not so hardened and fanatical, more out for
pleasure and curiosity, less for the real purposes of
religion. That may be true, comparatively speaking,
and the observation made by one who has been in
Jerusalem many years indicates a tendency. Doubt¬
less when Russia is more democratised, and man’s
labour, clothes, travelling, and himself are all made
as cheap as in England, the temper of pilgrims will
be entirely altered. As yet the seven thousand
pilgrims at Jerusalem are the seven thousand that
make a nation worth to God.

A word as to the facilities. The pilgrim’s ticket
from Odessa costs only twelve roubles — twenty-five
shillings — each way. He buys a return ticket unless
he feels sure he will die before he gets back. His
ticket is available a whole year, and he can break
the journey where he likes, or he can get an
extension to Port Said if he wishes to extend his
pilgrimage to Sinai and the shrines of the desert.
Each year thousands of beggars gather enough
money to pay the fares. It is a remarkable fact
that thousands of starved, illiterate, ragged men are
able to make a tour of the Levant, which many of
the wealthy would hesitate to embark upon, thinking
the means at their disposal too slender.

Formerly, when the numbers of the pilgrims were
less, they found hospitality in the Greek monasteries
at Jerusalem, and beyond what was taken by the

hi RUSSIAN PALESTINE SOCIETY 99

monks in manifold collections the pilgrims paid
nothing.

But directly the steamboats began to take the
pilgrims as passengers the numbers of those who
arrived at Jerusalem in Lent began to increase.
There began to be a thousand and more every year,
and the numbers became a great burden to the monks.
National measures became necessary, and in order to
get a clear idea of the situation, the late Grand Duke
Constantine Nikolaevitch travelled to Jerusalem in
1859. He has been called the first Imperial pilgrim,
and no doubt the Grand Duke did come to pray.
Probably the Russian Court had not quite made
up its mind as to whether it approved of pilgrimag¬
ing to Jerusalem; it generally objected to Russian
subjects leaving their native land, being afraid of
the infection of the ideas of the corrupt West.
Constantine Nikolaevitch, however, enthusiastically
approved of pilgrimaging, and on the strength of his
approval the Imperial Treasury made a grant of
five hundred thousand roubles, to which the people
of Russia added another six hundred thousand, ten
acres of land were bought just outside the Jerusalem
walls, and building operations were commenced.
In 1864 the new Trinity Cathedral was consecrated,
standing like a supporter in the middle of a ring of
hostelries. There was a special hostelry for monks
and priests, besides the accommodation for eight
hundred lay pilgrims ; a hospital was built, and also
a consulate.

ioo WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS in

Twenty years passed, and the number of pilgrims
increased to two thousand. Then in 1881 came
another Imperial pilgrim, the Grand Duke Sergey
Alexandra vitch, and he originated the Imperial
Orthodox Palestine Society. The Society built a
great hostelry, the Sergievsky, in 1889, accommoda¬
tion being made therein not only for the simple
people, but for all classes of society — the decent
rooms, however, being let at ordinary hotel prices.
The refectory and the bath - house were built.
Before 1889 the pilgrims had no means of washing
themselves at Jerusalem, and water was so precious
that a bath was out of the question. The Society
undertook canalisation and drainage, and they cut
channels for a mile and a half through the Jerusalem
rock, and along these washed away the otherwise
accumulating filth. That was a great work ; it
went hand in hand with the building of cisterns to
catch the rain water. It is difficult to imagine how
horrible material conditions were in the dark times
of no water and no drains. The Society went on
to mend the broken hostelry windows and repair
the rat-gnawn fittings. They made ventilation and
built stoves for heating the rooms.

The hospital was enlarged, and not only took in
the broken-down and the dying, but accommodated
women with child. This was very advantageous,
for many peasant women think a child born in
Jerusalem especially holy, and they forget that their
position in a strange land, after a long and terrible

THE RUSSIAN CATHEDRAL.

hi RUSSIAN PALESTINE SOCIETY ioi

journey, is likely to be more dangerous than in
Russia.

In the old days there was great difficulty about
food, and the pilgrims lived on bread, Arabian
fritters, and seeds. Now for threepence a day the
pilgrim receives a typical village meal ; for the
Society imports all the Russian ingredients. There
is now a Russian shop in the monastery yard, and
there one can buy everything Russian, even the
tea, duty free. If the pilgrim is too poor to afford
threepence a day on his dinner he gets his plate
of porridge for three-farthings.

So an interesting work of “ Mother ” Russia goes
on. In these years seven, eight, or nine thousand
peasants come every Easter, and of course once
more there is little room to spare in the hostelries.
In the place where a thousand should be accom¬
modated three thousand have to find room some¬
how. The bath is far too small — it takes only
twenty - five at a time. The refectory is often
crowded to the doors. Perhaps we shall soon hear
of another Imperial pilgrim.

The Society certainly does very good work. It
takes upon itself a great deal of motherly care that
;s generally absent from such anonymous institutions.
Thus each pilgrim is invited to deposit all his
loney with the Society, and only to take out just
what he needs each day, a shilling or so as the case
n ay be. On the morrow of the day of our arrival
at Jerusalem we all went to the registration office

102 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS in

for that purpose. Each depositor received a
receipt from the Society, and withdrawals could be
plainly checked off upon it. Of course many
pilgrims preferred to keep all their money upon
their persons, distrusting all officials, but from every
one who had the money a deposit of five roubles
was exacted. This deposit was returned to us on
the day we left Jerusalem, and it was held by the
Society so that we should not be destitute on our
return journey.

A feature of the hostelry management was that
everything was contributory. The pilgrims paid
very little, but they did pay something. They paid
ten copecks for a bath, and I think that was twice
too much — the dirtiest pilgrims were often those
who had least money. The next Imperial pilgrim
must look to that bath-house, and have it made
bigger and cheaper. Then we paid for our boiling
water, a farthing for a gallon or so, quite an amusing
charge, but sufficient to preclude wastefulness, I
dare say. The Society also washes your linen in
its own steam laundry, and makes the most filthy
rags as white as snow. Peasant women, however,
undersell the official institution, and if whiteness is
not your object you may as well apply to them.
Finally, the Russian Government exacts its shilling
or so for vises to the passports, and thereby reminds
the Slav, if he needs reminding, that even in
Jerusalem he is a subject of the Tsar.

We arrived in Jerusalem in the afternoon, and on

iii RUSSIAN PALESTINE SOCIETY 103

the morning of the same day, some thousand
pilgrims had set off in the caravan with the Society’s
mounted guides and a Turkish gendarme for the
shrines and wonderful places of Nazareth. Many,
when they heard of it, replaced their bundles on their
shoulders, and set off at once to overtake the others.
We were also too late to be permitted into the bath¬
house that day, even though some of us procured
tickets. There was nothing to do but to wait till the
morrow. I put up my pack in the curtained apart¬
ment, and set out with my new-found pilgrim acquaint¬
ance and pigeon-hole host to hear a magic-lantern
lecture that was being given by a priest behind the
hostelries. This show was also a care of the Palestine
Society. Every night, so I was told, a lecture was
given, open to all, on the history of the Holy Places.
The lecture was a long one, and when it had been
read through once, it commenced again automatically.
It went on for two or three hours every evening,
and when one reader was tired another took his
place. I found the matter somewhat uninspiring ;
the hall was practically full of listeners, but it
seemed to me that more would have been gained if,
when the pictures were shown, Jerusalem monks or
guides had spoken freely out of their minds and
hearts just what they knew about the places
depicted ; what had happened there originally ;
what had happened in the course of the centuries ;
what had happened to them there ; what they
had heard from pilgrims and neighbours ; what

104 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

they thought of it or made of it. Perhaps such a
harangue did take place upon occasion. If so I
was unfortunate, for I always heard the same old
biblical guide-book, droned out by a sleepy priest
who couldn’t read his scrawled manuscript by the
dim flicker of the candle. Pilgrims, however,
listened with unlimited patience and took ideas in,
no doubt.

When we came out of the magic-lantern hall we
went through all the hostelries and saw the evening
toil of the pilgrims, labouring over oil stoves with
pots and tea-kettles. Oil and spirit stoves were
permitted in these wooden dormitories, and they
constitute a grave danger, for the Society’s fire¬
extinguishing apparatus consists of one hose, no
engine and no water, though there hang in each
hostelry a dqzen or so mysterious bottles labelled in
English, “ Break this in case of fire.”

Then I went into a tavern with my mysterious
pilgrim acquaintance — he must have a chapter to
himself later — and we drank a halfpennyworth of
wine each. We sinned. After that, having gone
into church to “ kiss the ikons,” we returned to
the hostelry to sleep.

THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE
HOSTELRY

On board, when we had been travelling more than
a week together, it suddenly occurred to me one
evening, “ Isn’t it strange ; we have no policeman
on the ship, yet we live in peace and happiness,
though we have five hundred and sixty peasants on
board and many other poor people. It follows the
policeman is perhaps not really necessary.” I could
not help feeling that the policeman was a superfluous
person in a simple Christian community. Then I
remembered his place in the town and in the village.
There he is part of a trap. He is really in con¬
junction with the vodka shop — the vodka being the
bait of the trap, and the policeman the lid which
shuts down.

At Jerusalem, however, though there was no

drunkenness there was, perhaps, need of police. If

the Palestine Society and the clergy believe in

police they ought to provide them. It is possible to

understand that Christians, and above all, pilgrims,

do not need other protection than the bond between

105

io6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

their prayers and God, but I do not really credit
the authorities with such a high conception. The
absence of police is simply an omission. If a
pilgrim is robbed he takes his case to the Consul,
or he buries it in his heart, or he forgets, or he
forgives it. I fancy few forget. The Consul may
report to the Turkish authorities, but commonly he
does nothing of the sort. The Russian settlement
is a little Russia, but without police and almost
without watchmen, and all troubles are settled by
the Consul and the representatives of the Society
and the Church.

I felt a certain anxiety when, on the first night at
Jerusalem, the time came to turn in and sleep. Since
sundown the weather had become cold, the city being
on a hill. I shivered somewhat when, after the magic-
lantern lecture and the visits to tavern and church,
I re-entered the great room where so many of us
were accommodated. It was dark. Three paraffin
lamps shed a miserable light round about the posts
where they wTere hung. In distant recesses an occa¬
sional candle was alight, or an oil stove, and one dis¬
cerned dim, dark shapes of heavy moujiks moving like
shadows. There was a continuous mutter of prayers,
a thumping of knees going down in the exercises of
religion, a buzz of conversation.

My companion lit a church taper in his curtained
apartment, spread a fleecy black and white sheep¬
skin over the floor, took off his coat, and prepared
to go to bed. At the back of our little tent he had

iii FIRST NIGHT IN THE HOSTELRY 107

set up a picture of Jesus sitting in the stocks. The
ikon, which I had not noticed hitherto, was care¬
fully swathed with an embroidered towel, and he
knelt and prayed a quarter of an hour before it. I
felt shy, as you may imagine, but there came to
my aid a certain sort of English resolution, for I
knelt and prayed, and crossed myself, and bowed
to the ground as he did, and practically at the same
time.

I took some while arranging how I should sleep.
I had, fortunately, two suits of clothes, and I
changed from one to the other. Sleeping in one's
shirt was out of the question. I spread my great¬
coat over my portion of the sheepskin. I fixed my
pack in such a way that if any one pulled it I should
infallibly waken up. As I had a pair of long
stockings I drew them over my trouser legs, and
put my money down at the ankles under all. I lay
down and the light was put out.

Many of my boat acquaintances came along and
looked in at the curtain, to the obvious distaste of
my companion, but I felt rather glad of them. I
chatted as long as they would. At last they came
no more and there was a time of silence. There
was no buzz of conversation ; even the mutter of
prayers died down somewhat, and I committed
myself to go to sleep.

Just as I was dropping off, however, I saw the
dark curtain in front of me gently moving, raising
itself as it were. I stared in silence. The curtain

io8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

revealed a dark shadowy face, dense hair crowned
with a biretta. It was to all appearance that of a
monk. The face peered intently at my companion
and at me. I feigned to be asleep, but my bed¬
fellow was actually snoring. The monk stretched
out an arm from his robe and bent down.

“ What do you want ? ( Shto vam nuzJwio ?) ” I

cried suddenly.

The monk started. My companion wakened
and rubbed his eyes.

“ Nothing, nothing,” said the mysterious visitor.
“God bless you! Good evening, Philip.”

“Well, and what do you want now? Why are
you prowling here ? ” my companion asked.

“ Oh, don’t be angry ! You’ve got a visitor, I see.
That’s not the old one. Where’s he gone ? ”

“To Nazareth with the caravan.”

“ And this is one of to-day’s arrivals ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Ah, and what might your province be ? ” asked
the monk, turning to me. He had a somewhat
drunken gait. I told him I came from the Don
Province, but was not born there.

“ Ah ! ” he replied. “ I know Don Province
very well. We’ll exchange impressions later on.
I must go now, but if you’ll make room, I’ll come
back in an hour or two and sleep.”

“ No room,” said Philip.

The monk appealed to me.

“ I can easily find another place,” I said.

hi FIRST NIGHT IN THE HOSTELRY 109

But neither my companion nor the monk would
hear of my changing. Our mysterious visitor bade
us not to put ourselves out ; he would find a place
at our feet, and saying that, he dropped the curtain
and went away.

“ Who is he ? ” I asked. “ A friend of yours ? ”

“ Ne khoroshy (He is not good),” said my com¬
panion. “ He is a thief. You think he is a monk,
but there you are mistaken. He is a Greek ; once he
was a monk at Mount Athos, but he was expelled for
robbery. He went to Russia and there committed
many crimes, but he got away as a pilgrim. He is
wanted in Russia and there is a price on his head.”

“ Why is he allowed in here ? ”

“ He isn’t allowed. No monks are allowed in
the hostelry. It is against the regulations. If they
wish to be put up they must go to the special house
for priests and monks. But, as you see, there are
no doorkeepers, for the porter sleeps all day and
all night.”

My civilised soul wanted the police handy, but
what was there to be done ? I didn’t relish his
coming back, but I was dead tired, and besides, I
had disposed my valuables in such a way that no
one could rob me without first causing me to awake.
I lay back and fell into a troubled sleep.

There was a disturbance in the night, but I
heeded it not. Some one seemed feeling about me.
The curtain rose and fell. The woman who was
lying next me on the other side of the curtain

no WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

screamed, and her feet scraped on the hard pallet.
I wakened some time after this, saw my companion
had left me, and felt somewhat relieved. I looked
outside the curtain ; he was sitting on the bench
next door talking with the woman. I went back
and slept. ... I wakened in perhaps an hour.
The two were still talking. I felt rather surprised,
but went to sleep again. It was only at dawn that
I learned what had happened in the night. The
monk had reappeared, taken away my companion’s
coat, searched it and brought it back, felt my empty
pockets, and then given his attention to my neighbour.
He was an adept at finding out where the peasant
women keep their money, but this time, perhaps
because he was drunken and unsteady, his fingers
had touched too heavily the woman’s bare bosom —
for she kept her money in a bag fastened by a tape
round her body. She had started and screamed,
and the monk fled. My companion told me the
story, emphasising repeatedly his opinion that the
monk was ne-khoroshy (not at all nice). It hardly
needed to be said, I thought, and I rejoiced that
night number two was twelve hours’ distant.

The woman, who was about thirty-five, seemed
greatly alarmed, for she had two hundred roubles in
her keeping. When the attempt had been made
she could not sleep any more, and Philip had tried
to comfort her. The long conversation had all
been one of comfort. I counselled her to go at
once to the registration offices and deposit every

hi FIRST NIGHT IN THE HOSTELRY m

rouble of her money. You can never be sure what
will happen if it is possible for thieves to come to
you disguised as monks.

We had another doubtful character in the
hostelry, also a monk, but disguised as an ordinary
pilgrim. He had come to make money out of the
pilgrims by writing letters for them, and doing
various commissions for money. Philip averred
that he came by the same steamboat as he did.
He had come on board at Mount Athos clad in the
monk’s hat and gown, but on the day after leaving
the Holy island had packed his clerical outfit away,
changed into ordinary Russian attire, cut off his
hair, and taken his stand as an ordinary pilgrim.
He made great friends with a peasant woman, who,
he said, was his sister. The couple had their
resting-place within sight of our curtained apart¬
ment, and they took almost exclusive charge of the
treadle sewing-machine supplied for the use of all.

I said to my companion that since he knew the
cases of these two monks, he ought to report the
matter to the authorities. The security of thousands
of simple and innocent peasants was at stake. But
Philip hawed and hee’-d, and said it would be no
good, and that there were three doors and only one
doorkeeper, that perhaps, for all he knew, the monk
with the peasant girl was an honest character. As
a matter of fact, Philip, fourteen times in Jerusalem,
had mysterious business of his own. He kept out
of the authorities’ way, but of that more anon.

GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS

When a new boy comes to school, some other boy
or boys take charge of him and show him round ;
they show him the features of the playground, the
redoubts there to be lost and won, the trees where
starlings are wont to nest ; they show him the
quadrangles, dormitories, studies, sanctums, the
haunts of funny characters, the shop outside the
grounds, the playing-fields, etc. etc. ; he is served
with no printed guide at the gate as he enters the
school. There are no guides but the boys them¬
selves.

It is much the same at Jerusalem where these
different children are, the Russian pilgrims ; when
a new pilgrim comes the old ones show him round ;
they take him about and show him everything.
The pilgrims have no Baedeker , indeed no such
thing exists in the Russian language, though even
if there did, the 60 per cent of the pilgrims who
are illiterate could not profit by it.

When I saw the English and American tourists,

hundreds of them, with their Arab guides and red

1 12

hi GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS 113

handbooks, I could not but be struck with the
contrast between the ways of our nation and those
of the peasant. Why could not the English and
Americans show one another what is to be seen ?
Why do the visitors fail to become intimate with
the settled colony of English and Americans there ?
Why do they think the guide with his absurd patter
is more authority than a chance acquaintance who
has been in Jerusalem some weeks already?
Jerusalem is worth visiting by every one, even by
rich commercial pagans, but not in this style, and
not for these ends.

What is necessary is “the personal touch,” that
which the mercenary and cunning Arab has not.
So artificial is the relationship between the guide
and his rich customer, that all the jokes, all the
Arab’s seeming naivete, the things for which you
laugh at him and over him, are learnt by him
beforehand, together with his guide-book recitation.
Personally the Arab guide is something quite
different, as I know, who have spoken to him in
English, French, and Russian, and found his out¬
ward manner change completely as I seemed to
change nationality. Not that guide-books or even
Arab guides are utterly superfluous ; they certainly
may be an aid ; but what is necessary is an intro¬
duction to the Holy City on altogether more
intimate terms.

I for my part had never read a page of a guide¬
book, and I had no need to • turn to one whilst I

1 14 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS 111

was at Jerusalem; the pilgrims took me to the
places. Later on, when I knew my way, I took
some pilgrims who had come later than I, and
showed them. There was just one amusing
danger ; there were so many English visitors that
I was always expecting to run into an acquaintance
and be recognised — I saw at least three people who
knew me, but my disguise served.

Going down the Sacred Way with a pilgrim
on the first morning, we came along behind two
Americans and an Arab guide. The guide was
saying : —

“ Kip yer hands on yer pokkits, sah, yes, all the
way along hyah. This is one of the oldest bits of
Jerusalem, sah ; this was whar the Temple stood.
If you were to begin excavations some twenty feet
to the left of that wall — kip yer hands on yer
pokkits — you would come upon the ruins.”

The tourists, with their coats tightly buttoned
up, turned about them and looked at us suspiciously.

“ Stop ! ” said the guide. “ Let them get past ;
you get robbed in a second down hyah, and the
robber is off into the crowd before you know whah
you ah.”

The Americans sniffed the air as we passed
them. My pilgrim, not knowing English, of course
knew nothing of the little comedy. He mumbled
hurriedly, “ Here Jesus Christ stumbled when He
was carrying the cross — you know ? — and a girl
gave Him a cloth to wipe His face.” As I said I

THE JERUSALEM STREET.

hi GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS 115

knew, the pilgrim dived down into the cave where
there is a sort of waxwork representation of the act
of St. Veronica. At the moment when the guide
would be resuming his archaeological prattle —
“praetorium here, praetorium there” — the suspected
pickpocket was flat down on his breast before the
ikon not made by hands.

Later on we went to the place where the
monastery of St. Nicodemus is being built, and we
had tea with the founder in a room off the gallery
where Christ is supposed to have conversed with
Nicodemus. As we came out on to the road we
met two ponderous gentlemen coming up the steep
way astride of little asses. They had long bamboo
poles in their hands, and kept clumping the little
beasts with them between the ears. A tall, bare-
legged Syrian ran beside them ; he wore an ancient
rusty garment, tattered at the knees, and on his
head a white turban.

“ Come up, you brute ! ” said one tourist to
his ass.

“Head him off there, Frank!” said the other,
bashing his donkey’s ears with the hollow-sounding
bamboo.

“In this haas Pilate lived,” said the Syrian as
they passed.

“ Really ! ” drawled the one addressed as Frank.
His companion’s steed had got the better of its
rider, and it showed an inclination to continue its
way tail foremost.

1 1 6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

“ Yes, sah,” said the Syrian. “ And undah this
church is the dungeon whah ahr Saviour was
skahged.”

“ Ah, dear me ; that’s very interesting. But
give my beast a whop up behind, will you. . . .
That’s right! Now I tell you Pm not coming out
on one of these animals again. I’ll trust my feet, I
reckon. Come, let’s get along. Pilate’s house, you
say. That’s interesting. Be sure and don’t miss
anything.”

The peasant pilgrim looked solemnly at the
high-mettled asses. “If you’re not used to it,
it’s better to go on foot,” he said at last. “ The
Frenchmen don’t hit anything like hard enough.”

“They’re not French, but English, I think, and
rather kind-hearted,” I urged, laughing to myself.

“ English,” said the peasant, looking after them
with adoration. “If I’d known that I’d have
looked at them more carefully. The English are a
noble people.”

We went along to the old city wall, to the point
where Cook’s offices are and a great number of
curio shops. Here a crowd was collected in the
street, and my companion was curious enough to
stop and stare. A photograph was being taken of
a very tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired woman wearing a
brass circlet on her head and triple bangles on her
arms. She wore an ancient embroidered scarlet
costume that would serve as a representation of
Babylon at a fancy dress ball, and the somewhat

m GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS 117

large toes of her bare feet were stuffed into little
lilac-coloured Turkish slippers.

“ What is she ? ” said the bewildered pilgrim.

“ Look hard,” I replied. “ She’s a fine English
lady dressed up in the garments of beautiful dark
Syrian girls as they used to dress hundreds of years
ago. She has been into that shop, put off her fine
things there, and changed into these. Now they’re
going to take her photograph. See, the photo¬
grapher is coming out of the shop. There’s her
guide standing by her, and there’s her husband, I
think.”

The husband seemed to be repenting that he
had agreed to the affair. The crowd annoyed him.
But suddenly some officious sons of the desert
rushed in and cleared a space, and the photographer
got a clear view of the picture.

“ Ah yer reddy ? Ah yer kwyte reddy ? ” said he.

The tall lady came more into view. I forgot
to say she was wearing tight corsets under this
magnificent attire, and that she had a finely
developed bust like a great armful of cream roses
standing above a slim curved vase. She was
trying to stand at her ease, putting more of her
weight on to one foot than on the other. She
looked what the lady novelist calls “perfectly
lovable ” at that moment. And when the Eastern
photographer asked if she were ready, she gave
assent by looking upward with her pale-blue eyes
above the people’s heads, swaying her body the while.

1 1 8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS in

“Thank yah,” said the photographer, and the
crowd closed in again. The peasant took it all in,
and didn’t utter a word till we started walking again.
At last he rolled out his four -syllabled word of
approbation.

“ Khoroshaya ! ” saidfhe. (“ Fine ! ”)

“ What’s fine ? ”

“The lady,” said he, “and tall . . . .”

We came up the Jaffa road toward the hostelry
again, and there at a corner is a shop whose windows
were pasted out with advertisements of this sort : —

CHUBB’S TOURS.

TRIPS UP THE NILE, IN THE DESERT, TO
JORDAN, THE PYRAMIDS, etc. etc.

WITH CAMELS OR IN TENTS.

EVERY CONVENTION OR NO CONVENTION.

FREE INFORMATION BUREAU.

STEP INSIDE!

FREE LIBRARY FOR TRAVELLERS.

GUIDES, OUTFITS, MONEY, STEAMBOATS.

CARAVANS, PASSPORTS, etc. etc.

Outside of this at the door a Syrian clerk was
bowing out a rich nobleman, or one of those “ born
in the purple of commerce.”

“Jaast as you please, sir,” said the Syrian;
“ jaast as you like. Jaast as you please, sir ; just as
you like.”

“ What magnificent words ! ” I thought. “ How
symbolic ! ” That man with his money can get any
mortal thing. How fortunate he is! Yet I think

in GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS 119

Chubb was deceiving him. What he gets from
Chubb and his guides won’t be exactly what he
pleases to have and what he likes. When he goes
with his family to the place where the five thousand
were fed he will have to hurry back to the hotel
for a meal. When he comes to the Jordan he will
not see the life-giving stream, but will be rather
bored. I should add to Chubb’s announcement and
his “ Every convention or no convention” the little
text, “ Who drinketh of this water shall thirst again.”
• • • • • • •
Jerusalem is an extremely ancient-looking city;
there is nothing modern about it except its Easter
visitors. It has no electric trams, no broad streets,
no large shops or offices — even its hotels have a
ramshackle appearance. None of the modern cities
of great antiquity look their part as Jerusalem does.
Its stones are indeed old — though not so old as they
look, for in the East they build new houses to look
like ruins. A hundred generations have worshipped
the living God in the city which is called Jerusalem ;
its name and foundations have outlived nations and
empires.

It has been sacked and destroyed as many times
as ancient Rome, and ever, over the debris, some
people built it up again. The sceptical aver that no
one now knows exactly where the ancient Jerusalem
stood — that perhaps it was as much as a mile away,
and that localisation and identification of the Holy
Places are so much pious fraud. I can offer no

120 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

opinion here, and the point is immaterial, for the
peasants have no doubt that this is the City of
David, street for street and stone for stone.

Jerusalem is built high up — the mountains do
not stand round about it. At points it is higher
than in the centre ; there are the four hills, but they
are not so much higher than the rest of the town as
the Calton Hill, Edinburgh, is above Princes Street.
They give no mountain landscape or mountain
freshness.

The sun strikes dead down, pitilessly, so that
from twelve till three most Europeans go indoors
and sleep, and many shopkeepers put up their
shutters. The population, however, is Oriental, and
the natives do not mind the heat. Its modern
aspect is that of a provincial Mahomedan city.
The streets, strange to say, are very shady, for
they are narrow, and the houses on each side are
high. They are no broader than Great Turnstile,
Holborn — long narrow pavements, overcrowded
with the out-tumbled wares of the Eastern shops on
either side, and full of a flocking, turbaned crowd.
Many parts of these roads are arched and roofed,
and they descend in long gradual stairways ; to
enter them is like going underground ; the walls
and the roofs are grey, lichened, shadowy, and
ancient. The most delightful scene there is that of
a train of panniered camels stalking up the road
through the crowd, or “ loping ” down.

There are no palm trees in Jerusalem and little

hi GUIDES AND GUIDE-BOOKS 121

greenery of any kind, but the stony slopes of the
hills about it are covered with sparse grass and
many wild flowers. There are olive trees, cypresses,
and aspens in considerable numbers outside the
city walls, on the Mount of Olives, by and in the
Garden of Gethsemane, at Bethany, and at Jericho.
There are great gardens of orange shrubs heavy
laden with oranges at Jaffa, but not at Jerusalem,
which stands too high.

At some points of the city it is possible to look
far below and away to the wilderness, the little
Jordan, and the silvery pool of the Dead Sea.
Beyond all these rise the mountains of Egypt — a
great wall along the horizon.

• ••••*•

Jerusalem is “the city that we seek”; the
difficulty is to find the city when you get to
Jerusalem. Jerusalem is different from other sights,
like Rome or Athens or the Pyramids. Even the
most hardened globe-trotter and sight-seer is to a
certain extent a seeker in Jerusalem. He is not
quite satisfied when he gets there. There was
something beyond what he saw and what he heard —
something that he sub-consciously expected to find
but did not. Even the man who thoroughly dis¬
believes in the Bible story has this feeling. Hence,
I think, the immense number of guide-books to
Jerusalem. Hence the mass of Jerusalem literature.
Tourists and pilgrims have turned in vain from
book to book, seeking the haunting little secret, the

i22 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

something which the soul expects to find there.
Every building of Jerusalem has been described and
surveyed, every inch of the ground has its pages of
printed matter, and the baffled reader might well be
sick to nausea.

Jerusalem is indeed a “hackneyed” subject.
Scarcely any book which tried to give the real
Jerusalem could make its way against the existent
superfluity of books. It would be simply lost. I
am not myself trying to write such a volume.
Mine is an attempt to give the story of a pilgrimage,
and to make intelligible the religious life of the
Russian peasantry. But I cannot assume that all
my readers have read these dull guide-books and
have been to Jerusalem, nor could I ask them to
take so much trouble in order to fill in the back¬
ground of the picture. I shall be pardoned if I
give now and then a few details such as the fore¬
going, which could no doubt be found in any
gazetteer. For the rest, it is one of the children in
the school who is showing you round.

A SERVICE IN A CHAPEL OE THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE.

AT THE CHURCH OF THE LIFE-

GIVING GRAVE

When I announced my intention of going to
Jerusalem, friends told me I was sure to be dis¬
appointed, that every one going there nursed high
hopes which were destined to remain unfulfilled ;
Jerusalem was not at all what we would have it be,
what we dream it to be ; that the commercial spirit
of the Arabs, the fraud and hypocrisy of the Greek
monks, and the banality and sordidness of the
everyday scenes would be a great shock to me. I
should feel that my religion and the Author of it
were disgraced, and not in any way honoured or
made more holy by what the Sacred Places look in
our day. I knew all this too, in myself, and on that
account should never have gone to Jerusalem, in the
ordinary course of things, from England and in the
English way. But now that I have journeyed with
the peasants, understood their religious life, and
come with them from the other side of Europe, I see
all things differently. Jerusalem stands revealed as
“the highest of all earthly,” the real “Holy of

123

124 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

holies.” It might have been that God had sent a
blight upon Jerusalem as He did upon Sodom, but
He found many pure and simple men worshipping
Him there as best they knew how, and the city has
remained unharmed. As long as the Russian
peasants and their like are gathered together there,
God will be found in the midst of them — those who
have been disappointed with Jerusalem will simply
not have got there at all.

The road from the Jerusalem of the tourist to the
Jerusalem of the pilgrim is long indeed. The
difference between the man surveying the Church
of the Sepulchre with a handbook, and the poor
peasant who creeps into the inmost chamber of the
Tomb to kiss the stone where he believes the dead
body of his Saviour was laid, is something over¬
whelming to the mind.

For the pilgrimage is the highest rite that
Christianity has conceived. As the rite of Com¬
munion keeps the memory of Christ “till His
coming again,” so the pilgrimage foreshadows the
whole journey of the human soul in earth and
heaven. When the peasant has slept in the sacred
Tomb, and awakened again and gone out of it once
more, he has been received into the presence of
the angels.

But to put aside for a moment this fundamental
and personal meaning of the pilgrimage, let me take
it simply in its relation to the Holy Orthodox
Church and the religious life of the Russian

in AT THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE 125

peasantry. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem is again
found to be a fundamental matter, and the Church of
the Sepulchre to be the mother shrine of the whole
Church. It is an extremely interesting matter, and
by no means an idle generalisation. Those who
wish to study the religious life of Russia, to under¬
stand the reverence for the dead bodies of the saints,
and the psychology of the little pilgrimage ought
really to take the Jerusalem pilgrimage as a starting-
point, for it is in itself an interpretation and ex¬
planation.

Western Europeans, and indeed even cultured
Russians, divorced from the realities of their native
land, must have often wondered at the belief the
peasants have that the dead bodies of the saints
have in them great holiness, healing power, the
strength to work miracles. To take an example —
those who have read The Brothers Kara?7iazov
remember how, when holy Father Zossima was
dying, people came from far and near, and brought
their sick, maimed, and blind to be in readiness
for a miracle directly the good man died. He who
in his lifetime had worked no miracles was expected
to work them when he was dead. And not even
anything so credible as that! It was actually the
dead body, the corpse from which the soul had
departed, that was supposed to work the miracle.
It seems absurd. It is not quite so absurd to
the simple Roman Catholic, but utterly absurd to
the Protestant. Protestantism reveals itself as

126 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iii

the religion of the mystery of life ; Orthodoxy as the
religion of the mystery of death.

It is not superstition ; it does not spring simply
from the peasants’ credulity. It is far deeper than
that. Superstition is infectious ; this other is
something spontaneous in the Russian soul. It is
perhaps older than Christianity, this worship of
corpses, unless we take it that Christianity in one
form or another has been existent since the founda¬
tion of the world.

The Russian believes — though but one in ten
thousand could articulate the belief — that when the
soul leaves the body it is purified, that it leaves in
the body its earthly impurities. Life is a sort of
smelting process, a refining by suffering instead of
by fire. The deathbed is the final struggle in the
release of the soul. The Russian is very much
afraid of sudden death ; he is afraid that if he dies
quickly the process will not have been properly
worked out. He likes to die a prolonged death of
suffering on his bed, in order that his soul may be
completely purged. To die suddenly is to die like
an animal. And yet that dead body in which is left
all the earthly dross is treated as having miraculous
power. The paradox is only an apparent one.
The Russian feels that the corpse has on it the trail
of the heavenly spirit which has escaped. As when
one looks at an empty chrysalis case one detects
traces of the bright scales of the wings of the
butterfly that has escaped, so the Russian is aware

hi AT THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE 127

of a sort of astral slime — forgive the expression —
on the bodies of those departed this life. The holy
man, the great saint, is essentially the man who
has greatly suffered, who has refined his soul to
perfection. And the body of the holy man is the
more holy because a wonderful and celestial spirit
has stepped out of it. It is even thought that when
exceptional saints die they leave such a trace of
their empyreal substance behind that for many years
the body remains incorruptible and will not decay.

The body of Jesus, whilst it lay in the Sepulchre,
was consequently the greatest of all earthly relics,
for out of it had flown not only a perfected celestial
spirit, but God of God and Very God of Very God.
That relic, however, disappeared. The Bible story
is confused : the disciples were evidently of two
minds as to the meaning of the Resurrection. Most
thought it meant that Christ rose again, as Lazarus
rose, in his old earthly body. There was probably
a strange rumour for many years after Jesus’ death
that He was abroad in the land and would shortly
manifest Himself. The enemies had said that Jesus’
body was stolen away by the disciples by night.
All four gospel writers have this slander in mind as
a most important point to be refuted. Consequently
there is a concerted defence of the material resurrec¬
tion. The story of Thomas and of the meal that
Jesus ate, and many other facts, are given to sub¬
stantiate the belief that the risen Jesus was not a
spirit. Yet Jesus was taken up into heaven, He

128 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

vanished into invisibility before the disciples’ eyes
and was evidently not subject to the laws of the flesh.
Jesus’ body certainly vanished, and it was never
recovered. Not even an ecclesiastic has ever laid
claim to have in his church the remains of Jesus,
though such remains would be considered the most
holy thing upon the world. Observe, Jesus dead is
holier than Jesus alive. For Orthodoxy He was
dead ; for Protestantism He is alive for evermore.

There are no bones and dust, there is only the
Sepulchre, the place where the shining God stepped
out, the place where the glowing, holy Body lay.
But that is enough ; it is as if the Body lay there
still. The stones which the peasants kiss in the
sacred Tomb are pregnant with the very mystery of
mysteries. The pilgrimage is not so much to the
Holy Land or to Jerusalem as to these sacred stones,
for they are holier than priest and church and city.
The same truth applies to pilgrimage in Russia, the
holy bones and dust of the saint deposited at the
holiest place in the church, the throne of the altar,
are the object of the pilgrimage, not so much the
church or monastery itself. The promise to God to
go to Jerusalem is called in popular parlance “the
promise to the Life-giving Grave.”

It was a common salutation of one pilgrim
to another in the hostelry of a morning, “ Let us go
and kiss the grave ! ” It was in answer to such an
invitation that I first visited the Holy Sepulchre.
It happened on the morning of the second day ; at

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FACES AT A PILGRIM’S FUNERAL.

“The pilgrim's whole concern centres round death, just as the whole concern of the Protestant

centres round life.’’

hi AT THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE

129

Jerusalem on the succeeding night we were all of us,
all who wished, to go and sleep there. It was a
strange contrast to come there by day and to come
there by night.

We went away down those descending, shadowy,
crowded alleys in the broiling noonday, threading
our way through a labyrinth — the peasant knew the
way — to the strange little turning that delivers you
unexpectedly into the sight of the Sepulchre.

“There, that is the Grave,” said the peasant,
pointing over the crowd of hawkers and buyers who
occupied the square in front of the church. I beheld
a heavy, ancient building with two disproportionately
large doors, one of which was mortared up. We
stood in the square facing the doors, and on each
side of us, not detached from the church, were the
ancient buildings of the monasteries of the Grave
in which formerly the pilgrims were accommodated.
It was a surprise. The whole was so ruined,
so patched and grimed, so ancient, and withal so
enigmatical. It seemed as if it might have been
produced only the night before by some evil
magician. Certainly that round which the Crusader
and the Saracen had fought, and round which now
the Arab hawkers loafed and screamed, was not
beautiful. It had in it an appearance of death.

This is really rather a horror to the fastidious.

The noise about it and the offal of the East are

appalling. What shall one say of the Turkish

gendarme .sprawling on a sofa at the entrance

1 3o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iii

smoking his cigarette and lazily looking at his
half-drunk cup of coffee? Even within, there is
heard the noise of the incautious movements of
Greek and Armenian priests ; the church is vast
and strange, ruined, dirty beyond words, with
verminous walls all cracked and chipped. One has
entered into a mysterious and awful chamber. I
came, of course, not to look but to pray. I only
realise now, as I write, what I saw. A strange
thought rose to my mind as we bent down to enter
the chamber of the Holy of holies, that Mary, the
mother of God, was the first pilgrim to the Life-
giving Grave, and up to that moment we were the
last.

I followed the pilgrim humbly and prostrated
myself at the great stone of anointing that lies in
the doorway, and kissed it after him. I followed to
various little shrines within the temple and repeated
the reverence, and then bent down to enter the
tunnel staircase to go to the very cleft in the rock
where the sacred Body was laid. The church is
built about the crowned and adorned Sepulchre, and
the latter, made square on all sides, suggests to the
mind the idea of the sacred Ark. I veritably held
my breath as I followed the pilgrim. And for me
the bond was loose : I do not believe like a peasant.
What the poor, simple pilgrim must feel, when at the
end of his long journey from the quiet little village
in the backwoods, he gets to this point I leave to the
imagination. It is a wonder that on that staircase

in AT THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE 131

peasants’ hearts do not stop. I should not be
surprised to hear that many have died there before
now. We crawled forward in entire reverence and
touched most delicately with our lips the shrine of
shrines. We were in the womb of death. Even the
consciousness seemed drawn away and we walked as
in a dream. I remember my surprise, when as I
lifted my head from kneeling, I suddenly felt a spray
of water on my face, a tingling in my eyes, and a
breath of perfume. I had not noticed the priest,
who sat in the background, holding an aspergeoire
in his hand with which he sprayed each worshipper
with holy water.

The pilgrim had been many times to the Grave,
and he showed me a carved baptism cross which
he had taken in with him to the inner sanctuary, and
held in that spurt of rose-scented water. When
he got back to his native village, greater gift than
this cross thus sanctified could not be within his
power. It would be something to outlast life and
the world itself — a token round the neck of the
wearer when dead — the same token round his neck
on the final day of resurrection.

For the peasant goes to Jerusalem in order that
he may die in a certain sort of way in Russia. His
whole concern centres round death just as the whole
concern of the Protestant centres round life.

This was our experience of the night in the
Tomb. We outlived all the possibilities of death
in that night. As I said, it was a strange contrast

132 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS hi

to the day-scene. All the scenery of the world
seemed changed for our benefit. The square was
deserted. The light of day and the feeling of living
in the present moment were gone. Myriads of
stars looked down and spoke to us of the eternity of
the past. We entered the funereal church whose
blackness was only intensified by the candles. We
were in a crowd like the bodies in a graveyard.
We were silent and morose, and said nothing to our
neighbours. Each individual settled down to the
way in which he wished to pass the night. Some
prayed, some prayed aloud, some lay prostrate, some
crouched and dreamed, some composed themselves
to sleep. Strangely enough we all found the church
more verminous than the hostelry. I cannot say
what each man lived through. Outside, I know, the
stars rolled overhead in that haggard, hungry way
that suggests the passing of centuries in a night. I
thought of the night after night of stars that look
down on the earth where we shall all be buried, the
stars that will look down on our dead bodies for
ever and ever, and I felt very sad and lonely, like a
little child that had a mother but a while since and
has just lost her. I dreamed in the dark. Then
some sort of comfort came that I cannot analyse,
the nameless, and I felt that all the universe had
passed away, but we who were lost had all found
one another again. Taking a turn to look out at
the door, I found it was morning, and I saw a queer
little hunchback pilgrim sitting on the cold stone

in AT THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE 133

pavement outside the door of the church. He wore
blue spectacles and was poring over an ancient Bible,
mumbling as he read, and I caught the phrase I
wanted, “ I am Alpha and Omega, the first and
the last, which was and which is, and which is to

come.

THE PILGRIMS

THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM

My attention was first drawn to the comic on the
pilgrim boat. I was standing by a deaf Turkish
hawker in the port of Smyrna, when suddenly a man
with a loud hollow voice addressed my neighbour : —
“ Move your hearing ear around ! ”

The Turk obeyed, leaning his head on one side
to catch whatever the possible customer might say.
The pilgrim put his lips to the Turk’s ear and
bawled louder than before : —

“ I want smoky eye-glasses ... to keep the sun
off . . . Say your lowest price at once as we lose
time, and death is coming.”

The pedlar fumbled hastily among his wares and
produced a pair of spectacles.

“ Fifty copecks,” he said, apologetically.

“ Twenty,” said the pilgrim. “ Don’t waste time.
Twenty.”

“ Forty-five.”

“Thirty. That’s my last figure. Decide

quickly ; if you don’t accept at once I shall go

back to twenty-five and remain at that, after which

137

138 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

I should not agree even if you did come down to
thirty.”

The poor pedlar could descend no lower, so the
pilgrim left him, and toddled away back to his place
in the hold, apparently without disappointment.
I followed him, and heard him ejaculate to his
neighbour down below, “ Vso blago polootchno," mean¬
ing that he had made his journey on to the upper
deck, God had preserved him, and he’d come to no
harm. Evidently he was one of those who hardly
ever moved from his place in the hold. He seemed
an extremely original fellow, and I tried to get into
conversation with him.

“If I see another pedlar I’ll send him to you,” I
volunteered.

“ I need no help,” said he, “ neither of man nor
of woman. Tell me. You have a ring on your
finger — does that mean you have been married for
the second, third, or fourth time ? ”

“ For the fifth,” I replied.

“ Hoo, hoo, hoo ! ” He cast up his eyes to the
low roof of the hold and giggled. He lost control
of his thin lips and wriggled with amusement. “ I
quite understand that,” he said at last.

But then a change came over his countenance.
I asked him from what province he came, and
apparently he took it ill.

“ Tambof,” he said abruptly. “ But to return to
the matter of your wives. You said five ; I laughed.
Perhaps I had no right to laugh. I don’t know

LIUBOMUDROF, THE COMIC

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 139

you ; you are only an acquaintance. I should
probably never get to know you so well that I
could be sure of you. The proverb says that to
know any one as you know yourself it is necessary
to eat forty pounds of salt, and that in the end of
ends is impossible. To be brief, the more we
probe into the human nature of our fellow-man
the more bitterness we find. To know a man is
like committing suicide by swallowing salt a spoon¬
ful at a time till we have eaten forty pounds.
Then we know him and we are dead. Where have
you sprung from ? I take you for a man. You may
be a woman for all I know .... in man’s clothes.
Avaunt ! ”

I tried to be cheerful, but only got sent away.
So, feeling rather offended, I went back to my place
upstairs again, and we didn’t see one another till
we arrived at the hostelry.

There I saw him again, and saw him every day,
for he slept not twenty yards from me. One
morning he came up to me with a deliberative air
and himself broke the silence. He didn’t refer to
our previous conversation, and indeed was very
abrupt.

“ Can you tell me,” said he, “ whether the Dread¬
ful Judgment will take place in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat or on the shores of the Dead Sea ?
Some people say one thing ; some another.”

This question was our re-introduction. He was
a strange little peasant with a large, idiotic-looking

1 4o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

head, and wasted arms and legs. He wore a
peasant-made wadded jacket and jack-boots into
which his little trousers were tucked. I could not
answer his question about the Dreadful Judgment,
but we went together to the Dead Sea shore from
Jordan, and he came to the conclusion it would be
there. We never referred to our first meeting on
the boat, and perhaps he had forgotten it. Anyway,
we remained on quite intimate terms to the day of
my departure for Russia. Several days he lay ill on
his pallet and could not stir, and I sat beside him,
read extracts out of holy books, and talked. He
was not an ordinary pilgrim at all, but then I think
that each and every one of these seven thousand
pilgrims, known intimately, would reveal himself as
by no means ordinary. But that is by the way.
Certainly this one was abnormal. He spoke in
enigmatical sentences and often at great length, and
in a very complex style. His voice was so arresting
that it could be distinguished from afar, even in the
buzz of the whole hostelry speaking at once. He
made a confession to me.

“ I was once an alcoholik. My two great sins
were drunkenness and adultery, a leaning to the one
as to the other ; a weakness for strong drinks and for
the female sex. For although God made man and
woman equal and complementary, taking the one
out of the other, and making one want the other, and
bidding the other cleave to the one, yet man is not
content ; for he imagines that happiness is in change,

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 141

even though he has the stars over him as an example
of constancy in the very night of his falseness. And
although spirits are a superfluity, God having given
men nerves in certain quantities and proportions
fitting to his virtues, and the strong liquor upsetting
those proportions and changing those quantities,
yet man thinks in his smallness that more happiness
is to be obtained by being in the wrong quantities,
out of their balance, not sober, drunken, inebriate
. . . you understand. Yes, these were my sins for
which I suffered in God’s mercy. One day I was
struck down from heaven. I felt a terrible pain
down the middle of my forehead. ...”

The pilgrim stopped, and crossed himself three
times with awful solemnity.

“ Since the morning when that happened,” he
went on, “ I have not lifted a spade or held a rein.
I fell ill. My enemies appeared. I became ill and
my enemies appeared ; the well became ill, the friend
became the enemy. They made a plan to steal my
property.”

The peasant looked me straight in the eyes. I
looked at his yellow, wrinkled face, and saw that
he was about to trust me with his most dangerous
confidence.

“ I was eight months in a lunatic asylum,” he
went on hastily. “ My enemies contrived it. They
sat in my house whilst I was ill and contrived it.
So I lay in a madhouse till I saw a priest and asked
him to speak to the doctor. I paid a little money, I

1 42 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

may say, a little of the paper with which we ease
our business, he, he, he ! . . . and I managed it.
The doctor certified my recovery. I got the plan in
a dream. I felt well, and I resolved never to smell
a glass of vodka any more, and I haven’t. I know I
should have that pain again if I did. I gained much
of my property back then, but finding myself useless

for work, and having money on my hands and time,

and reflecting on the mercy of God, I vowed to go
to Jerusalem, and I put a notice on my house door
to that effect, and collected many holy commissions.”

This evidently reminded him of some duties, for
he said to me, “ If you are free we can go out into
the city together.” I agreed to accompany him,
and we went out to look at the shops and buy ikons.

We turned down past the cathedral and the
hospital, and into the town. On the way I stopped
at a shop to buy some photographic material. The
salesman, not understanding the Russian word for
films ( plonki ), I had to explain what I wanted in
French. When I got outside again the pilgrim
asked me what language I had spoken in.

“ In French,” I replied.

“ They speak it in your province ? ” he queried.

“Yes. We learn it besides our own language ;
it’s often necessary,” I replied.

We went on along a line of ecclesiastical shops
where religious ornaments, crucifixes, charms, and
curios were exposed for sale. My friend evidently
wanted to buy, but he seemed to hesitate. We

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 143

stopped a long time looking at the shop windows,
and I judged he was very glad to have me by him,
for he would not allow me to desert him.

At length he seemed to have made his choice of
a shop. “You are my witness,” he said, as we
stood on the threshold.

“ Witness of what ? ” I asked.

“Of what I buy,” he replied.

He bought, first of all, a stout pilgrim’s staff,
brass-headed, not for himself apparently, for it was
disproportionately large. He was particularly care¬
ful to inspect it, and see that it had printed on the
side of it, “ With the blessing of the Holy City of
Jerusalem.”

The shopman began to pester him to buy frank¬
incense. He was an oily-lipped, fat-nosed, dark
salesman, a Jew I thought, but he said he was
Orthodox ; said also that he had been educated
for the Church at Moscow, though he spoke Russian
deplorably. “An unpleasant, fawning, loquacious
shopman,” I thought.

The pilgrim asked to see a panoraina, as he
called it, that is, a stereoscope with a set of Jeru¬
salem pictures. As in this shop the pictures were
not photographic, but cheap lithographs, the pilgrim
was very disappointed. He looked at about fifty
pictures and decided fifty times. “ It wasn’t good
enough.” The shopman was mortified. He was
quite a young Jew, had an extreme contempt for
pilgrims in general, no sympathy with them or

i44 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

understanding of them. So when the peasant
refused to take the stereoscope he began reducing
the price. He came down from three roubles fifty
copecks to one rouble fifty, and quite unnecessarily
showed of how much he would have robbed us.
My companion, however, ignored the salesmans
personality and character. These obviously didn’t
concern him. He asked for myrrh, and without any
bargaining bought three pounds of it. He got it
at a reasonable price, for the shopman was sobered.

“ These are ordinary purchases,” said Liubo-
mudrof, for that was my pilgrim’s name — lover of
wisdom, it means. “These are ordinary purchases,
as one man to another, God being above us and
this being my witness,” he pointed to me. “ Now,
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, Amen.”

He turned north, south, east, and west in turn
and crossed himself, the salesman with affable
familiarity and feigned reverence doing the same.
I stood and watched, or examined the things for
sale.

“ Now,” said Liubomudrof, looking straight at
the expectant shop-keeper, “ I want ten thorn
crowns.”

“ What do you want ? ”

The pilgrim explained. He wanted thorn crowns
such as the Arab peasant women plait and sell in
the streets, crowns made of the same thorns as
those which wounded Jesus’ brow. The salesman

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 145

sent a boy out for the ten, and brought them in a
few minutes while we examined ikons. These also
were bought without bargaining.

“Now,” said the pilgrim, “I want a wooden
baptism cross with a figure of Christ on one side,
and on the other bits of the seven sacred woods
inlaid.”

“ Forty copecks,” said the salesman. Such
goods are sold at five copecks.

“Ah!” said Liubomudrof. “I do not bargain
over sacred things, and I’m not proposing a reduc¬
tion. However, I have an order. I don’t want
one only, no doubt that makes a difference with
you. Now, if I were to say I wanted ten I suppose
that would be different.”

“ Oh yes, that would be quite different.”

“Well, then, now that I’ve told you I shan’t
bargain with you, and you quite understand, tell me
at what rate you would charge for them now that I
bring an order to you.”

“ I’ll tell you what I’ll do, batushka ,” said the
shopman. “ So as there shall be no bargaining,
I’ll say a minimum price. I’ll say thirty copecks
each, and I’ll give you a special large cross in for
yourself as a premium.”

“ Hoo, hoo,” said the pilgrim, “that’s cheating.
I did not ask for a premium as you call it, and I
don’t want it. How much is such a premium
worth anyway ? ”

“We sell them for seventy copecks at least.”

146 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

“ Well, then, distribute that seventy copecks ;
spread it over the other crosses and make their
price less. I want twenty-eight, that is at least two
copecks less.”

“ I’m quite honest,” said the shopman. He
crossed himself with an appearance of devoutness.
“ And now, batushka , I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
Seeing that you want twenty-eight, and will prob¬
ably bring other orders to me, I’ll make it twenty-
five copecks each, and I’ll still give you the large
cross in.”

“ No, no,” said Liubomudrof impatiently. “ The
price is thirty copecks, but I want no premium, and
I propose that you deduct two copecks each in
respect of it, and make the price twenty-eight. Do
you agree ? ”

The salesman with a serious and appreciative
look agreed, but he said he would give the cross in
all the same. This puzzled Liubomudrof, and after
repeating that he didn’t want the cross he seemed
about to leave the shop.

The shopman hastily put it away and took the
order, sorting out the crosses. Liubomudrof re¬
jected seven as being bad specimens, lacking the
inlay of the seven woods. When the twenty-eight
had been found, the shopman offered the pilgrim
chains by which to attach the crosses — they were
the sort which are hung round the neck.

Liubomudrof rejected them. “ String is better,”
said he.

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 147

The shopman, however, put in two as a bounty,
and even offered me one free. He was excited at
the money he was taking.

Liubomudrof then bought five funeral shrouds
and five black skull-caps embroidered with silver-
coloured crosses. He also bought a sheaf of hideous
oleographs, and twenty little manufactured and
stamped tablets of Jerusalem earth, and he ordered
an ikon of St. Ignatief to be specially painted for
him, indicating exactly how it was to be done —
all without bargaining. Then he requested the
man to make out a bill and receipt it, and said he
would pay. He waved a twenty-five rouble note.
The shopman, to my surprise, was very much dis¬
inclined to write out a bill. He was afraid that
Liubomudrof might show his bill to the authorities,
and that how much he had overcharged would be
noticed by them. The pilgrim, however, was firm,
and was ready to go out of the shop quite happily
and cheerfully, resigning all his purchases if he could
not have a receipt. The salesman therefore, though
very unwillingly, wrote out the list, the number, and
the price. Liubomudrof corrected him several times
on unimportant points. At the end he signed his
name simply “ Dmitri.” I said it was not enough ;
that a surname was needed, and the name of the
shop, but Liubomudrof said, “ No, Dmitri is
sufficient.” Again there was trouble over the
change, for among the Russian gold was a ten-
franc piece which was supposed to be the same as

i48 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

five roubles. The pilgrim refused the coin ; didn’t
know what it was, but refused it as bad. “It
hadn’t got the Tsar’s head on,” he said. Affecting
to examine the coin in his fingers, the shopman
dropped it, and fooling us to the top of his bent,
he lisped out, “ Ah ! God have mercy ! ” There
lay the yellow coin of the Republique Frangaise
of 1875, and before he picked it up he made the
sign of the cross over it.

At last, with right change, with a bill of a
kind, and loaded with purchases, we left the shop.
Liubomudrof chuckled.

“ Vso blagopolootchno ,” he said, using the same
phrase as when he got safely back to his seat in the
hold on the pilgrim boat.

Some days later he brought me a long document
to sign.

Certificate

This is to certify that on the 12th March 1912, Pavel
Pavlovitch Liubomudrof, a pilgrim at Jerusalem, bought
in the Holy City of Jerusalem, at Dmitri’s shop, near the
church of the Life-giving Grave .... etc.

He enumerated with many explanations the
things that he had bought and the price paid for
them. At the end it was signed, “Pavel Pavlovitch
Liubomudrof,” and under that signature came
another five lines to this effect: —

I certify that I was with Pavel Pavlovitch Liubomudrof
on the 1 2th March, and witnessed all these transactions,
and I certify that the things were bought as written,
above.

IV THE UNCOMMERCIAL PILGRIM 149

Then I understood how it was he had said I was
his witness, and I signed.

The Comic was very fond of making out long,
official-looking documents, and he spent nearly the
whole of one day composing and copying out a long
petition to the Governor of Tambof, apparently
about his property. He had his mysteries.

One day he came to me and said, “ I want your
help. Write me a telegram in French. Translate
this for me and take it to the Turkish post-office.”

“ Why in French ? ” I asked.

“ They won't take a telegram in Russian,” he
replied.

“ But to whom are you sending it ? ” I enquired.

“A friend in Russia,” he replied; “that is
irrelevant.”

“ But will he understand French ? ” I asked.

This was a poser. It seemed very certain that
the pilgrim’s friend was simply an uneducated
mouzhik. The upshot was that we went to the
post - office, and we found that the Russian
telegram could be sent, but it would have to be
trans-literated, that is, written in Latin letters.
So the telegram was sent, “ Pay Kislovsky 100
roubles. — Liubomudrof.” I wonder if it was under¬
stood at that rural post - office to which it was
directed.

Yes, we did a great many such things together,
and the pilgrim came to regard me as an indispens¬
able person. He came along at all times and at all

150 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

hours, and asked me the most astonishing questions
— to the great distaste of Philip who liked privacy.
Then Liubomudrof and I went to Jordan. We
spent together the morning of the receiving of the
Sacred Fire. But of these matters I must speak
in due place.

A CROWD JUST OUT OF CHURCH.

The little ones are Syrian children from the Russian Mission School.

PHILIP

Before relating the story of the caravan to Jordan,
I must just say a word about a pilgrim who was the
very opposite of Liubomudrof in his dealings with
the shop-keepers, namely, my enigmatical acquaint¬
ance Philip. Philip was a commercial person at
Jerusalem; praying took but a third or perhaps a
fourth place in his life there.

H e was a Little Russian from the province of
Podolsk, a large settlement near the Austrian
frontier. I know I was rather inclined to set it
down to the influence of Austria that he was such
a peculiar peasant. I hit on the wrong person
when I went to live with him at the hostelry. If
any one wished to write a book on all that was
wrong at Jerusalem, Philip would have been the
type to study. He was a tall, full-blooded peasant,
broad-shouldered but fat, with a large, dirty, black¬
haired, unshaven face, fat nose and cheeks, round
chin, dreamy, affectionate, but cunning eyes ; his
hair brushed back over a clever, roofed head,

showed a high but red and wrinkled Russian fore-

151

152 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

head. His bushy moustache hung in a sensual sort
of drop over thick, red, sluggish lips. He was thirty-
five. He walked with a peculiar jaunt, lifting his
back up and down as he went, wore a sugar-loaf
sheepskin hat, and talked in a low, musical whisper.
He liked to descend into an artificial, childish sing¬
song when he was talking familiarly ; he knew
every one, and whenever any trouble arose about
places or the like in the hostelry, he always settled
it in a way that led the other peasants to think he
had authority to do so.

I did not personally feel drawn to him. He was
much more dirty than he seemed ; his curtained
apartment was suffocating ; I feared he was in
league with the pickpocket monk. Eventually I
discovered so many of his ways, and he had so
much reason to fear and hate me, that I left him for
a safer place in the hostelry. Philip was a pander
to the monks, a tout for ecclesiastical shop-keepers
like Dmitri’s, an agent for bringing credulous pil¬
grims to priests who said prayers to God on pay¬
ment of money, a smuggler of goods to Russia, a
trader in articles of religion and Turkish goods, an
immoralist. He infringed all the rules of the
Palestine Society, had an understanding with all
the lower officials, paid nothing for his keep, did
not give his passport in, could even get his dinner
free. He was pious with a genuine childlike piety,
made a journey to Jordan to get ten bottles of the
real Jordan water, and would not think of filling his

PHILIP

i53

bottles at Jerusalem and lying when he got home;
but he was all on the side of disorganisation and
corruption, and the presence of such in the fold is a
menace to the sheep and to the good work and
name of the shepherds — the Orthodox Palestine
Society.

He was in Jerusalem to make money, and he
carried back to Russia each year something like four
hundred pounds of luggage, though he came with
only a sack on his back. And he bestowed all that
immense quantity of stuff on the ship, and took it
through the Customs at Odessa without paying a
farthing for freight or duty. He had had much
experience, and knew his way about, both in Russia
and Jerusalem.

I must say his ways puzzled me. All one day he
cut up potatoes, pared them, sliced them, and hung
them on strings to dry. The next day he did the
same, morning, noon, and night, and he seemed to
have patience to go on for eternity. Our apartment
was hung with strings of black slices and presented
an extraordinary appearance. Moreover, no one
else in the whole hostelry was doing such a thing or
had such strings drying. The other pilgrims were
very curious ; but to all questions Philip answered
that Turkish potatoes dried were good in soup —
which was untrue. Whoever heard of any one
putting ancient black slices of bitter potatoes in
soup ? His explanation to me was more amazing
than the act. “ Don’t tell the others : the potatoes

154 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

are for the peasant women in our village ; they break
the slices up and put them in their tea ; it’s good for
toothache, headache, stomachache. The Arabs use
it. Once I took a pound home, and they were liked
so much that now whenever I go to Jerusalem all
the babas come round me asking me to bring some
home.”

Another day Philip brought in seventy-five yards
of muslin, and spent hours and hours cutting it into
squares, and not deigning an explanation, till one
day he took them out in the morning to a “Jew
Factory,” where he had them all stamped “ With a
blessing from Jerusalem.”

“ What will you do with them ? ” I asked.

“Give them to the peasant girls at the fair,” he
replied, “ for a copeck or so.”

“ But how can a Jew give the muslin a blessing
from Jerusalem by stamping with a machine?”

“ I shall lay them on the grave,” he replied.

We went out one morning, and after long haggling
at a shop — not Dmitri’s — bought sixty-six pounds
of frankincense, which he carried home on his back
in a great dun-coloured sack.

But instead of going into all these commercial
iniquities, I will tell of a little outing he and I had
just before going to the Jordan. After all I shall
have to tell more of Philip’s ways when I tell of life
in the hostelry as it was when all the new pilgrims
came and the old ones returned from Nazareth —
when we had a full house.

PHILIP

155

Philip said, “ Let us go out to pray,” and we
went to the Church of Christ’s torments, a Greek
temple where the service was not in Russian, and
neither he nor I knew much of the meaning. There
was a great crowd of well-dressed Greeks, and we
stood at the back prostrating ourselves on the cold
stone, actually outside the church door. Directly
the service was ended we took candles and went
down to do reverence in the dungeons. Being at
the back of the congregation we were in a fortunate
position, for many worshippers wished to do as we
did, and it was well to be the first to go down the
dark stairways.

“ They bought it recently from the Turks,” said
Philip. “ They dug it up and found a lot of human
bones — see ! ”

He pointed to little piles of bleached human
bones that the monks had arranged edifyingly.
Philip was quite serious. Though his purposes at
Jerusalem were commercial he had no doubts of his
religion. We went into the den where Christ was
scourged, and kissed the stones and the ikon of
Christ set up there. We also kissed the stone
stocks in which Jesus is supposed to have been set.
We prostrated ourselves in the room where Jesus
was kept waiting whilst Pilate harangued the people
and offered them Barabbas ; we even saw the basin
in which Pilate washed his hands. I forget some of
the little shrines in these dungeons. There was the
place where the great ikon of Jesus crowned with

156 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

thorns is kept, the den in which St. Peter lay when he
was delivered by the angel. We hurried along from
one to the other, lighting up the dark corners with
our flickering tapers. As we went out we heard the
hoarse voices of guides showing these curiosities to
European visitors.

We drank tea and wine with bread and raisins
with a hospitable priest at the back of the building,
and he persuaded me to write down the names and
addresses of three virtuous people in Russia.

“ Write down all, all you know,” he urged. But I
averred that that was all I could tell him. “ All
right, batushku ,” said he, “now I shall make you a
present.” And he gave me a little oleograph picture
of Christ sitting in the stocks. It was part of
Philip’s business to bring pilgrims to this priest : the
latter was circularising people in Russia for sub¬
scriptions for the building of his church.

Philip took me away to visit an acquaintance of
his, a little Russian monk from his own district,
Father Constantine, a miserable, melancholy hermit
who lived in a cell near Herod’s wall. Evidently
Father Constantine had wanted to see Philip for
some time, for he talked to him very anxiously and
paid no attention to me. Indeed, he came to us
before we got to his door and hurriedly brought us
in. It was a room no bigger than a large cupboard,
and it lay in unimaginable dirt and disorder. The
table was a three-legged stool ; we sat about it on
provision boxes. On the table was a large bottle of

PHILIP

i57

church wine and two glasses. The fat little monk,
who was dressed in greasy, ancient clothes, leaned
across to Philip, put a little fat hand on his
shoulder, and whispered to him with artificial sobs.

“ Go there, go there this afternoon, I’ll give you a
letter for her, she is in a bad state. Give her the
five roubles, that is, wait of course till she asks for
money. But if she asks, give it her. It is a lot of
money, and I wouldn’t give it if she didn’t expect it
or didn’t ask for it. See, I have a letter for you,
I wrote it yesterday. How dusty it is ! We need a
clean out in here ; the dust is always falling, even on
the wine just poured out. But come, you’ll have
something to drink.”

He poured us out wine in the two glasses, en¬
quired who I was, what government, etc. etc. I
didn’t feel like wine, but I allowed him to pour me
out a glass.

“ Hungry ? ” said the monk. ‘‘No doubt ! All I
have is arabsky kushanie (Arab-eating); never mind,
it’s what God sends, it’s not bad.”

He placed on the stool table a plate of half-eaten
pickled cauliflower of very sickly taste, for it was
soaked in Lenten oil, a basin of black compote
made from cheap Turkish unwashed fruits, and a
dish of cold cooked grain.

“Eat what God has sent,” said he, and he
resumed his conversation with Philip.

“ Father Antony is dead,” said he.

“ No ! ” said Philip, “ I had not heard.”

i58 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

“Yes, he finished up stark staring mad. For
the last six weeks he’s been drinking every hour.
Nobody ever found him sober. We daren’t go near
him ; he threatened to murder us. When we looked
through the window of his cell he shook a razor at
us. I only went once, and he abused me who used
to be his friend, his bosom companion. So I said
as I went away, ‘ Next time I come it’ll be to sew
you up.’ So it was . . . they came to me the day
before yesterday and said, ‘ Father Constantine, will
you sew him up ? ’ ”

“ Ai, ai, ai ! ” said Philip in a melancholy sing-song
voice, wagging his head.

“ Yes, they were afraid, they didn’t like to, and so
they came to me. It’s the eighteenth man I’ve sewn
up here. It was a sad piece of work washing the
corpse and sewing up the shroud, but I’m an
experienced hand.”

Objurgated at this point I resigned my wine and
handed it over to the monk, who drank down the
contents and poured me out a second. We had only
two glasses between the three. The food was
beyond me, but I helped myself, and pretended to eat
just to keep them company. They took me for a
mouzhik and paid me no attention. They went on
talking ; I took stock of the room. There was truly
an unconscionable amount of dust and litter, and
even the prints on the walls were effaced by dirt,
age, and fly-marks. The only substantial piece
of furniture was a cupboard full of wine bottles.

PHILIP

i59

There was no bed : the old fellow apparently slept in
an old blanket on the floor. On one of the cobwebby
walls was a notice which reminded me of the evils
of degenerate ecclesiasticism: It was a tariff for
prayers : —

For eternal memory in the Monastery, every day

for ever . . . . . . 30 roubles

For eternal memory once a week . . 10 ,,

For eternal memory once a year . . 5 „

For a lamp to be lit that shall never be put out 100 ,,

And I thought, ‘‘This won’t do at all. To write
down a thing like this is obviously simony ; even
taking money when there is no definite undertaking
is a delicate matter, but this is depravity.” Yet
before I left Jerusalem I saw such a notice in print,
and I know it has been circulated broadcast.

Poor old Father Constantine, however, continued
his talk: “Father Joseph will be next, he hasn’t
been sober for a month, he doesn’t know what he’s
doing, he’ll pick up the kerosine, drink that, and
there’ll be an end of him. You remember how
Father George died after drinking methylated spirit.
O Lord my God, what a shock ! Yes, every time
I hear a knock in the night I think, Here it is, a
messenger to say, ‘Come and sew up Father Joseph,
come and wash his corpse, nobody else dares.’
People begin to look on me simply in that light. But
who will sew me up when my turn comes ? I also
am a sinner. I’m not so sober as I was.”

Philip and he were at their fifth glass at this point.

160 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

I had resigned my glass long since, for it was a
heavy, oppressive wine.

The monk showed a tendency to sob. Suddenly
something seemed to happen to him. He was
looking up at the ikon as if it were far, far away —
star-gazing at it, in fact. “ Philip,” he said, “ I pray
each day for forgiveness to the blessed Mother of
God, and it seems I see her move towards me.” At
this point he ceased speaking, and stared into
vacancy as if he saw something we did not. His
eyes caught a vinous, but beatific expression, floods
of tears rolled down his red cheeks, and he held up
his little fat fingers as if to take some gift of mercy
to his bosom.

I must say I was astonished, for the old fellow
was certainly not acting a part. I feared he had
gone mad. But the mood passed as suddenly as it
had come. The tears dried. He turned his atten¬
tion to me.

“You’ve no doubt got some one to pray for,’
said he, “some in your village for health of body or
peace of soul. Why go to Bethlehem, or Nazareth,
or Jordan. They take your money there and forget
all about you ! Philip knows. He cares for the
poor pilgrim, has been here ten times at least, and
knows all the frauds. Just shell out all the papers
you’ve got and the subscriptions, and I’ll see that
everything’s carried out properly.”

I was nonplussed. “ I haven’t any,” I said. “ You
can pray for my mother and father if you like.”

PHILIP

1 6 1

“God rest their souls! Give me their Christian
names.”

“Oh, they are alive,” said I, “but perhaps you
had better pray for me. I am a great sinner ;
here’s fifty copecks. And many thanks to you.”

We rose to go out. The monk gave Philip the
letter. “ Be sure and go to the nunnery,” said he ;
“ find out about her. Don’t give her the money
unless she asks for it. Five roubles is much, very
much . . . Don’t forget . . . and come back again
as soon as you can.”

We parted.

“ What was the matter with him ? ” I asked
Philip when we got out of earshot. “Why did he
stare into the air that time and call on the Virgin ? ”

“ He had a vision of his sins,” said Philip, in a
matter-of-fact air. “ He often has them.”

My companion seemed drowsy and sulky ; he
had had quite enough wine, more than enough,
in fact.

“ I’ve little time left before Easter,” said he, “and
a great deal to do. I can’t spare time to go on that
old monk’s business. . . . Now I must buy some¬
thing, so as not to go back to the hostelry empty
handed.”

We went into a shop and bought three hundred
crosses. Philip hitched the great sack containing
them on to his shoulders, and bore them as a man
does a sack of coals all the way to the Russian
settlement, and to our corner where was the

162 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

curtained apartment. Then, despite the fact that
time was precious, he lay down on his sheepskin
and slept till late in the evening. Father Con¬
stantine’s church wine was potent, especially in
conjunction with bad cauliflower, oil, and compote.

Ill

THE MONK YEVGENY

Father Constantine was a type of degenerate
Jerusalem monk. A peasant who had had a wish
to live worthily, he had, no doubt, offered his soul
to God as many young men do in Russia, had re¬
nounced the world and entered a Russian monastery.
Philip told me he had been a monk in a monastery
at Kiev, had been transferred to the Ilinsky shrine
at Odessa, and thence to Jerusalem. It would have
been interesting to follow the history of his decay.
It certainly was a strange ending for a simple
life — drunkenness, religious hysteria, and corpse
washing.

I met another monk of an extremely different
type, Yevgeny, also an old man, sixty-five in fact,
and given to drink, but one who was living his life,
and being young even in old age. It was he who
raised the scandal over the Syrian girls, he who
preached what I called the “ Gospel of Stupidity ”
on the pilgrim boat. He was a type that counts
for far more than Father Constantine in Russia and
the world, for wherever he went he threw himself

163

1 64 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

and his prejudices, right or wrong, headlong into
men’s affairs.

We early came to know one another. The good
old man had warned the pilgrims to beware of the
English, and amusingly talked with one and knew
him not. I pleased him by asking intelligent
questions, and somehow or other we spent much
time together at Jerusalem, though we must have
seemed an ill-assorted couple.

Outside the hostelry were gardens planted with
pepper trees covered with pepper-corns ; there were
also many cedars, aspens, and olives, and under the
trees were grass swards, flower beds, and gravel
paths. It was a pleasant place to perambulate ; the
monks came out to meditate and read the Scriptures
there, and the peasants, all flushed with sunburn, sat
in the shade of the trees resting their weary limbs.
I commonly turned up in this pleasant place some¬
time in the morning, read a chapter of the Bible,
and jotted down in my note-book any particular
points in the pilgrimage that occurred to me at that
time as vital. Sometimes I would sit an hour or so
uninterrupted, but generally not more than twenty
minutes. For Yevgeny would come along and talk
or ask me to walk with him. He was a jealous sort
of character, and if I had begun a talk with some
peasant he would be sure to come and bear me off,
saying he would have liked to stay with them, but
as he was an old man his legs grew cold when he
sat in the shade.

FATHER YEVGENY DISCOURSING ON THE BOAT.

THE MONK YEVGENY

l65

He was a tall man and spare, but not thin. He
had good ample shoulders under his cassock, and
stout arms and legs. His face was ancient, and
framed in grey hair ; his eyes sunken, yet live and
intellectual ; his cheeks shrivelled and red, with
shadowy furrows. His gums lacked teeth, but he
opened his mouth wide when speaking, and his ill-
pronounced words seemed to gain authority from
his toothlessness. He always stood erect, having
a sort of military tradition in his bearing, for he
had been a soldier. His movements were uncom¬
promising, dramatic, and at times awe-inspiring.
Though no one knew anything much about him,
and he had no actual authority, he was always a
central figure wherever he went. He commanded,
instructed, rated, cursed, blessed, and never lost any
dignity in coming out of a dilemma.

One day we were in the back room of one of the
little pilgrim-restaurants near the hostelry, and had
each ordered a penny plateful of boiled beans, when
Yevgeny jumped up and addressed the occupants of
the table next to ours ; they were swarthy, wild¬
looking Bulgarians with long black hair and dense
whiskers, and they wore broad-brimmed black felt
hats cocked jauntily over their ears.

“ Am I in the presence of beasts ? ” asked
Yevgeny. “Am I in the presence of beasts or of
men? Take off your hats! How do you dare to
come in here like Turks with your hats on as if there
were no ikons. I have taken off my own hat,

166 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

which is a holy hat and need not be removed, and
my friend here, a simple Russian, has taken off his.
Who are you to keep your hats on ? ”

Yevgeny stood pointing to the ikon figure.
Three of the Bulgarians took off their hats, but the
fourth paid no attention whatever. He was busy
pouring out wine for his companions.

‘‘What is it the batushka is saying?” I heard
them say. “ It’s our hats, I suppose. What’s he
worrying about? Isn’t it our concern ?”

The recalcitrant one, a fat, jovial man, still kept
his hat on. Yevgeny called for the owner of the
shop, a Syrian Christian of commercial soul.

“You come in here to have your beans,” said
the Syrian; “you mustn’t interfere with other
customers.”

“Are you a Christian?” thundered Yevgeny.
“ Then command him to take off his hat else I
leave you.”

The fat Bulgarian went on pouring out wine and
babbling in his native tongue.

“Come on,” said Yevgeny, “we will go. No,
thanks, we don’t want your beans. Sell them to
the Turks, Judas! Come on, come on.”

He stalked out of the shop. I remained and ate
my meal. But presently he returned into the shop
storming all the way, and creating such a clamour
that the customers were frightened and the owner
was certainly vexed.

“ Oh,” said he, “ if he doesn’t take off his hat, or

IV THE MONK YEVGENY 167

if he isn’t turned out I will pronounce a curse over
the shop. I will curse it. I have the power.”

I wondered what was going to happen. Would
there be a great scene ? Would there, perhaps, be a
fight? . . . the Bulgarians looked very warlike. But
no ; I was far out in my imaginings ; the miracle
of miracles took place. The swarthy peasant, the
offender, himself a pilgrim, took off his hat and
came up to the monk, and said in a gentle, simple
voice —

“ Forgive me, father ; I didn’t know you were
referring to me. My back was to you, and I didn’t
know you were a father ; forgive me now and give
me your blessing.”

“You sincerely repent? ” said Yevgeny.

“ I didn’t know. Forgive me. Give me your
blessing.”

“If you repent I forgive you,” said the monk,
somewhat astonished, and he made the sign of the
cross over the kneeling peasant, very solemnly
pronouncing a blessing the while.

“ And now I shall kiss you,” said the Bulgarian,
and with great gusto and simple happiness he kissed
the old red, wizened, hairy cheeks of the monk and his
aged lips. We all looked on, and it was as if a ray of
morning sunshine had leapt down us upon after rainy
weather. Every one in the whole establishment
felt astonishingly happy.

“It was a victory,” said the monk afterwards
when we got into the street.

1 68 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

Another day we went down to see the
Mosque of Omar, which is built as they say over the
ruins of Solomon’s Temple, and Yevgeny had par¬
taken plentifully of the juice of the vine. “ I need the
wine to keep me warm,” he used to say apologeti¬
cally, “my limbs go very cold now every day
because I’m getting old, and my time is drawing
near ! ” We had gone on our own account, that is,
without any letter to the Turks to let us in, and of
course had been turned back, for the Mosque is
accounted very sacred, and is kept very jealously
guarded from the chance footsteps of the unbeliever.
Yevgeny, with the passion of cross versus crescent
in his bosom, was very angry, and tried to force his
way through, but was stopped by the Turkish
soldiers. We retraced our footsteps through an
animated and somewhat hostile crowd of Arabs.
And all the way back Yevgeny cursed them, shouted
Anathema, and made fork lightning with his two
fingers and thumb put together and dashed through
the air in mystic signs. I should explain that the
two fingers and thumb together symbolise the
Trinity. We were surrounded by a crowd of
Easterns, coffee faced, with gleaming teeth, be-
turbaned. I thought there was going to be trouble,
when suddenly a reasonable old fellow, whom I took
to be a Persian, spoke for the Mahomedans. “ Why
are you angry, old man? You wouldn’t allow us
into your Sepulchre. Why should we allow you in
our Mosque ? ” Yevgeny, who was a thorough

IV THE MONK YEVGENY 169

fire-eater, had really great dramatic force in him.
He never ceased to walk forward with me even
when he was addressed, and he never ceased fork
lightning with his fingers ; but when it looked as if
we should be driven by a mob he suddenly stopped,
faced his foes, and dramatically put aside his black
cassock, showing underneath a great red cross
embroidered on a black shirt. Every one stood
back, and the superstitious Moslems half expected
a miracle. “And now,” said Yevgeny, “begone,
accursed ! ” With that the crowd dispersed, and as
we went forward once more it was only a few
curious who were watching us.

“ A victory,” said the monk to me. “ It is always
necessary to fight with force. Once I had energy ;
now I am weaker. You know what I believe, weak
speaking sets people against you ; never speak at
all unless you are going to conquer.”

“ Do all monks wear that cross ? ” I asked, “ I
never guessed it was there under the cassock.”

“No,” said he, “only a few of us are permitted
to wear it. It is a special honour and privilege.”

It needs perhaps a third incident to show Father
Yevgeny in action. One afternoon he asked me to
come with him to see a Bulgarian monk at the
monastery of the Sepulchre, and we went along the
familiar alley to the strange square where the
Church of the Grave looks out, and we entered one
of the doors at the side and went up a stone stairway
to the brother’s cell. Here it turned out that it

170 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

was not the Bulgarian monk that we had come to
visit, but his sister, a pious woman who had heard
of Yevgeny’s celebrity and wanted his advice. She
was very good-looking, about five-and-twenty, of
full figure, large pale face, and extraordinarily
abundant black hair. Directly Yevgeny saw her he
took fright visibly, for women he regarded as “ the
devil,” and neither more nor less.

■ There were four or five quiet people in the
room, but the beautiful lady was the hostess, and
everything centred in her. She made us Turkish
coffee in thimbleful cups, and gave us little
squares of Turkish delight in which were little nut
kernels.

Yevgeny tried to talk to the brother and leave
me to the lady, but the latter brought her chair over
and sat opposite him.

“ Do you know, father,” said she, “it is not with
us as it is with you in Russia. We are all very
wild. Many of us are going astray. I don’t know
whether it is due to the Turks or to the factories.
We work all we can, but we cannot stem the tide.
It seems to me it needs that some one should make
a great sacrifice again. The people need an
example in contemporary life. I have thought that
perhaps I might give up everything, all my goods
and all my life, and in such a way that our
Bulgarians should know and understand. It seems
it would be a good work. What do you say ? I
have heard much of your wisdom, and I asked my

THE MONK YEVGENY

1 7i

brother to bring you. Forgive me, but you see it
is not an idle matter.”

Yevgeny answered her in the most astonishing
fashion. I think he was afraid of her in his peculiar
way. He recited in a loud voice that passage in
the Bible which tells of how a woman in the crowd
touched Jesus, who in His turn perceived that virtue
had gone out of Him.

The lady looked at him with an un-understanding
gaze. “ I should like, without any vanity, to
become a saint for the people’s sake,” she said.
“What must I do?”

Yevgeny crossed himself. “Some people say
one thing, some say another,” said he. “ Good
works are very well, but for my part all I should do
is to prostrate myself before God. Like this . . .”

The monk got down on the floor, and lay full
length with his forehead on the wood, and for a
whole quarter of an hour lay like that, unmoving,
none daring to disturb him or to break the silence.
The woman who wished to be a saint seemed
flabergasted.

At last Yevgeny got up and came forward to shake
hands and say good-bye. “ Must be going,” said
he, “ come along ! ”

“ The batushkas been having a glass,” I heard
one man say to another sotto voce behind me, but I
don’t think it was exactly that. Yevgeny had a
way of putting himself into biblical situations, and I
fancy he regarded the Bulgarian, who was really a

172 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

delightful, lovable woman, as the devil, tempting
him to say or do something evil. His prostrating
himself was a “get thee behind me, Satan.’

It was Yevgeny’s way. He told me one
morning afterwards how often he had come in
contact with the devil. “ I have lived a full life,”
said he, “have been stoned, put in prison, have
been in dungeons, have been beaten, have been
assaulted in the open street, but have always gone
forward. What does the sum total of calamity on
earth matter ? Nothing can touch our heavenly
destinies. Six times I have been arrested even by
our Russian Government, on whose side I have
generally spoken ; think of that ! ”

“ Why were you arrested ? ” I asked curiously.

“For no reason. Through the most extra¬
ordinary mistakes. Wherever I go I speak and
act energetically. I throw myself among men, and
strike out fire. I touch them, I make them repent
of the old life, and turn to the new. And the devil
is angry ; he is always dogging me about. You
ask how I got arrested ; it was the devil managed
it. He always wants to put a stopper on me. He
even prevailed for a while ; but I preached to the
soldiers and gendarmes taking me, and I made them
confess that they dare not lay rough hands on me.
I walked to the prison a free man. Then I took
the cross into prison. I stirred them up there — the
robbers, thieves, murderers. I read to them about
the two thieves, and let them see their choice. In

THE MONK YEVGENY

1 73

short there was such an uproar in the prison that
the authorities soon understood how I had been
tricked into gaol by the devil. I always got out
quickly again, and always to find myself in extra¬
ordinary circumstances. The devil was always
lying in my way trying to prevent me, and but for
the grace of God, not only should I have been
prevented but should long ago have been killed. I
am sixty-five and I go on — Slava Tebye Gospody !"

DEAR OLD DYADYA1

Liubomudrof was an original character, and there
were many originals at Jerusalem ; it needs
a certain amount of originality to have had the
idea to go there. Philip was a wolf in the fold,
and Yevgeny, though a pilgrim, was also a religious
insurrectionist like the monk Iliodor, whose doings
have created so much official trouble in Russia.
But dear old Dyadya, of whom I must say a few
words, was just a simple worshipper — a typical
gentle, reverent, innocuous, and outwardly-seeming-
uninteresting pilgrim. He did nothing that was
comic, and nothing that drew attention to him ; he
was, in short, one of the many. I liked him, and I
often fell in with him and talked on the way. I
never learnt his name, but I always addressed him
as “ uncle ” (dyadya), and always thought of him as
“ dear old dyadya.”

He was a poor peasant about fifty-five years old,
rather frail in appearance, but having the powers of
endurance of a Northerner. He came from the

1 Both the letters y in dyadya are consonants, not vowels.

174

DEAR OLD DYADYA.

DEAR OLD DYADYA

i75

province of Tver. The photograph which I took
of him gives a very fair idea of his simple counte¬
nance. He was commonly victimised by beggars,
Arab shopkeepers, and porters, and so had often
some little worry in his mind reflected in his face.
He was, however, inwardly joyful. He had been
vexed when he left home, for the villagers had said
it was foolish to go to Jerusalem, even the priest
had indicated that the journey might not be accept¬
able to God. But once Dyadya had got into the
company of the other pilgrims he had felt reassured,
and apart from the satisfaction of his soul he enjoyed
himself immensely.

We went together to Golgotha and saw the life-
size representation of the Crucifixion — the great
cross standing beside the cleft in the rock where
the actual cross is supposed to have been fixed —
and we kissed the place where St. Mary and the
beloved disciple stood looking at the sacrifice. We
also kissed the place where Jesus was nailed to the
cross, and the great rent which wTas made in the
rock when He expired. Dyadya prayed a long
time and shed tears of joy. When we came away
he told me in confidence that he should buy a cross
here at Golgotha, a large one, surrounded by little
pictures showing the whole life of Jesus from the
manger to the tomb, and he would take it home as
an offering to the village church.

“ They have nothing from Jerusalem in our little
church,” said he. “ But I will buy one of these for

176 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

tea roubles, and that will be very good. It will
remain in the church hundreds of years after I die,
perhaps to the day of Judgment. Yes, it will be
very good.”

I think Dyadya got terribly tired that night in
the Life-giving Grave. I met him next day high
upon Eleonskaya Gora, where St. Mary appeared
to St. Thomas, and dropped her girdle from the
heavens. Dyadya was sitting on a seat, and looked
absolutely worn out. The church was full to over¬
flowing, many being obliged to kneel in the open
air outside, and we sat on a seat in a nunnery
garden and heard the service. We looked down
on a grand scene, the dark valley of the Jordan
over which rolled many clouds, and the far-off
silvery sea. Dyadya had scarcely enough “go”
in him to be interested. He longed for a kettleful
of tea, and a loaf. At least so I surmised. I had
in my pocket three musty dates of the cheap and
nasty sort. They were, in fact, the relict of a not
very pleasant pound. I gave them to the old man,
and he ate them with relish, even licking the stones
clean. Then I counselled him to lie flat out on the
seat and rest a little, and he went off into a quiet
doze.

This mountain is taken by the Greek Church
to be that of the ascension of Jesus, and on our
way down we came to the cave of St. Pelagia,
where by tradition the disciples first set up a cross
as the symbol of the Christian Faith. This seemed

DEAR OLD DYADYA

177

to give my old friend some further satisfaction in
thinking about the cross he intended to take home
to the village church. He would be doing at his
little village what the disciples did at St. Pelagia’s
cave. I think the thought materially lightened his
steps as we plodded through the valley of Jeho-
shaphat once more. We had to pass the Garden
of Gethsemane, and there we pressed our lips to
the ancient scarred stone of porphyry which is
said to be part of the column by which Jesus
stood when Judas kissed him. The monks
certainly have had no sense of humour in the
disposal of their archaeological heritage. That,
however, was not a thought to enter the head of
any pious pilgrim, and Dyadya never doubted
anything for a moment. He believed that the
stone of anointing at the entrance to the Church
of the Sepulchre was the very stone on which the
precious Body of Jesus was laid by Joseph of
Arimathea, and on which it was swathed in fine
linen by Mary, and anointed with precious oils.
He believed that the basin in Pilate’s house was
the very basin ; that the cleft at Golgotha into
which he put his old “unworthy” hands was the
very cleft ; that the Sacred Fire was actually received
on Holy Saturday by miracle direct from God ;
that the Bethlehem manger was the very manger ;
and that the place where the priest at Jordan dipped
the cross in the water was actually Bethabara, the
point where Jesus came to John the Baptist, and

178 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

over which the heavens opened. I for one was not
astonished at his beliefs. Why should he doubt
anything? It will be a sad day for pilgrimaging
when the peasant grins at the shrines, gives his
barren money-offering instead of prayer, and hurries
on from sight to sight.

When Dyadya had got home and had fetched his
kettleful of boiling water from the hostelry kitchen,

I came over to him and we made a meal. By a
stroke of luck we had procured hot potato pies from
the little restaurant where Yevgeny had created the
scene, and we had raisins and bread.

“Ah,” said I, “it’s good to be in Jerusalem, is
it not ? ”

“ How ! ” he replied, in the stern voice of an
elder to a frivolous young one. “ Of course it is
good to be where God walked. Of course it is
good.” He always spoke of Jesus as God, I may
add, and seemed to have some uncompromising
conviction on that point. Dyadya’s faith was as
sound as a bell.

“ When are you going to Jordan ? ” asked he.

“Well, with the caravan, of course,” I replied.
“You know it is all arranged for next Wednesday.
A great number of pilgrims are going, two thousand
perhaps, so as to be ready for Holy Week. The
priests will go down in procession carrying the ikons,
and will consecrate the water. All those who weren’t
there for the great service in January will go then.”

“Are you going on foot?” he asked. “If so,

DEAR OLD DYADYA

179

tell me when we start ; perhaps the night before
we can go to Lazarus’ tomb to sleep. We will start
out together.”

It turned out that I had many acquaintances on
the road to Jordan, and that I saw “Uncle” little
enough. I remember how he came into the hostelry
at Jericho, dusty and worn, and how he sat down to
the abominable dock-leaf soup, at the last gasp of
his strength as it seemed, but still quite happy and
cheerful. “God suffered so here,” he would say.
“What is our suffering to compare with His!”
The old man never grumbled, even on the Nazareth
journey, though he nearly died coming home. And
always on his bushy, hairy face there was a look as
if he felt he was enjoying real life, doing the things
which other people only read of. He grew lean and
sunburnt with tramping. I often sat with him under
the pepper trees in the hostelry garden, and I had
opportunity to notice. I am sure, when he returned
to that village of his, with a sack of relics and
mementoes on his back, that Golgotha cross for the
village church under his arm, that bright face and
happy old heart, he must not only have convinced
the unsympathetic, but have given one or two others
the inspiration to follow the same way. How he
would talk when he got home! I saw the words
saving up in him.

ON THE BANKS OF THE JORDAN

The modern Protestant says, “ Live well, use your
wealth with a sense of responsibility to God, be
sober, be just to your neighbour, be temperate in
your passions.” The Russian says: “All that is
minor matter ; it is chiefly necessary to die well.”
Breaking the commandments means for the Pro¬
testant breaking with God until repentance ; but for
the Russian peasant there is no such feeling of
breaking with God. The drunkard, the thief, and
the murderer are as intimate with God as the just
man ; and perhaps even more intimate. Life
doesn’t matter very much ; what matters are the
everyday ties between man and God, that for which
the ikon stands, and the great rites by which man
enters into communion with his higher destiny.
All the rites of the Russian Church are very solemn,
and they are invested with great importance.
Certainly the funeral, the laying out of the dead
body for its long rest, and the hymns and prayers
sung over it are felt to be not only impressive to
the living, but good for the one who is dead.

180

BUYING HIS SHROUD.

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 181

It was amazing to me to see the extent to which
the pilgrims sought in Jerusalem tokens for the
clothing of their dead bodies, and how much their
thoughts were centred on death and the final
resurrection morning. They sanctified crosses at
the grave, little ones to wear round their necks in
the tomb, and larger ones to lie on their breasts ;
they brought their death - shrouds and cross -
embroidered caps to dip them in Jordan; they took
Jerusalem earth to put in their coffins, and even
had their arms tattooed with the word Jerusalem,
and with pictures of the Virgin ; so that they might
lie so marked in the grave, and indeed that they
might rise again so marked, and show it in heaven.
By these things they felt they obtained a sort of
sanctity.

The going to Jordan was essentially something
done against the Last Day. It was very touching
that on the day before the caravan set out, the
peasants cut linen to the shape of the “ Stone of
the Anointing,” which stands outside the Sepulchre,
and placed that linen with their death-shrouds on
that stone for blessing, feeling that they were doing
for their dead bodies just what Mary and Joseph of
Arimathea did for the body of Jesus, and on the
same stone. They felt it would be particularly
good to rise from death in shrouds thus sanctified.

I suppose several hundreds of pilgrims took their
shrouds to the Grave on the day before the caravan
set out ; in the hostelry there was an unrolling of

1 8 2 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

an amount of clean linen most amazing as the
possession of such dirty people. What a bustle of
preparation there was on the night before ! the
mending of lapti, the filling of the sacks with things
to be dipped in the stream, the procuring of bottles
and cans for bringing back the water of the river.
For most of us it was an extraordinary occasion, a
pilgrimage within a pilgrimage ; for those who
were in Palestine for the first time it was the first
occasion of tramping a distance in such a crowd.
The caravan does not mean travelling like gipsies
in houses on wheels as once I fondly supposed, but
the journeying together of a great concourse of
people on foot, or with camels and mules, in the
East.

There were more than a thousand of us that set
out next morning at dawn, even before it was light.
Liubomudrof was there, dear old Dyadya, the boy
from the Urals. Yevgeny was in a cart, Abraham
was there among a knot of babas , the old man from
Tobolsk to whom I gave sixpence, and a host of
others with whom I was acquainted. It was a
long, straggling crowd. In front rode a Turkish
policeman, and one of the Palestine Society’s
gorgeously dressed Montenegrins, and a similar
escort formed our protection at the very rear ;
there were a great number of panniered asses
carrying pilgrims or pilgrims’ sacks ; and Arab
boys with poles ran at their sides prodding, beating
and hulloaing ; a number of vans carrying those

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 183

who cared to be carried. Most of the pilgrims
were on foot, and most carried their own packs ;
some were in overcoats, some carried umbrellas
to guard against the sun. There were about
equal numbers of men and women, and the
women almost without exception walked, the broad-
backed mules offering them no temptation. We
started out at a smart pace, as we wished to make
progress while the weather was cool : we knew that
when the sun got up, it would be more arduous to
keep up on the dusty, shadeless road.

We passed the brook Kedron, the Mount of
Olives, and Bethany, and were well across the
Judaean wilderness before the weather became
unpleasant. At Bethany we were joined by a fresh
party who had gone out to the monastery by
Lazarus’ tomb the night before, in order to make
the day’s journey to Jericho less tiring — the road to
Jordan is a very difficult one, even for the strong
pilgrim.

My companion was a strange old fellow from
Voronezh Government. He was evidently very
poor. He wore old slit and ragged cotton trousers
and no coat, but only a thick, homespun linen shirt
which showed his sunburnt bosom. Over his back
he held the tattered remains of a red rug. Round
his neck was a piece of ordinary string from which
an old wooden cross hung on his breast, and he
wore an ancient mitre-shaped sheepskin hat. He
was very clean, and in his way fine-looking and

1 84 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

simple ; he held himself erect, and marched rather
than walked, at a funeral pace. When I saw him
first from behind, he was all by himself, and the
look of him reminded me of the picture of a
victim of an auto da fd. I must say he was a
strange figure, a strange person. He didn’t en¬
courage me to walk with him, and though he was
quite polite, and answered my questions sweetly
and simply, he never entered into any conversation
of his own account. He walked slowly, but he
never stopped to take rest. I believe that at
Jericho he simply passed on, and did not stay as we
did at the hostelry there. Most of the pilgrims
rested at the Apostles’ Well, where it is said the
Apostles used to drink water and refresh them¬
selves, but my companion went on without notice.
Even at the Khan Khasrura, the inn to which the
good Samaritan is supposed to have taken the man
whom the thieves had beset, my new acquaintance
only looked in, saw the pilgrims drinking water and
munching crusts, and went on further.

Clouds of dust pursued us over the mountains.
The road rising from the grandeur of Bethany
wound in long curves round the breast of the hills.
We were all alone in the world, only occasionally
there came a line of mules or camels with dark
Bedouin Arabs passing or overtaking us. I stood
at a corner, and looked back on the long, labouring
train of black figures on the baked white road,
bundles on their backs, staves in their hands, and

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 185

hemp or bark boots on their feet. The bend
of their backs as they toiled upward seemed a
sight that must be very acceptable in the eyes of
God.

The pilgrims did reverence at the brook Cherith,
where God sent the ravens to Elijah, and deep
down in the ravine saw the monastery of St.
George, built on the place where the birth of the
Virgin Mary is supposed to have been announced
to her father Joachim. The pilgrim from Voronezh
crossed himself very devoutly at this point, and
when we resumed our tramp upward I ventured to
offer him some white bread and raisins, which to
my surprise he accepted very gladly, crossing him¬
self and calling upon God to save me. An hour
and a half later we reached the pass over the
mountains, and saw lying before us the Dead Sea
and the whole valley of the Jordan, almost the same
picture as was visible from the summit of the
Mount of Olives at Jerusalem. Far away in dark
shadow stood the steep Moabite mountains, and
to the right of them the Ammonite mountains,
amongst whose summits the pilgrims marked out
what they took to be Mount Nebo, where Moses
died, and from whence the prophet saw the
Promised Land, though he might not enter it.

We were high up on the right bank of a great
ravine, and more than a thousand feet below ran a
white foaming mountain stream. The rocks led
down majestically to the little river, they sat about

1 86 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

it in extraordinary grandeur, the silent powers of
nature in the presence of life.

Here we passed the first representatives of
Western Europe, a young Frenchman who suddenly
pointed out the galleries of the rocks to his wife,
“ Regardez, comme c’est beau la.” The pilgrims
stared at the couple and said, “ Nice people. Just
what you see in Moscow.”

An hours descent brought us to the poplar trees
and palms of what was once Jericho, and what is now
the little Arab hamlet of Erikha. Nothing remains
now of what was once a famous city. Erikha is a
miserable hamlet of two hundred people, and no
more. It has two grand hotels which stand out in
startling contrast to the huts of the Arabs. There
is not even a large church in the village, and the
Russian Shelter is an insignificant building scarcely
fit to accommodate fifty people, far less the fifteen
hundred who came there this day.

We were all led to tables in the open air under
pleasant shady trees, and there regaled with soup
and tea. The soup, if it could be said to have any
colour, was green ; and large leaves, which I took to
be dock, floated in it. It was served in dishes the
size of washbasins, there were wooden spoons all
round, and ten or twelve peasants sat about each
dish. The tea was hot and clear, and just a tinge
of yellow colour in it told that it was tea and not
simply boiling water. After the meal there was a
service in the hostelry yard, and then rest.

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 187

Father Yevgeny, who made himself very con¬
spicuous in all the arrangements, found a room set
apart for clean pilgrims. I had settled down to
a pallet on the floor of the general dormitory, and
was wondering whether I would not go out and find
some fresh and open place among the mountains,
when Yevgeny came across me and hurriedly brought
me to his room. “There’s just one bedstead left,”
said he. “ I’ve been looking for a likely sort of
person to give it to.” This was very fortunate for
me, as the general room was soon so crowded with
sleepers that it was impossible to get across without
treading on arms and legs. I felt we were rather
selfish, however, “the clean public,” and I fetched
old Liubomudrof in, for he was dead beat. The
veins stood out on his brow, and I counselled him to
get a lift in a cart on the morrow, but he said he
would go all the way to Jordan on foot, and perhaps
coming home he’d get on a mule ; it didn’t matter
so much going home, and if it were to save him
dying or going mad he’d do it.

Next day early we were all hurrying along the
Jordan valley road. The mountains were grand
before us, pale stars shone down upon us as we
kicked through the deep, white, stifling dust. We
were stealing a march on the heat of the day, and
with good cause. Before we reached St. John the
Baptist monastery the sun rose blindingly across the
horizon of the perfectly clear sky, and its rays rushed
mercilessly to us as against the only things left

1 88 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

living in the desert. We were glad to call a halt at
the monastery, and rest in the shade of its high,
whitewashed walls. It was about seven miles from
Jericho, I suppose, and we were already quite near
the Jordan stream. Some of the pilgrims went
straight ahead to find the river and bathe in it, but
the great majority waited for the priests and monks
of the monastery to take us down and consecrate
the water.

There was a tremendous clamour whilst we stood
about this great white gleaming monastery. A score
or so of Arab hawkers were waiting for us with
soap stamped with portraits of Jesus or John the
Baptist, with bottles for the water, with crosses and
rosaries, and all manner of religious keepsakes. A
novice of the monastery was distributing brown
loaves, another sugar, and a third wandered about
with a gigantic iron kettle full of boiling water.
Somewhere in the background were tables on
trestles, and an abundance of mugs for our breakfast.
A great number of Christian Arabs had also come
up from beyond Jordan in order to participate in the
great service on the banks, and splendid figures they
looked with their swarthy faces and white cloaks
and turbans. We waited about an hour, and during
that time many of the peasants obtained the honour
of holding the ikons and the crosses that were
to be taken in procession. Out came a great gilt
cross swathed with bath towels, and the pilgrims all
crowded round to kiss it. One by one the peasants,

KISSING THE TOWEL-SWATHED CROSS— A FINE BACK

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 189

men and women, came up and reverently kissed it.
After the cross came two ikons similarly swathed, a
picture of St. John the Baptist, and a representation
of the descending of the Holy Spirit on Jesus as
He was coming up out of the river at baptism.
Suddenly the clergy appeared, and with them a
number of shaggy-haired monks. The ikon bearers
and the cross bearer formed in a line, and at a word
from the officiating priest marched forward, the
thousand pilgrims trooping after them. We went
down a steep road between clay banks, and it seemed
as if we were descending into the bowels of the
earth. There was not the gleam of a blade of grass
about, and high above us blazed the tyrant of the
desert in unapproachable magnificence. But we
were quickly delivered from this ugly stretch of
what is really the ancient shore of the Dead Sea,
and at a turn found ourselves in the running oasis of
the river banks, a little paradise of green fields and
hedges of oleander and tamarisk.

We crossed one field and passed into another,
there to be met by a crowd of half-dressed people
who had come down before us. Here all the bushes
were hung with drying linen, there were great piles
of clothes on the grass, in one corner was a tent
church, and in another a Turkish araka shop. We
arrived singing a hymn in chorus, and as we stood
in sight of the little turbid river racing underneath
its weeping willows, all the pilgrims raised their hats
and crossed themselves. We had arrived at that

1 9o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

point in the river’s course where, according to one
tradition, Jesus came to be baptized; and where,
according to another, the Jews had forded when
they came to Canaan after their servitude in
Egypt.

In a great miscellaneous crowd the peasants
began to undress and to step into their white
shrouds, the women into long robes like night¬
dresses, the men into full white shirts and pantaloons.
Those who came unprovided stood quite naked on
the banks. Then the priest, when he had given the
pilgrims time to prepare, began taking the service
for the sanctification of the water. The ikons and
the cross were ranged around a wooden platform
over the water. Calling out in a loud voice, “ Come,
ye thirsty, and take water gladly from the wells of
salvation,” the priest bent down, and in a silver
basin scooped up water from the running stream.
Then standing in front of the basin he read the
prayers for the sanctification of the water. Candles
were dealt out and lighted, and then to the music of
the hymn, “ They baptize Thee in Jordan, O Lord,”
he dipped the towel-swathed cross first in the basin
and then in the river three times. At the dipping
of the cross as many of the pilgrims as could get
near plunged into the water, crossing themselves
and shivering.

It was a wonderful sight, that plunge into the
life-giving stream, that rush from the bank of
glistering, sun-lit figures into the strange little yellow-

ALL IN THEIR SHROUDS ON THE BANKS OF THE JORDAN.

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 191

green river. But though so many went in at the
dipping of the holy cross, their elimination from the
numbers on the banks only served to show how
many more were waiting behind. For a whole hour
there was a scene that baffles description, the most
extraordinary mingling of men and women all in
white, dry and gleaming, or wet and dripping.
Then no one seemed to have brought towels, and
the naked stood or sat in the sun, drying themselves.
Many pilgrims who had been in the water once,
took off their clinging shrouds, and strolling across
the fields in Adamite simplicity, hung them on the
bushes to dry. Having done this, they went in again
in another suit of funeral garb, or they sat and dried
themselves, or put their old clothes over their damp
limbs just as they were. The Christian Arabs stood
on the shore in their shrouds, and made hysterical
chants and speeches. For the whole of the hour the
water was full of bathers ; some took the opportunity
to have a good swim, some poor old women stood
with their toes in the river mud, and couldn’t get
out though they wished to. I remember especially
four ancient dames all over sixty, unprovided with
shrouds, standing in the water holding on to one
another, brown -bodied and ruined -looking, with
crosses round their necks just showing, and their
lean, naked shoulders sticking up out of the water.
They were crossing themselves and kissing one
another, promising to meet in heaven, shivering and
gurgling all the while, obviously waiting for some-

1 92 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

one who had forgotten to come and help them out.
Some others crawled up the steep clayey bank, and
looking round them, wondered where they had left
their clothes ; everything was in such a muddle that
it was difficult to find anything. I suppose some
pilgrims went into the water with their money tied
to their bodies, others left it in charge of some other
pilgrims on the shore, though most must have
simply left it in the heaps with their shed clothing.
There were many Arab muleteers wandering about
among the things, yet I heard of no robberies.
There were also many hawkers of brandy, and
despite the fact that it was in the Great Fast, some
old pilgrims took a glass lest they should be ill after
going into the cold water. The river was, I may
say in parenthesis, quite warm.

All my acquaintances bathed in the stream. The
young man from the Urals went across several times
— no mean feat, for the current was swift. Dear
old Dyadya let himself down gingerly by a branch of
a weeping willow, but slipping, went right over his
head in the stream. Yevgeny, being a monk, went
far away from the sight of the female form divine,
and let himself in privately, solemnly anathematising
any devils that might be about before he went down
into the stream. Liubomudrof went through a little
private ceremony of putting himself into his shroud,
crossing the neck opening before he put it over his
head, and he also trusted his weight to a willow
branch, and slipped without accident into the

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 193

stream. When he was dried and dressed he said
to me, “ Let’s go and get some tea somewhere.
I fear the effects of the water ; for the hale and
strong cold water is a blessing, but for the weak,
even with God’s blessing, it is almost necessary,
perhaps, to follow it with a drink of vodka. I don’t
feel ill. No, I don’t feel any different. I should like
some araka, but I haven’t tasted alcohol since I
promised to God. Come, let us go to the Dead Sea
shore, and the monastery of St. Guerassim. There
they say the monks have always tea ready for those
come up from Jordan.”

So with a farewell glance at the field now covered
with drying linen, I prepared to set out with him.
The Comic had dipped the shrouds he bought in
Dmitri’s shop, and also the death-caps, and had
wrung them dry and put all in his pack. Many
pilgrims cut canes from the bushes, and putting their
shrouds on these hung them over their backs to dry,
and walked to St. Guerassim as it were with white
flags. About a dozen of us collected together, and
then a whole crowd of dripping pilgrims in white
came about us to ask where we were going, and by
what road. We pointed out the way to them and
they promised to follow.

• • • • • •

St. Guerassim, when he was a hermit in the
wilderness, met a lion crying out with pain and holding
up its paw to have a thorn pulled out. The lions

seem to have made many appeals of this kind to

i94 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

the early Christians, and Guerassim was not less
backward than Androcles and the other heroes.
He bound up the poor beast’s paw and led it to the
monastery, where for five years it gratefully served
the old man, even doing domestic labours for him.
The other brothers of the monastery also made use
of the lion’s services, and even set him to watch
the monastery ass whilst it was grazing. One
day the lion returned to the monastery without the
ass, and Guerassim thinking that the natural leonine
appetite had accounted for the beast of labour, said
to the lion, “ Henceforth you shall be the monastery
ass.” Panniers were put on the king of beasts and
he carried their grain, their pitchers, and he brought
water from Jordan. The lion, who seems to have
been more saintly even than Guerassim himself,
served meekly, and in those days when the pilgrims
came down to Jordan, he not only brought up water,
but chased the peasants from the sacred river to the
monastery, where they paid the brothers good
money to pray for the health of their bodies and
the peace of soul of their fathers and grandfathers.
At last, coming back one day, the lion found that
Guerassim was dead. When the saint was buried
the monks showed the lion the tomb, and there he
stretched himself out and expired. Poor old lion !
On him rests the name and fame of the monastery of
St. Guerassim in the desert, and now, though the
lion is dead, yet his repute still brings the pilgrims
along from Jordan and for the same purpose. I

BY THE JORDAN.

Grandma doesn’t remember where she put her clothes.

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 195

told dear old Dyadya the story, and he seemed highly
edified. He knew of the lion, of course, but had
never heard the details. “ It only shows to what
sainthood the people attained long ago,” said he ;
“ we’ve outlived all that.” I was fain to agree.

It was a terribly hot walk along that Jordan
gully to St. Guerassim. Those who had thought to
bring umbrellas to keep off the sun were lucky.
The very mountains round about us glowed with
reflected sunshine. We were again on the old Dead
Sea shore, three thousand feet below the level of
the Mediterranean Sea, the lowest place on earth.
The air was oppressive ; we had the sense of the
vicinity of Sodom and Gomorrah. Poor Liubomu-
drof! I thought he would collapse, and I made him
untwist one of his wet shrouds and wear it under his
hat and down his back. I, for my part, wore a
rough bath towel that I had taken with me. I am
sure it was only a short way, not more than four
miles, but we felt we had never walked so far in a day
before. How joyfully we rested at the flower-
crowned oasis of Guerassim’s well and sipped the
warm salt water ! At last we stood at the gates of
the monastery with its high, blue-white walls of
whitewashed bricks. Liubomudrof had his wish :
there was tea for all comers in a long, dark, shady
cellar — tea, I may say of a saltish taste, made with
something not unlike Dead Sea water, and there
were basins of black olives to eat with it, but, alas !
no sugar and no bread.

196 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

Scarcely, had we taken our seats when the other
pilgrims began to arrive ; they came in scores and
hundreds, and swarmed over the monastery. Soon
our cellar was full, and not another person could get
a seat at the tables. Indeed, there was such a crush
opposite us that the seat, a swaying plank placed
across two empty casks, suddenly gave way with a
crash and let the pilgrims to the floor. It was a
scene of much merriment.

For all of us it was a great relief to rest in the
shade. Liubomudrof was next to me, and we
helped one another liberally to tea and olives. He
had saved a great lump of bread from Jerusalem,
and as I had none he shared with me. We all
drank an enormous quantity of that salt tea, and all
the time we sat drinking we heard the grind of
the monastery pump which less fortunate pilgrims
outside were glad to use to get a drink even of
diluted Dead Sea brine. It seems that after the
lion’s decease the monks had a well sunk in their
monastery, and so dispensed with that arduous
water-carrying to and fro from Jordan.

What a clamour had invaded this stilly monas¬
tery ! But half an hour before, it had not had a
witness of life, but stood still and gleaming on the
desert under the noonday sun ; now a thousand
men and women in black clothes and long hair had
suddenly swarmed over it — from the far-away
villages of Russia !

What a scene it was may be understood from the

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 197

fact, that the monastery was built four square round
a little courtyard. On the other side of the yard,
and facing the entrance passage, rose two twin stone
stairways up to the belfry in which hung the great
black bell. Just under the bell, and right round the
square, ran a stone gallery, half in brightest sunlight,
half in darkest shadow, and all up and down these
stairways and along the corridors surged a crowd
of Russian men and women looking down at another
crowd surging about the monastery pump in the
middle of the courtyard below. All were shouting,
laughing, and calling ; and above all sounded the
ancient, harsh-toned monastery bell.

When Liubomudrof, Dyadya and I had had
enough tea we went up the stone steps to the gallery,
and sat down in the shady part. Some went down
to the Dead Sea to look at the waters which covered
the cities of Sin. Others crowded into the office of
the monastery to subscribe for prayers. I went to
the room where the names of the people for whom
prayers were to be said were being taken down.
There were three monks busy writing in ancient
over-scrawled registers as fast as the peasants could
call out the names. The room was packed. Along
one side was an immense picture of St. Guerassim
and the Lion, and on the table was a whole stack
of little oleograph miniatures of the same. Each
peasant on giving in the names of the “ to-be-prayed-
for ” received an oleograph with a blessing from St.
Guerassim in the desert. I noticed that Liubomu-

198 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

drof paid out two roubles to the monks. But then
he had brought thirty or forty roubles which had
been given him by the villagers at home, and had
doled out money and mentioned such names as he
thought fit, not only here at St. Guerassim, but at
St. John the Baptist monastery and in Jerusalem.
He purposed going to Mount Sinai on a camel
after Easter, and no doubt would ask for prayers
and give an alms all the way. Asked whether he
purposed taking a bottle of Dead Sea water back
to Russia, he grinned in a peculiar way, and called
out in his hollow, oracular voice, “ No, although it
has been done by pilgrims before now, for the evil
purposes of others in Russia. A witch I knew
asked for a bottle of the water to be brought to her,
and on the night she received it, all her cattle fell
dead. Some of the more educated go to bathe in
the sea to improve their health, cure rheumatism,
kings evil, and the influence of the evil eye. I was
even advised to take a dip. But can Satan cast out
Satan? No! And would it be true to God to
bathe in the holy Jordan and then to wash in the
sins of Sodom? No!” This seemed conclusive,
and if that had not sufficed, a monk came and
warned us that if we bathed there we should feel
such an itch in all our limbs after it as might drive
us out of our minds. So we did not test the state¬
ment that it is impossible to sink in the Dead Sea,
and we did not take any water back in our bottles.

We spent much time round about St. Guerassim,

CROSSING HERSELF IN THE STREAM.

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 199

for we were in the wilderness where Jesus was
tempted, and but half - an - hour’s walk westward
brought us to “ Forty-day mountain ” — a mountain
of innumerable caves which have been occupied by
hermits and world-forsakers since the earliest days
of Christianity. Here at the half-way point was a
little monastery over the cave where Christ is sup¬
posed to have often lain. The peasants went in
and prostrated themselves at the little church in the
cave, where in the darkness candles are ever burn¬
ing. The view from the mountain was a trifle
uninspiring, considering that the devil is supposed
to have shown therefrom all the kingdoms of the
world. I am afraid it only convinced me that it
was a much higher crag on which the devil and
Jesus stood — the summit of Imagination. However,
there was a grand view, and the idea gratified the
pilgrims immensely.

The day wore on to evening, and half the
pilgrims found their way back to Jericho to sleep,
whilst the other half sought out the monastery of
St. George by the brook Cherith, where Elijah
was fed by the ravens.

For my part, though the way was reputed to be
dangerous, I set off slowly and easily along the
highroad for Jerusalem all by myself. I had
tramped the Caucasus, which is three times more
dangerous than Palestine, so I had plenty of nerve
for the walk. If I were tired I resolved to sleep in
a cave at Bethany.

200 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS iv

It was a delightful journey. One realised one’s
real strength and fitness once the sun had gone
down behind the mountains, and one awakened to
the beauty of the country. For Palestine is beauti¬
ful — or rather, it is picturesque. The grey stone
of rock or ruin harmonises everything — the red¬
faced, bright-eyed Syrian women, the coal-black
Bedouin Arabs, the camel flocks, the cow camels
and their lively little calves browsing on the
mountain side, the dainty sheep and goats, the wild
shepherds with guns slung across their backs.

The earth was grateful for the shadow of night.

I caught up a long train of high green camels going
to Jerusalem. On three of them were richly clad
Arabs, and on the others were heavily laden
panniers. I walked by the side of them, and as it
grew darker they seemed to grow taller. But they
moved gracefully on the road, undulating their
bodies and balancing their burdens like living
cradles. One saw why they are called ships of
the desert.

It was eleven o’clock at night by the time I
reached Bethany, and it was after all too dark to
find a pleasant cave, so I went on to Jerusalem.
Leaving the camels behind, I went more briskly
along the winding road that takes one up the crags
beside the Mount of Olives, and down below I saw
the train of camels moving mysteriously forward,
a procession of shadows.

At last, Jerusalem; and I was glad, though the

IV ON THE BANKS OF JORDAN 201

city itself seemed more fearsome at night than the
road from Jericho had done. The booths were all
shuttered, the shops shut. The streets were veritably
dark tunnels. Prowling, nervous dogs slunk along
searching for refuse, and seemed terribly frightened
at the approach of a human being. At an upper
window near the Church of the Grave were lights and
music. Some one was playing an Armenian viol,
another a great thrumming tambourine, whilst a
third was yelling and chanting Trans-Caucasian
strains. Whilst I listened the town watch came
round, and as they passed me eyed me somewhat
suspiciously. I came to no harm, however, and
reached the postern of the Russian settlement,
where I waked the sleeping porter and made him
open the gates to me. When I got to the hostelry
and to the curtained apartment, what was my
astonishment to find a lamp burning, and Philip
busy wrapping up in bits of newspaper little tablets
of Bethlehem earth of which he had bought forty
pounds the morning before. He had not reckoned
on my coming back that night, and as each tablet
had to be wrapped up separately to save it from
breaking on the boat journey home, he had seized
the opportunity to put a night in at the work. He
seemed a little vexed, but we made tea, nevertheless,
and supped it cheerfully. Then I laid myself down
to sleep on a vacant bench near at hand, and was
soon lost in the world of dreams.

AFTER THE DIP IN THE STREAM: DRYING HIS SHROUD ON A

STICK ON HIS BACK.

THE CARAVAN TO NAZARETH

NAZARETH

Whilst we were at Jordan the greatest caravan of
the year was nearing its home-coming to Jerusalem ;
the annual Lenten party of over a thousand peasants
was returning from the pilgrimage to the shrines of
Nazareth.

Though it is less than a hundred miles from
Jerusalem to the Sea of Galilee, the journey is a
hard one for the pilgrim going on foot. The
road is heavy — very stony, dusty, and mountainous,
and the heat of the sun overhead is trying to the
heavily clothed northern man and woman. Every
year on the journey many pilgrims die. Even for
the man who has tramped from the White to the
Black Sea of his native land, the journey to Nazareth
and back again, once accomplished, is a matter of
glory and of thanks to God.

The caravan starts early in Lent, and generally

aims to arrive at Nazareth by March 25th, in order

to celebrate the Annunciation at the Virgin’s well.

This year, Easter and the Annunciation fell on the

same day, and as every orthodox man and woman

205

206 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

must be at the Sepulchre at Easter, the caravan set
out earlier than usual, and the keeping of the
Annunciation at Nazareth was foregone. It was
solemnised at Jerusalem instead with Easter.

The first day of the journey is an easy one, only
nine miles of the way being accomplished. The
long procession of pilgrims leaves the north gate of
the Russian settlement in the morning, and straggles
in a file a mile long all the way to the Damascus
gate of the city of Jerusalem. Little order is kept.
Those who wish to hasten, go ahead ; and those who
go slowly fall behind. There is often as much as
ten versts between the first pilgrim and the last — the
young man of seventeen goes fast, at fourscore it is
too late a week. Away past the graves of the kings,
and over the brook Kedron the long procession winds,
and the pilgrims climb one of the hills outside the
city, Scopus, to look back, and commend themselves
to the care of God, and ask for their pilgrimage a
blessed fulfilment. They file away toward ancient
Ramah, where, prostrating themselves to a church-
crowned mountain lying on the west, the pilgrims
do reverence to the grave of the prophet Samuel.
There is a rest, and then all troop on to Ramalla,
the first stage of the pilgrimage. It is only midday,
and further progress might be attempted, but there
are many miles to go before a place of accommoda¬
tion is to be found. Sensible pilgrims sleep out on
the hillside if the weather is dry ; otherwise they
must take their places in the crush at the little

INSIDE THE COURTYARD OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. GUERASSIM

IN THE DESERT.

NAZARETH

207

mission church, or find a lodging with hospitable or
mercenary Syrians. The night’s shelter is going to
be a matter of increasing sorrow as the days of
tiredness add themselves to one another, and the
night’s refreshment is not given.

Next day betimes the caravan goes on. All the
pilgrims are astir before dawn, and on the road at
sunrise. Night gives way to morning on the hills,
and the dark sky is filled with light. The Palestine
dawns are wonderful, for the morning becomes hot
so quickly. So strong is the alliance of the Desert
and the Sun that the very sky, as it is gradually lit
up, seems to have been damaged by the heat of the
day before, and to be a little dusty. The roads are
deep in dust, and through the dust the pilgrims
hurry forward to cover as much space as possible
before the enemy begins to glare and burn.

At El-bireh there are ruins of an ancient church
founded on a touching legend such as peasant
pilgrims love: here Joseph and Mary, returning
from Jerusalem to Nazareth, are supposed to have
noticed the absence of their twelve-year-old child
when He, Jesus, was in the Temple teaching the
people and confounding the scribes.

About an hour later the caravan turns aside from
the high-road in order to visit Bethel, a little collec¬
tion of houses and ruins up in the hills. The pilgrim
enriches the harvest of his experiences, for he looks
upon the place where Jacob had the vision of the
ladder from earth to heaven, the angels ascending

2o8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

and descending. The path climbs upward amidst
boulders and ravines, and is as uneven as can be.
The pilgrims take rest frequently in the shadow
of the rocks or of the olive trees. The goal of the
second day’s march is Nablous, anciently Sychem,
near which is Jacob’s well, where Jesus conversed
with the Samaritan woman — twenty-seven miles,
not much to walk in a day, but equal to thirty-five
in level Russia.

At Nablous the whole troop is besieged by
beggar children, dark-skinned and naked, some whin¬
ing for coppers, others bullying, some even stone¬
throwing. The poor peasant disburses farthings
and half-farthings “ for the love of God,” but does
not know how to deal with this army of little rascals.
I, for my part, solved the problem by buying figs,
three pounds for a halfpenny, and making the little
beggars scramble.

The population of Nablous is exclusively
Mahometan, so that it is not a very convenient
place for a Christian staying the night, but a mile
beyond the town is a large Turkish barracks where
most of the pilgrims find shelter.

Five miles from Nablous is Samaria, a town on
a high hill, and now called Sebastia, and the pilgrims
go out of their way to pray at the ruins of the once
magnificent church standing on the spot where
John the Baptist was buried by his disciples, and
where by tradition the prophet Elisha was buried
also. These graves are the only shrines on the

NAZARETH

209

way to Burkin, the third night-station of the caravan.
The pilgrims trudge along as usual — some over¬
taking, others falling behind, all making new acquaint¬
ances, talking over Russia, recollecting together,
reading their Bibles, and whispering children’s hopes
and fears about the rest of the journey to Galilee,
resting beside springs or under cypress trees. Now
and then as they walk a view opens, such as the
valley of Esdraelon and the sea beyond, or Mount
Hermon glistering with snow.

Already at Burkin Nazareth is near, only a day’s
march distant. It is generally a happy day among
the hills. The pilgrims pass over the valley to the
battlefield where Saul and Jonathan were killed by
the Philistines. They see Mount Tabor, thought
by many to be the height where Jesus was trans¬
figured in the eyes of His disciples. They see also
the last stones of Jezreel, the city of Ahab and
Jezebel. Some pilgrims, instead of going direct to
Nazareth, climb Tabor first, passing through Nain,
where the widow’s son was raised, and through
Endor, where lived the witch who called forth
Samuel’s ghost. A little pathway leads up the
slope of Tabor to the sacred summit. The mountain
is covered with trees and shrubs, and in many places
are the ruins of ancient houses and churches. It is
an hour’s climb to the church built over the place
where the monks say Jesus actually stood when He
was transfigured. Many ruins still stand on the
. crest of the hill, as if a fort had once been there

2io WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

or a town with walls. The pilgrims pray in the
church, and then repair to the Greek monastery
hard by for tea. Those who are tired can sleep
there, but there is little accommodation, and the
journey is generally continued to Nazareth and
the Russian hostelry there.

I should say the pilgrims are hospitably enter¬
tained all the way, and pay nothing for shelter at
night, or indeed for the simple food they obtain at
the monasteries. It is well that hospitality survives;
no one is a loser thereby, even in a material way,
for the peasant always remembers that the monks
have to live somehow, and bearing that in mind
he subscribes liberally for prayers.

The little town of Nazareth, with its ill-kept
Church of the Annunciation, is perhaps a pitiful-
looking shrine compared with that of Jerusalem, but
the pilgrims do not regard mere material appearance.

“ Not by these measures shall it be measured,
not by these numbers shall it be counted, nor by
these weights shall it be weighed, O Anathema,” as
God says to Human Reason in one of Andreefs
mystery plays, “ for measure there is not, no, nor
number.”

There is a whole tender world of religious life for
the pilgrim to realise at Nazareth, for woman as for
man : the mystery of the coming of the angel, the
birth of the Child, the motherhood, the care of
the mother, the growing of the Child, the young
and beautiful life and the world about it ; all

NAZARETH

21 I

that by tradition and one’s own personal imagination
the little Christ-Child did ; the father teaching the
Child in the carpenter’s shop, what it was to be such
a father, the representative on earth of the ultimate
Father, God. For all hearts Nazareth has its living
story, and the pilgrims do not. walk thither in vain.

The two or three days that they spend there are
passed in different ways, and mean differently to
different natures : the pausing by the Virgin’s well,
the kneeling in the sacred church, the kissing the
house of Joseph and the places where Jesus walked
and lived in the days when he saw visions and knew
promises, but as yet stepped not consciously along
the hard and narrow road to the cross. The
peasants have simple minds and are not troubled by
profitless doubts when the monks show pieces of the
actual dress which the Virgin wore or planks which
Jesus planed. The little child’s soul in the peasant
lisps, and marvels, and wonders, and is blessed.

THE LAKE OF GALILEE

The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society has
control over the hostelry at Nazareth, and its
provision is part of the Society’s good work ; it has
also instituted schools for the boys and girls of the
district, and has consequently a definite missionary
influence. Russian is taught, there are Russian
masters and mistresses, and a great number of the
rising generation speak Russian as well as Syrian.
It should be mentioned that one-third of the
population belongs to the Holy Orthodox Church,
either to the Russian branch of it or to the Greek.

For the pilgrims there is free medical aid at the
Nazareth hostelry, and considerably more liberal
hospitality in the matter of food than obtains in
Jerusalem. But the peasant does not follow for the
loaves and fishes.

Strange to say, there is little idea of resting at
Nazareth. When the pilgrim has worshipped at the
shrines of the little town he is eager to proceed to
Galilee. The shore of the Sea of Galilee is most
important. As Khitrof says in his exhortations to

212

THE LAKE OF GALILEE

213

pilgrims, “If in Jerusalem was consummated the
Great Sacrifice whereby we were redeemed, if in
Bethlehem for our sake the Child was born, if in
Jordan we have seen Him baptized and been
afeard, then we shouldn’t forget that with the Lake
of Tiberias is connected almost all the teaching
activity of the Saviour. Here He pronounced
great truths, here were accomplished most of His
miracles, almost the whole gospel was fulfilled on
the shores of the Sea of Galilee.” The pilgrim does
not forget it and is not likely to.

The lake, as all travellers to the Holy Land know,
is delightful in the view of it from the slopes of Mount
Tabor; it is the landscape of a beloved country, a
country that might have been beloved in any
century, and which was probably very dear to Jesus,
though there is little to make one think so in the
writing of the Gospel. Jesus’ tendernesses to His
mother are not recorded, as how could they be !
We can only dimly imagine what the familiarity of
the land meant to the Man Jesus who grew up in it.

The pilgrims come trooping over it now like real
New Testament characters, every group of them
like a picture of early Christians and disciples
standing together, and they bring simple hearts.
Simon Peter, before he was called to be a disciple,
might almost be portrayed as a Russian peasant type.
In my picture of Father Yevgeny discoursing there
is a pilgrim listening who looks a regular St. Peter.
Perhaps the peasants are conscious of the likeness,

2I4 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

or perhaps their faces and appearance are in a way
a reflection of the faces and appearances in church
paintings at home. In any case, the pilgrim has a
lively interest in the shore where the first disciples
were called ; he feels that the men called were like
himself. A pilgrim in the hostelry told me one morn¬
ing a dream that seemed to me very touching ; it
was that Jesus had appeared to him in his native
village away in Russia, and called him to be one of
His disciples. Perhaps he really was called in his
village, only not then, but when he set out to
pilgrimage.

The peasants visit Cana, where the water was
changed into wine — the mountain where the great
Sermon was spoken — Gadara, where the man was
cured by the devils passing into the swine — Caper¬
naum, in ruins, where Peter’s mother-in-law was
healed — Magdala, where Jesus met Mary Magdalene
— and many another little town and village on the
populous shores of the lake.

There is a certain wistfulness in the peasant’s
actions, for instance, in their sitting in companies and
eating bread at the place where the five thousand
were fed, in their scattering fragments of bread
specially brought from Jerusalem for the purpose
and picking them up again, as if playing like children
at the old miracle. It is enough to attract the
attention of the Great Father had He even forgotten
His children.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE CARAVAN AT THE MONASTERY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE DESERT.

Ill

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

The way back from Nazareth and Galilee is gener¬
ally harder than the journey out. The pilgrims are
definitely committed to the road ; they have often
exhausted both their food-supply and the little money
they think wise to take on their persons. Often
there is the necessity to reach Jerusalem by Holy
Week, and if bad weather sets in, the pilgrims prefer
to brave rain or snow rather than wait in a village
and be late for the great festivals of the Holy City.

There is, unfortunately, no literature of the
pilgrimage, no collected stories and anecdotes, no
novels on the subject. Russian culture has rather
despised the peasant and the pilgrim. I have
searched in vain the pages of modern Russian
authors for stories of the pilgrims. I find nothing
that is historically of the slightest value. No one of
any literary ability seems to have ever journeyed
with the pilgrims and brought a story home. It is
strange that an immemorial national pilgrimage
should have remained unsung. It shows how
divorced is the interest of the Russian cultured

215

2 1 6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

class from that which is essentially Russian. If
we English had had this glorious emblem in our
national life it would have been immortalised long
ago.

Certainly, for a great Russian writer there is the
outward form and visible expression of greatness
lying potentially in the pilgrimage. There is the
possibility of a great national epic that would make
Europe ring. Of course it needs a Russian to
write it — one can write a national epic only for one’s
own nation.

What matter there is in the story of the in¬
dividual pilgrim, in the story of the caravan, of the
crowd upon the pilgrim boat, or the congregation at
the Sepulchre !

I take a story, now quickly growing legendary, of
the calamities that overwhelmed the Annunciation
caravan that set out for Nazareth in March just
twenty years ago. It seems to have been the most
adventurous and terrible journey in recent annals
of the pilgrimage. I have pieced my story together
from what an old pilgrim told me who was himself
on that journey, and from what I have found in the
printed records. It is a story of the pilgrim’s cross.

The caravan left Jerusalem on the 4th of March
1893, 'm warm and clear weather. It was formed
of five hundred and thirty-one women and two
hundred and thirty-three men, most of whom were
aged people, wasted by the strict fast, going on foot
the whole of the fortnight’s journey in accordance

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

217

with the pilgrim custom. The caravan was accom¬
panied by the feldscher Ivanof, a monk of the
mission of Father Gennady, a sick-nurse from the
hospital, the Montenegrin policeman Nikolai
Bykovitch, a negro, Dmitri, who spoke Russian well
and had been hired temporarily by the Society, the
retired Turkish gendarme Jogar, and two other
gendarmes ordered to accompany the caravan by the
Governor of Jerusalem. In the train of the caravan
were thirty-eight saddled mules to carry such of the
folk as should break down.

The caravan accomplished the out-journey to
Nazareth without mischance. The weather was so
warm that at Nablous, by the well where Jesus
talked with the Samaritan woman, all slept in the
open field under the stars. Soon afterwards, how¬
ever, there was a change in the weather, and the
caravan left Nazareth for Tabor in a thick mist.
The mist was cleared by a fresh wind, and changed
to a drizzling rain, which continued for some days.
At Tabor it was decided to give up the journey to
the Sea of Galilee and return by the direct road to
Jerusalem. But only a hundred pilgrims would agree
to this. These left the main body and marched
home ; the weather was wet and they had a heavy
tramp, but they reached Jerusalem safely; the re¬
mainder stayed at Tabor and indicated their deter¬
mination to go on to Tiberias.

The morning of the nth of March broke rainy
and windy. The weather was very chill. At eight

2 1 8 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

o’clock, however, the sun came out and the caravan
moved forward. There was perhaps an hour’s
deceptive sunshine, and for the time being the
weather was very hot. The pilgrims whose clothes
were wet were glad to get dry, and were becoming
very cheerful, when suddenly the sun disappeared
behind a bank of cloud almost as unexpectedly as an
hour before it had broken out. A high wind came
across the mountains with spots of rain ; the spots
gave way to torrents, and then for two hours there
came such a storm of rain and hail as the pilgrims
can seldom have seen in their lives. The torrents
were blinding ; the caravan came to a standstill, and
the people were all shelterless. There was not even
a cave to hide in. As for the road, the mud was
so deep that even the asses couldn’t walk on it,
and they were left behind in the charge of
the muleteers. The exhausted pilgrims reached
Tiberias about six in the evening, and were accom¬
modated in the miserable Greek and Russian
hostelries there, all wet, cold, shivering, and without
even the most ordinary comforts of life. Here the
leader of the caravan informed the pilgrims that he
should await a change of weather before going
further. So, for two whole days and nights, the
rain never stopping, the caravan remained at
Tiberias, that miserable empty collection of Arab
huts and ruins. Many of the pilgrims then asked
that they might be reconducted to Nazareth; no
doubt several set off on their own account without

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

219

waiting for the main body. Some pilgrims still
wished to go on to the shrines of Galilee, but they
were over-ruled, and the whole party set off once
more with sprawling mules and slipping feet to
Nazareth. The rain had ceased, and the caravan
made the journey without misadventure. At
Nazareth they waited some while, but on the
morning of 17th March decided to begin the
journey back to Jerusalem.

The return was commenced in complete disorder.
Near the village Khuvar a great gale sprang up,
blowing in the faces of the pilgrims, the sky filled
with leaden-coloured clouds in which every minute
the white lightning flickered. The storm came up,
darkening the day, the road was swept by blinding
lightning, accompanied by the most appalling de¬
tonations of thunder. What the pilgrims felt,
especially the women, who believe literally that
the thunder is the voice of God, must be left to the
imagination. From all the mountains around, the
echoes grumbled, the lightning darted from all
imaginable quarters, and the great leaden-coloured
cumuli oppressed the air with their weight and the
senses with their darkness. The caravan was filled
with terror. Most of the pilgrims stopped of their
own accord and prostrated themselves on the hill¬
side, and even whilst they did so, after one final
overwhelming explosion of the thunder, the clouds
opened and discharged themselves in torrential rain.

Down rushed the rain impetuous.

220 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

Stinging through the rain came large hailstones.
On all the landscape there was not shelter for a cat.
That was the least of the matter, however. In less
time than it is written rivulets were born in the hills
and they quickly became rivers ; the road itself
became a running stream, and the pilgrims stood up
to the knee and even up to the waist in water.
Imagine seven hundred English old-age pensioners
in such a plight, and you have a notion of the age
and frailty of the peasants, but add to that that they
were all worn out with fasting, tired out with
tramping, and had cold in their bones from the
soaking at Tiberias.

Many fainted, many fell down in the water ; some
were rescued, some drowned. The caravan was, of
course, at a standstill, and all who had strength to
help gave their succour to the feeble, handing round
vodka and cognac, and placing whom they could
upon the asses, strapping on the fainting and the
bodies of those who were dead. Those who retained
consciousness sang hymns and crossed themselves
continuously.

At length, the storm passing and the water sub¬
siding, the caravan moved forward over the slippery
mud, and it gained the little village of el-Lubban.
The weather had become extremely cold and wintry,
snow and sleet were falling, and the wind pierced to
the bone. Bonfires were lighted in the Arab village.
The children of the village and the stronger pilgrims
gathered the wood and built the fires, and the others,

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

22 1

soaked and shivering, or moaning and dying, were
placed around the cheerful blaze. Hot milk and
cognac were served to all, and every effort was made
to restore the failing. Many died. They gave
up their souls to God and were glad. There had
been terror in the moment of the storm, but now
peace was attained and none of the pilgrims felt any
fear. To them the experience was very strange and
wonderful ; they invested it with a personal religious
significance. God had a special reason for sending
the storm and calling so many of their brothers and
sisters to Him. Perhaps all over the world at that
moment just as strange things were happening.
That day was a particular one, not only in the life
of each individual pilgrim, but in the life of every
man in the world, for God was walking in the
heavens. The bodies of the dead pilgrims were laid
out in a shed and over them candles were lit, the
living pilgrims never ceasing to watch and to sing.

Those officially in charge of the caravan must
have felt the burden of their responsibility very
heavy. There was no telegraph, no means of
communication with Jerusalem. They could do
nothing but attend to the sick, and hurry forward as
quickly as possible. El-Lubban was a miserable
village, and it was decided to move the caravan on
to the neighbouring settlement of Sindzhil, which
afforded better accommodation. Sindzhil was not far
away ; those who had not broken down would not
find the journey too much for them, and the sick

222 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

and the dead could be brought on the asses and in
the village carts. But this project was defeated by
the Arab muleteers, who blankly refused to allow
their animals to go. Turkey is comparatively a free
country, as there is no power to be brought to bear
effectively on its people : if a muleteer proves can¬
tankerous there is nothing to be done. In Russia
the official in charge of such an expedition would
have had these muleteers arrested very quickly.
Palestine, however, is not subject to the all-seeing
double-headed eagle, and the muleteers saved their
mules and sacrificed the pilgrims. The sick and the
dead were left behind at el-Lubban, and those who
could walk set out for Sindzhil with the feldscher.

As they didn’t know the way and it was evening,
these were nearly overtaken by calamity once more.
As evidence of the disorganised state of the party,
they actually found one poor old pilgrim woman on
the road who had never reached el-Lubban with the
rest, and when they all reached Sindzhil they found
forty-four pilgrims there already, a party that had
been lost in the storm and had gone on by itself.
From this village the feldscher sent the Turkish
gendarme Jogar to Jerusalem with news of the
plight of the caravan.

Long before the news reached Jerusalem however,
there was anxiety and even consternation there.
The pilgrims had long been expected, and as from
the eleventh to the eighteenth of March it snowed
or rained without intermission, it was felt that the

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

223

weather on the mountainous road from Nazareth
must be very bad. There were all manner of
rumours in the hostelry, the most persistent being
that the caravan had been completely buried and
frozen in a snowstorm. Even before the gendarme
Jogar arrived the Palestine Society had sent out aid.
The two Montenegrins, Lazar Ban and Ivan
Kniazhevitch were despatched with money, and
with an order to spare nothing to bring the people
safely home. Fortunately money has more power
to persuade an Arab than any other argument.
The muleteers under its influence allowed the mules
to go out to work again and carry the sick and the
dead. There were not, however, sufficient mules to
be found, so that Lazar Ban sent to Jerusalem for
forty more.

At this point it may well be mentioned that there
was now no caravan at all, but instead, a series of
straggling parties all along the road from Nazareth
to Jerusalem. All idea of order was gone. There
was no main party, there were no real headquarters,
pilgrims fell by the roadside and died ; many bodies
were found afterwards with knife wounds, showing
that in their enfeebled state they had been attacked
by the natives and robbed, many bodies never were
found. Horses and mules, carts of bread and wine
and medicines were sent from headquarters, for as
the news of the extent of the calamity came through,
the interest of all people at Jerusalem was aroused.
Though the weather remained wet and dreary, many

224 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

went out of the Holy City to Ramalla to meet the
pilgrims, and they met hundreds of men and women
on the road, worn-out, bedraggled, and speechless.
The strange thing was that when the mules were
brought, many of the pilgrims refused to take the
proffered aid, though they had to walk at the rate
of but half a mile an hour up to the ankle in slimy
mud ; they refused to ride on the mules, saying that
it was necessary to suffer, and that nothing would
persuade them to ride where Jesus had walked.

At Ramalla was a terrible state of affairs. In
one shelter lay a hundred women and ten men who
had fallen by the way. A priest tells of the Greek
hostelry where in a stone cell forty women sat about
a bonfire made of wet wood and kerosine, and the
room was full of suffocating white smoke. In the
village church lay a long line of dead bodies waiting
for burial. Here one evening the burial service was
taken for twenty- five simultaneously, an occasion
unforgettable for all those who were present. The
pilgrims held candles and sang with quavering voices,
and kissed the dead faces with terrible emotion.

Help for the pilgrims was concentrated at
Ramalla, where were sent several hundred pounds
of bread, clean linen for a hundred people, and an
extraordinary amount of medicine and wine. The
caravan was re-formed as the stragglers came in, and
at length several hundreds were formed into a
procession and brought to Jerusalem. They came,
not with palms nor with olive branches, neither with

PILGRIM WOMAN WHO DIED ON THE WAY HOME EROM JORDAN.

A CALAMITOUS RETURN

225

hymns nor with cries, but with pale, silent faces and
tottering limbs. Crowds went out from Jerusalem
to meet them and give a hearty welcome ; but the
pilgrims, living, not in the sight of men but in the
sight of God, fell down upon their knees as the walls
of the City came into vision, and cried out, “Thanks
be to Thee, O Lord, who hast brought us once more
to see Thy Holy City, and has not left us to perish
in the wilderness. Thanks be to Thee who hast
saved our bodies from the wild beasts and the
birds ! ”

THE JOYFUL RETURN

This was the return of twenty years ago, but it is
not to be thought that there has been such sorrow
on many occasions. The return to Jerusalem is
generally one of great gladness, of songs and
triumph. Nowadays the caravan is a larger one,
generally exceeding fifteen hundred in number, and
the entry into the Holy City is made in grand style.

Greater precautions are now taken by the
Palestine Society to save the weak ; those in charge
have more power to spend money ; there are more
saddled asses. Two days before the arrival in Jeru¬
salem, a consignment of bread is sent out to meet
the caravan, and a pound of bread is given to each
pilgrim. The bread is received with gladness, even
with tears ; not that the majority of pilgrims are in
need of a pound of bread, but that they are touched
by the care of Jerusalem for them.

On the day after coming home from Jordan, I
went out with a party of pilgrims to meet the
caravan at the Mount of Olives. It was a glorious
morning, one of many perfectly sunny days, and it

226

V THE JOYFUL RETURN 227

was very pleasant sitting on rocks among the wild
flowers at the side of the road waiting with hundreds
of others for the arrival.

Only the pilgrims and the beggars knew that the
caravan was expected. The European and American
tourists who saw the spectacle by chance seem to
have been generally of opinion that the pilgrims
thus coming in were just arriving from Russia,
having walked all the way. The impression of the
entry is so grand that one might well believe that it
was the crown of the long pilgrimage, the coming
in of those who had just reached Jerusalem after
three or four thousand miles journeying on foot.

About this time, that is, just before Holy Week,
Jerusalem began to swarm with beggars and to
have triple and quadruple its usual number, attracted
from all districts round by the rich concourse of
Easter. Now they began to show themselves in
force ; and truly their number, ugliness, and diversity
were appalling as we saw them drawn up to plunge
upon the joyous pilgrims and get money from them
in the first emotional burst of the arrival at Jerusalem.

Already they began to cry : —

“ Baksheesh , baksheesh ! ”

“ Pa-pa , ma-ma, niet .” (“ No papa, no mamma.”)

‘ ‘ Spree-ezd Nazaret, spree-ezd Nazaret. ” ( “ Wel¬
come from Nazareth.”)

The crippled crawled in the dust, the diseased
displayed their sores, the ragged their rents. The
road was filled with all the loathsome beggary of

228 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS v

the East. When the advance-guard of the caravan
appeared at a corner of the road the beggars fairly
lost their heads.

“Welcome to Jerusalem! Welcome, brothers!
Spree-ezdom, Spree-ezdom ! ” cry the pilgrims who
are waiting, and they run towards the happy faces
of the throng. Here they come, all carrying olive
branches and palms, here are the Montenegrin
policemen, the mounted Turkish gendarme, pilgrims
on asses, pilgrims in carts, pilgrims under immense
broad black umbrellas, phalanxes on foot, dust all
over, pack on back, lapti on the feet, staff in hand,
and radiantly smiling. Jerusalem once morel
Jerusalem all bedecked for Holy Week with a
glorious sun shining over it, and the crown of the
pilgrimage at hand ! The pilgrims embrace and
kiss one another ; they fall down on their knees and
give thanks ; they rise and kiss again.

But onward ! The line of the caravan must not
be broken. It is but a Sabbath day’s journey to
the hostelry. The beggars cry plaintively, whine,
shriek, fall down in the way, and the pilgrims empty
from their sacks all their crusts and waste ends to
them. We who have gone out to meet them march
by the side, and we bring them triumphantly to the
Russian settlement. Here once more a crowd is
waiting to meet them, the happy demonstrations are
repeated. But without much delay the whole party
is brought into the gardens, and it sits down to
many tables where Jerusalem gives a free dinner

THE PILGRIMS ARRIVE WITHIN SIGHT OF THE HOLY CITY.

V THE JOYFUL RETURN 229

to all, thanking God before and after for all His
mercies.

In the dormitories and the pavilions there is not
an empty place this day. And Abraham, the
mysterious pilgrim, has specially sanctified all the
pigeon-hole beds, making the sign of the cross in
incense over them one by one. Jerusalem now
holds its full complement of pilgrims.

HOLY WEEK

THE APPROACH OF HOLY WEEK

Jerusalem began to overflow with pilgrims and
sightseers, and also with mountebanks, showmen
and hawkers, and all the parasites of the legitimate
crowd. Christianity in all the garishness and
diversity of its Eastern adherence flaunted the eye.
The ordinarily dressed European and American
whom one is led to regard as the Christian type is
in a minority at the Holy City. The speculative
looking English rector, the mild and self-contained
Catholic, the hotel-loads of commercial heathen, or
cousins and dependants of these heathen, form but a
sober and unarresting unit of the Jerusalem pageant.
The Holy City is delivered into the hands of the
Russians, the Armenians, the Bulgarians, and the
Christian Arabs and Syrians. But beyond these
there are great numbers of Greeks, Albanians,
Soudanese, there are Indian converts, negroes, and
indeed representatives of almost every race of the
world, all hustling and crowding one another in the
narrow Jerusalem streets.

With the coming on of Holy Week the pilgrim

234 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

enters upon the final phase of this service of his to
God. From the Saturday before Palm Sunday to
the morning of Easter he lives the most arduous
and glowing life that can be imagined. Religious
fire fuses his whole being so that he becomes one
flame, like a lamp burning before the Holy of
Holies. All day and all night life becomes a
continuous church service and ecclesiastical pageant.
The Jerusalem churches, and especially that of the
Sepulchre, are crowded from morning till night ; one
great service and procession follows another all day
long. In the numerous chapels and dim galleries
of St. Sepulchre the sweet singing never dies away.

In my experience I never saw such devotion as
that of the Russian peasants this last week of the
great fast this year. Worn out already by tramping
and by fasting, to say nothing of the effect of such
exciting life on their hitherto quiet age, they were
yet ready to spend themselves to the last limit of
life and care, sacrificing food, sleep, and the most
elementary comforts of existence in order to live the
pilgrimage out to the glorious end.

How many died these last days !

In the hospital, as soon as Holy Week came near,
there was the utmost feverishness among the
patients. They found themselves virtual prisoners
— prisoners for their own sake. But they felt they
would rather die in the streets than lie in their beds
gathering vulgar health when such doings were
toward in the city.

VI THE APPROACH OF HOLY WEEK 235

I met one of the doctors one day — it seems he
had been having a lively time, being alternately
coaxed and abused by all his patients in turn.

“ Here’s a rouble for you,” said one old querulous
pilgrim. “Just stir yourself, a little now and get
me right.”

“Write that I may get up now,” was the general
cry.

“ You’re not in a fit state,” would be the reply.

“ A fit state, a fit state ! What does it matter to us
or to God whether our bodies are well. Write, write,
write. God’ll pardon you for saying we are well.”

I heard a pathetic tale at Easter how a poor,
broken-down old dame, who had been incarcerated
all through Holy Week and its glories, brought out
a hot shilling which she had been nursing under the
bedclothes all through the night of Good Friday,
and she offered it to the doctor with a whisper —

“ I won’t say anything, take that and write that I
am well, and let me go out.”

Yet the doctor refused.

To add to the asceticism of the pilgrims’ lives,
they began now to examine themselves and curtail
even their fast diet so as to be in a condition to
receive Holy Communion on the night of Holy
Thursday. Prayers and religious exercises seemed
to be doubled in the hostelries, and even at two in
the morning there was the continual drone of
prayers, and the thumpings of old knees going down
upon the wooden couches.

236 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

If the laity were preparing, the clergy were not
doing less. On the Friday before Palm Sunday,
i.e on the day after the return from Jordan, the
Church of the Life-giving Grave was closed to the
pilgrims. In preparation for Passion Week the
Sepulchre had to be washed and adorned. Those
of us who visited the square of the church saw the
Arabs and lay brethren swilling and mopping warm
water over the stone floors, taking down old lamps
and putting up new, erecting places of vantage, and
stands for European and American sightseers.
Many things were happening within the temple.
About a thousand new lamps were hung ; the
ordinary ikons were taken away and replaced by
representations of the Passion of our Lord, pictures
embroidered on gold and violet coloured velvets.
The Ark of the Sepulchre itself was also hung
with precious embroideries in which pictures were
made with pearls and rubies, and adorned with
flowers. The interior of the Ark, the Holy of
Holies, was carefully tended, scented with rose
odours, and decked with new-picked flowers. At
the entrance to the Ark was hung from the darkness
of the vault the precious five-wick lamp sent to
the Tomb by the Emperor Nicholas I. Then also
on the altar the priests placed precious cloths and
silver candlesticks. Above the great throne of the
altar of Golgotha were hung lamps, and from the
lamps lovely garlands. All along the ikonostasis
new shapely candles were erected, candles as tall as

VI THE APPROACH OF HOLY WEEK 237

the priests themselves, some of them great white
cylinders of wax. All day the long-haired monks
and priests moved to and fro in stately garb,
working with their white, ringed fingers. One
knew they were preparing for the strange sacrifice,
the offering of the embodiment of life’s loveliness
unto death. It seemed that somewhere in the
background the young and lovely One Himself was
in durance, and that it was the priests themselves
who would sacrifice Him. It was on this day that I
read in St. John how the priest Caiaphas prophesied
in spite of himself, and became in a strange way
changed from the vulgar persecutor to the pre¬
destined hierophant of the mystery — “ Consider
that it is expedient for us, that one man should die
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.
This spake he not of himself : but being high priest
that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for
that nation” (St. John xi. 50, 51).

What scandal, too, was talked about the priests
and their ways by new-come sightseers and free¬
thinkers. How frequently the pilgrims were called
upon by revolutionary propagandists to desert their
religion because the priests were in a great conspiracy
to exploit them, because the priests themselves
lived evil lives, and even smoked and drank in the
Holy Places. There was comfort in the thought
that the priests themselves were like Caiaphas of old,
made holy by destiny. What mattered at Jerusalem
was the rite, the sacrifice, the Jesus crucified in

238 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

mystery in each man’s heart. Indeed, had the
priests been tender and gentle as the victim Himself
they had never had the heart to carry through even
the rite, and even in symbolism to crucify Him over
again.

I told this to Father Yevgeny, but being himself
a monk he did not enter into the thought as readily
as other pilgrims. “ But the populace also was
guilty,” he cried out in his raucous voice, “they
participated in the guilt, for they cried out for
Barabbas. It was not only the chief priest and the
scribes, but you and I, and all of us. Even St. Peter
was afraid.”

“ But there was St. Joseph,” said I, “of Arima-
thea, and the Maries and St. John, and many who
watched from afar with fear and trembling in their
hearts, many also who like us had come to Jerusalem
from afar.”

Yevgeny agreed. We even promised to re¬
member through Holy Week, when we came back
from the solemnization of the raising of Lazarus,
that “ from that day forth the priests took counsel
together to put him to death.”

IN THE SEPULCHRE

A SERVICE FOR THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD.

Koutia, Communion Loaves, and Lighted Tapers.

■

VERBA AND PALM SUNDAY

I went out with 4500 pilgrims on the Friday
evening before Palm Sunday, some of us to sleep at
the Monastery of the righteous Lazarus, others to
spend the night in the Virgin’s tomb, others to be
shut in the Garden of Gethsemane, and many
simply to lie and sleep under the open face of
heaven a mile or so outside the city on the road
toward Bethany. I took my chance with the last
named.

It is a beautiful district wherein to spend the
night — between the Mount of Olives and Bethany.
The great grey rocks climb in gallery after gallery
to the sky ; whilst it is evening they breathe the
language of mystery, and when night cloaks them
they become the walls of a gigantic, dark, and awe¬
inspiring temple. As we lay, so far below the
summits of the rocks, we looked up at the lambent
roof of the sky alight with the yellow flames of stars.

We slept, most of us, very well, but the night
was surprisingly cold ; one pilgrim gathered wood
and made a small fire, which, when I wakened now

239

24o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

and then, I saw flickering poorly — the wild places of
the Holy Land do not abound in dry wood as
Russia does. Before dawn we got up ; some went
to the Lazarevsky Monastery to get tea, and others
climbed the Mount of Olives to join in the early
service at the Church of the Ascension. Liubomudrof
and I went to the grave of Lazarus, a cave with a
sharp descent of twenty-four steps at the bottom of
which is a Roman Catholic altar. We kissed the
place where Lazarus stood up in the grave-garments,
and then hurried out to the church of the meeting
of Martha with Jesus, and we did reverence to the
chair where Jesus sat whilst he waited some minutes
for Mary. A service was being rendered in the
little church, and the peasants swarmed about it
like bees. As the sun came up into the sky and
morning was realised, crowds of new pilgrims
appeared coming from the Mount of Olives to
Jerusalem. The road was thronged with mouzhiks
and babas walking in parade as on “ festival day ”
in a large Russian village. As Liubomudrof re¬
marked, it was as if the village church at Bethany
were celebrating its dedication day, and the people
had come from all the villages round about for a
gulanie.

For most of us it was a gala day, not one of
arduous prayer and tramping, but of rest and happi¬
ness. We talked gaily to all and sundry whom we
met, strayed over the fields picking Jacob’s ladders
and poppies, and breaking branches from the olive

VI VERBA AND PALM SUNDAY 241

trees. Many of us bought palms from the Arab
hawkers. In the afternoon we purposed to enter
Jerusalem with flowers and palms as the populace
does at Moscow and Kief on Palm Saturday,
bringing once more Jesus to Jerusalem.

On our way back we called at Bithsphania, where
the apostles took the ass’s colt, and we came strewing
petals of wild flowers and carrying our olive branches
to the Holy City once again. Those who had not
obtained date palms, and who preferred them to the
simple olive branches, hastened to buy them at
Jerusalem, in order that they might take them to the
great service in the evening and bear them in
triumph on the morrow. Formerly the clergy dis¬
tributed palms among the pilgrims gratis, but the
good custom has been allowed to lapse and the
commercial Arab has stepped in.

For my part I went from church to church in
Jerusalem, starting at the Troitsky Cathedral outside
the hostelry, and finishing with the Church of the
Life-giving Grave, and I lived a moment in each.
Every one of the sacred buildings was filled with
peasant humanity, and above the heads of the close-
packed crowd the palms waved like a maize-field.

The service at the Life-giving Grave was

magnificent. It was taken by the Patriarch of

Jerusalem, several bishops, and many monks, all the

clergy in gorgeous vestments. The new crystal

lamps were lit, and innumerable wax candles; the

black depth of the church was agleam with lights

242 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

like a starlit sky brought down from heaven. The
singing was glorious.

Again next morning, Palm Sunday, the pageant
at the Sepulchre was glorious, and those who pene¬
trated to the fore of the terrible crowd of pilgrims,
sight-seers, and Turkish soldiers, saw wondrous
sights — many clergy in rich robes holding in their
hands, some boxes of relics, others little bright-
painted ikons ; they saw bishops in their copes
carrying Gospels, priests holding bouquets of flowers,
surpliced boys with lighted candles, many with
waving palms, strange, pale-faced, lank-haired monks
with stove-pipe hats on their heads, and in their
hands the poles of painted banners and gilt crosses.
One priest held an immense olive branch, say
rather an olive tree, all hung with flowers and
ornaments like a different sort of Christmas tree.
With a great blast of singing and with much hustling
by the Turkish soldiers keeping the worshippers
back, the great procession commenced its threefold
march round the Sacred Grave. Not only the
choir, but all the pilgrims took up the hymn, and
even those in the surging mob without. The
Patriarch then read in a loud voice the prayer for
the Christian kings and for the Sultan — the Sultan
won’t be left out. Then he led the way to that part
of the church dedicated to the Resurrection, and
standing at his throne distributed the sacred bread.

The church was crushed to such an extent that
many lost their feet, and were borne up on other

VI VERBA AND PALM SUNDAY 243

people’s sides and shoulders. Every available
eminence was occupied, if not by peasants at least
by Arabs, and the rough soldiery dealt with the
crowd menacingly. The great olive branch which
in old times the clergy, the Patriarch, and even
emperors and kings, went out to hew at Bethany
was now to be cut into bits in the church and
distributed to the faithful. Lucky they who managed
to get a leaf to take home to Mother Russia.

Towards the end of the service and before the
distribution of the leaves, I sought a seat in one of
the grand structures put up by the monks, facing
the entrance to the Sepulchre, and there watched
the end. Nominally the seats are free, but a hand¬
some baksheesh is taken from the tourist who, of
course, manages his business through an interpreter.
Several Russian peasants had climbed up and taken
seats, no one saying them nay. I sat next to a
young lady from America ; she had her brother
with her, but he sat behind. They carried on a
very audible conversation. She sat in front in
order to take a snapshot when the people came
out of church. Her brother, who was a self-
professed specialist in nationality, and could tell
what each pilgrim was by a glance at his face, was
not at all abashed to call me “ some sort of a Russian,
but d — n tall.” The girl had a pack of letters which
she opened and re-read one by one. They were
evidently congratulations as, by a glimpse I had of
one, she had lately become engaged.

244 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

Presently, with much shrieking and skirling from
the Orthodox Arabs, who kept crying out in religious
frenzy, “There is no God but God, the God of the
Orthodox Christians,” etc., the dark cavern-door of
the Tomb began to vomit forth its dense crowds of
worshippers. The service was over. Out came
the huge olive branch. The clergy had not suc¬
ceeded in dividing it up, but one worshipper had
snatched it and borne it away himself. He carried
it high above his head and shouted ; the other
pilgrims cried with him, and many tried to snatch
twigs and leaves. Then suddenly a little band of
red-capped Turks and be-turbaned Moslems made
a loud whoop and struck their way with blows
through the amazed crowd of worshippers, threw
themselves on the bearer of the olive branch and
gained possession of the trophy. No one could
stand against them. The soldiers cried out, and
we thought they would fire as they did one year
previously, but the Mussulmans achieved the
desperate deed, broke the branch to bits among
themselves, and ran off as quickly as they had
come, shrieking triumphantly. The American girl
snapped her kodak.

The little scene was over in a twinkling. The
Christian Arabs swore vengeance, the mild Russians
spoke to one another indignantly, but the crowd, still
surging forth of the gate of the Sepulchre, soon
moved all would-be demonstrators on. I came
down from the stand and joined the Russians who

VI VERBA AND PALM SUNDAY 245

went down to the Golden Gate, that gate through
which it is prophesied that a great conqueror shall
enter Jerusalem, perhaps Jesus coming a second
time. The gate is that through which Jesus
came when he entered in triumph long ago. It
is now mortared up by the superstitious Turks who
fear the fulfilment of the prophecy.

Every day during this last period of Lent there
were funerals of pilgrims, and this Palm Sunday in
the afternoon I witnessed the committing of two old
peasants to their rest in earth. I had returned from
the Golden Gate to the hostelry, and had hardly
made my dinner — a better one than usual, for
fish was allowed that day — when a young monk
came and told me that the two dead ones were
being brought to the church. Already in the little
church of the monastery a great number of pilgrims
were gathered round about two simple plank coffins
standing on deal trestles in the nave. The coffins
were very shallow, only just permitting the lid to
fasten down. At Sion, where the pilgrims are buried,
it is too much labour to hew out a sepulchre for a
large coffin. I came in close with the monk and
beheld the dead, for the faces were uncovered.
Both pilgrims looked extraordinarily grand in
death ; on their heads were black mitre-shaped
caps with white tinsel crosses above the brows,
round about the brows were bound ribbons on
which prayers were embroidered or printed, their
lips were thick and long and dull under the now

246 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

statuesque moustache, their sunburnt faces had a
look of exaltation even, one might say, of madness.
They had both died suddenly, had both been to
Nazareth and back living on crusts of black bread,
had both been to Bethany the day before, and
gathered flowers and olive branches. Their own
flowers were strewn in the coffins with them. They
were dressed in their Jordan-dipped shrouds, crosses
were in their hands and palms on their breasts.
We all stood around and stared, the dead all encom¬
passed by the living. Presently, as was fitting,
candles were distributed, and we lit from one
another, all bowing toward one another in the
dim church, and the service commenced. The
prayers were soon said and the candles extin¬
guished, and then one by one, or rather two or three
by two or three, the pilgrims came up to the coffins,
bent down and kissed the inanimate faces, and said
farewell. We all crossed ourselves and sighed ;
some shed tears, others said words of praise. All
felt it was well for the pilgrims to have died in the
Holy Land in the holiest days of their life. There
was no thought that it was far away to die. It was
a great blessing. Many pilgrims reflected how good
it would be for these on the day of the Resurrection.

“ And you know/’ said one peasant to me, “here
bodies don’t corrupt. It’s not as in Russia, where
your face is all gone in a very short time ; here
there is holiness in the land, and that keeps the
bodies long after the processes of Nature are due.”

THE DEAD PILGRIM CARRIED ON THE PEASANTS’ HEADS ON PALM SUNDAY.

VI VERBA AND PALM SUNDAY 247

With what sounding kisses the peasant women
took leave of the dead ones and promised to meet
them in heaven ! I am sure every pilgrim in the
church came up and gave .the parting kiss. And
there was a strange fascination in the faces of the
dead. All the time the service was in process they
seemed to say mysteriously, “ Come, come, come
and die, come and die.’7

At last the final blessing was given, and several
of the living pilgrims lifted the coffins on to their
heads and bore them out of the church. All the
rest of us followed with hymns, and we bore them
away through the Jerusalem streets and found them
sepulchres in Sion.

Ill

ABRAHAM: THE ETERNAL PILGRIM

One of the most remarkable figures of the pilgrimage
was Abraham, seventy-five years old, at Jerusalem
for the twentieth time. The old greybeard beggar
pilgrim with wrinkled brows and opaque spectacles
was one of the sights of the hostelry. He was
commonly to be seen standing with head and
shoulders thrown back, as erect as a ship’s captain
scanning the sea, a great wallet hanging from his
shoulders, and in his hands a brass-bound, heavy
pilgrim’s staff. He was the most public person of
us all, though quite unofficial. All manner of life
centred round him in the hostelries. He was, more
than the archimandrite who drove to and fro, the
host of the pilgrims. He welcomed all newcomers
as if they were his guests. The numbers whom he
kissed and who chose or even wanted to be kissed
by the old “half-saint” were amazing.

Abraham is Jerusalem’s eternal pilgrim. His
whole life is a pilgrimage now, pilgrimage after
pilgrimage. He has no money or food or clothing
but what other people give him, and yet he manages

248

ABRAHAM

249

each year to reach the Holy City. For nine
months of the year he is tramping in Russia, and
for the other three he is in the Holy Land or
on the pilgrim boat. His life is a denial in itself of
all the modern conception of how one should spend
one’s days. From the common point of view
Abraham and his like are dead waste, they are
doing nothing, they are living on those who work,
and contributing nothing to the general store. But
Abraham is not only taking, but giving. For all
those who have helped him on the way to Jerusalem
he prays when he reaches the city. Not only that,
but he has hundreds of commissions for prayers and
a goodly quantity of money to give to the monks
and the priests in the names of peasants whom he
has met on his pilgrimage, and who have asked him
to pay for prayers for the health of the living and
the peace of soul of the dead.

A touching story is told of Abraham. When he
was a little boy his ears were filled with the tales of
the pilgrims to whom his hospitable father gave
shelter. At seven years old the little Abraham
conceived the idea of starting for Jerusalem, and he
began to save his crusts and put them by in a sack.
One day, when he had a sackful, he started off
without telling anyone, and toddled away up the road
along which he had seen so many pilgrims going.
Late in the evening, footsore and tired, he met an
old waggoner standing outside an inn. “ Where
are you going? ’’asked the latter. “ To Jerusalem,”

250 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

the boy replied faintly. “ Then,” said the waggoner,
“ you’d better come along with me. Get up into
the waggon.” The boy, nothing loth, climbed into
the cart, lay down in the hay and fell fast asleep.
And he. did not wake for a long while. At last he
was aware of someone shaking and poking him.

“Wake up, wake up,” said a familiar voice.

“ Where am I ? ” said the boy rubbing his eyes.

“At the Holy City of Jerusalem,” said someone
gruffly.

“Wha-at?” said the boy, “ wha-at?” And looking
round he saw his mother standing in the doorway.
The waggoner had driven him home again.

From that day to this the peasant has had a
pilgrim soul. He has visited all the shrines and is
deep in all the holy lore. For the last thirty years
he has done nothing but pilgrimage and “find other
men’s charity.” He has been a holy beggar, and
yet has not begged. Each night, when Abraham
arrives at a village and seeks hospitality at a strange
door, he does not cry out, “ Here comes an old
pilgrim who craves your Christian charity,” etc. etc.
He prefers to live in the atmosphere of Old Russia,
where the refusal of shelter to a pilgrim is a more
impossible discord than cursing in the Mass.
Abraham stops outside the door, knocks three times
with his brass-bound staff, and calls out in deep
bass : —

“In the name of the Father, and the Son, and
the Holy Ghost.”

ABRAHAM

251

How mysterious and wonderful the greeting is
when you hear it from within when the ikon lamp
is burning, the family is round the humming
samovar, and outside is the dark night, and the
unknown standing in it waiting at your door with
face and aspect unimaginable. There is always a
feeling it may be one of the ancient saints them¬
selves still wandering the earth, not yet taken
up into heaven. There is a pause, the family
cross themselves, then the good man of the house
says —

“ Amen.”

Abraham enters, the eternal pilgrim, with
wrinkled brow, grey ancient locks, opaque purple
spectacles, on his back the pack of sorrows, in his
hand his antique brass-bound staff.

He comes in with stories and with blessing ;
there is the odour of incense in his garments and
intelligence of Heaven in his features. He is the
“bell of the Lord,” the heavenly messenger going
to and fro on the business which is beyond the
grave. His presence under your roof is itself a
blessing. In the morning he does not ask of you,
he only receives. You give him money, bread, fruit
perhaps, you give him a home-spun shroud to dip in
the waters of Jordan for you, you entrust him to ask
the priests at holy shrines to pray for you, you send
him to Nazareth and Bethlehem, and Guerassim, and
the Grave, and give him copecks to offer for the
upkeep of the monasteries and churches where the

252 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

monks and priests are praying. Then the old
pilgrim goes on his way once more.

Each year Abraham has received enough money
to enable him to pay for his ticket to Jaffa on the
pilgrim boat — he never spends money on food or
lodging or clothes, so it is easy to save. From
Jaffa he walks to Jerusalem. He makes the arduous
pilgrimage to Jordan and Nazareth without turning
a hair and fulfils all his commissions. He lives in
the pilgrims’ lives at the hostelry at Jerusalem, and
is beloved of them, and then when Easter comes at
last and the life of Jesus is fulfilled in symbol, he
returns to Russia once more, laden with little tokens,
— ikons, crosses, sacred pictures, bits of Jerusalem
earth, bottles of Jordan water, — and he returns on his
path to those who have helped him and sheltered
him on the outward way. He distributes his
blessings, and then at the turn of the year turns
with it to face the Holy City once again.

Each morning in Holy Week before dawn there
was a smell of incense in the hostelry. By the dim
light of the paraffin lamp one saw the shadowy figure
of the aged pilgrim shuffling from bench to bench,
and carrying in his hand a home-made censer from
which a white and luscious smoke was rising.
Most of the other pilgrims slept, and old Abraham
came to make a cross of incense in the air above
each sleeper. It was a voluntary act — an act of
grace, something delightful and tender. The
pilgrim brought to birth in each of us, in the very

ABRAHAM

253

morning before the rising of the noise and clamour,
a sense of the holiness of each of these last days of
Christ’s Passion.

But Abraham was open to all, familiarly ; though
he was mysterious he was by no means recluse.
He was fond of addressing endless questions to
pilgrims, his one comment on the answers being
Slava Tebye Gospody ! (Glory be to Thee, O Lord !)
or more commonly Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! (Thanks
be to Thee, O Lord !) He assailed me thus one
morning : —

“What is your name ? ”

“ Stefan,” I replied.

“ Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! ” he rejoined, cross¬
ing himself. “ Which Stefan ? When do you keep
the day of your angel ? ”

“ The first martyr ; the 26th December.”

“ Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! ” (crossing himself).
“H ow old are you ? ”

“ Twenty-eight.”

“ Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! ” (crossing himself).
“ From what province do you come ? ”

“ From the Don Cossacks.”

“Spasebo Tebye Gospody!” (crossing himself)
and so on, asking if it were the first time to
Jerusalem, where I had prayed, whether I had been
to Jordan, and many other things, always thanking
God and crossing himself, so that we seemed to be
going through a sort of litany. He did not thank
God because I answered, but because of the holy

254 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

fact contained in my answer. To him each little
thing in life was part of God s wonderful providence.
That was the experience of the old pilgrim.

There was a little bath-house in the hostelry
yard where twenty-five pilgrims at a time had hot
baths, the men and women going in in alternate
relays. Unless one got there very early it was
necessary to wait hours — not that the pilgrims
minded. This bath-house was a favourite haunt of
Abraham, who not only sat and talked with the
mouzhiks, but also with the babas with whom he was
a great favourite.

One morning I met a Siberian woman, a midwife
who had come ostensibly on a pilgrimage, but in
reality to see if there might not be scope for her
in her profession at Jerusalem. She told me of
Abraham indignantly. She had been to the bath,
and was horrified to see the old man in the room
talking and singing with the peasant women ; she
flatly refused to undress whilst he remained. She,
however, found herself in a minority ; Abraham was
a half-saint, and no baba objected to him.

The old pilgrim was especially beloved by the
peasant women. They continually brought him
copecks and food, so that he could not possibly
have wanted for anything. He for his part was
never happier than when he gathered a crowd of
them about him, and conducted a little service of
hymn-singing with them. He might commonly be
seen in the hostelry yard with a score or so of

ABRAHAM, THE ETERNAL PILGRIM, BURNING INCENSE IN THE

HOSTELRY AT DAWN.

ABRAHAM

255

babas young and old about him. He stood in the
middle and recited the verse that he wanted them
to sing, and then swaying his body to and fro, and
keeping time with his two arms, the one that was
empty and the one that held the brass-bound staff,
he would lead the tune in an ancient, sloppy, grand¬
mother’s voice, while all the women joined in
unison. I watched him one evening hold such a
service for a whole hour. When he decided to
stop he took from his pocket a bottle of scented
water, and then blessed each pilgrim woman in turn.
He bade her cross herself, examined the way she
held her fingers, and if she had lapsed into unorthodox
habits, and did not, in his opinion, cross herself
rightly, he corrected her. Then he made the sign
of the cross on the top of her head very deliber¬
ately, tapping with his old fingers the crown and
the brow and the temple. That done he filled his
mouth with scented holy water and spurted it forth
again into the peasant woman’s face and then
kissed her cheeks all trickling with water. This he
did all the way round, and even by request twice
and thrice over again. The old women brought
him farthings.

I heard an onlooker say, “There isn’t his like in
Jerusalem, no, not even in Russia, not even in the
world. He does for love what the priests should
do through duty. Who take the trouble to see
that the babas held their fingers properly but such
as he ? ”

256 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

I felt thrilled with agreement as I overheard that
remark, but I would not have made it so myself.
It is true that Abraham is wonderful, but it is no
reproach to the priests. Wild flowers are more
acceptable to God than the flowers of the garden,
or to put it in another way, Nature is a greater
gardener than man, and what is done in Abraham
could scarcely be done in a priest.

IN THE HOSTELRIES

All who had not been to Jordan already journeyed
hurriedly thither on Monday of Holy Week, judging
the baptism in the holy stream an indispensable
preparation before receiving the sacrament and
entering upon the mysteries of Easter. Many
pilgrims also went to Duba on the plains of Mamri,
where still lives the oak under which Abraham
entertained the three angels manifesting the Trinity.
On the Wednesday I met my old man from Tobolsk
Government, the one to whom I gave sixpence on
the pilgrim-boat. He had just come back from
Duba.

“A tremendous oak!” said he. “To think that
it has lived all these thousands of years, and that my
unworthy eyes should survive to see it ! ”

Other pilgrims went to Bethlehem, amongst
them the boy from the Ural ; he had five roubles
from people in his village to give to the monks
there. Altogether there was an immense amount
of going in and out, and the city of Jerusalem was

like an ant heap swarming with ants.

257

258 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

Yevgeny and I went to the cave of St. Pelagia
once more, and the spot on which J esus is supposed to
have stood when he taught the disciples the Lord’s
Prayer. It was here that the apostles set up the
first cross that was used as a symbol of the Christian
religion.

“ How many millions of crosses have been made
since then,” said Yevgeny, “crosses of wood, crosses
of stone, crosses of metal, crosses of spirit, the
crosses which you make with your hand ! ”

The old man removed his hat and made the
sign of the cross over his black-robed chest.

Dear old Dyadya went with others and lived a
night in the tomb of the Virgin. Hundreds of
lamps were burning in the dark cave-temple. “It
was so sweet and comforting that I felt just as if
she had covered me with her sacred veil,” said
the gentle pilgrim.

Philip I found to be taking batches of peasant
women to booths opposite the Armenian Monastery
of St. James, there to be tattooed on the arm by
nimble Arab craftsmen sitting on three-leg stools
and jabbing the bare flesh of clients with their
tattooing needles. Here figures of the Saviour
were worked on the arm, also figures of the Mother
and Child, of Nicholas the wonder-worker, and other
favourite saints. Besides the little pictures most
pilgrims had the word Jerusalem printed, and the year
1912, and some ornamentation of flowers. The
process was quickly accomplished considering the art

According to the pilgrims, the same oak.

IN THE HOSTELRIES

259

in the work, but all the same it was slower and more
painful than being vaccinated. One girl of seventeen
wept bitterly all the while the operation was pro¬
ceeding. When the pricking was done the Arabs
covered up the places with black plaster, and their
victims were released with great black patches on
their arms. In a day they might take off the plaster
and they would find the picture fixed beneath.
The Arabs took a shilling a time, and Philip his
commission. It was a shame, though, to deface
girls’ arms in such a way. There would be too
much leisure to repent — a whole lifetime perhaps.
What is worse, the picture is only clear for a year or
so, and then blurs to an ugly smudge and a dis¬
coloration. However, in defence I must add a note.
When I returned to Russia after the pilgrimage,
and was telling an old Armenian woman of my
experiences, she turned on me with a —

“ Show me the picture on your arm.”

I could show her none, of course.

She looked at me with doubt and incredulity.
She wasn’t going to believe I had been to Jerusalem
unless I had got the word branded on my arm.

Philip told me in confidence that he was going
to pay a doctor five roubles some day to clear his
arm of his own old tattoo marks. He thought it
bad to be marked for life with a smudge, but he
took the women all the same. I didn’t see much of
Philip in Holy Week except when he came past me
with his sacks of purchases — he was a busy man.

260 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

Of course commercial Jerusalem grew happier
and happier as the city filled, and the final orgy
of keepsake-buying grew to a climax. The shops
were crushed from morning till night.

A new feature in the hostelry life was the
appearance of rows of sacred pictures, gigantic bead-
embroidered Madonnas as big as house doors, and
sold with packing cases all ready for transmission
on board. These almost life-sized representations
of the Virgin might have been thought to do some
shame to the sacred womanhood, but I did not
hear any objection on the part of the pilgrims.
The pictures were designed as gifts for village
churches, and were too big to accommodate in shops.
One peasant woman took one on trust, and sat beside
it all Holy Week begging money to pay for it.
By Good Friday she had obtained the price, and
it was packed in her name for her little village away
in Penza province. To-day, no doubt, it looks out
from a wall of her village church, and she regards it
with pride. She paid a lot for it, too, I suppose ;
the pilgrims pay heavily for all the little things
they want. Some would say they are swindled.
But pilgrims never do anything but gain by sacred
things. As Yevgeny said to me one day, pointing
to a crowd of hawkers and pilgrims, “ Look at our
peasants ransoming the crosses and the holy things
from the Jews and the infidel.”

If the Arabs were busy in the streets the com¬
mercial monks were busy in the courts of temples,

IN THE HOSTELRIES

261

playing their old shabby game of blessing selling.
Whenever the keeper of the hostelry wasn’t looking,
in popped an austere looking Greek monk with a
brief-case and a bag in his arms. One came up to
me on the Tuesday afternoon.

“ You have a list of souls from Russia, no doubt,”
said he. “ Give it to me and let our brotherhood
pray for them. So you will enable us to build our
monastery of St. Joachim in the Desert.”

“No souls,” said I lazily, handing him a piastre,
for I knew it was money he wanted.

“Why so little?” said he in an authoritative,
angry tone like a Russian official to a peasant.
“ That is not enough. Give me more ! ”

I put out my hand and took the piastre back
laconically.

He waited.

I turned to something else. When I turned back
he was still standing waiting, so I asked him what
more he wanted.

“ The money,” said he, painedly.

“ But you didn’t want it,” said I. “You gave it
me back.”

“ Give me the piastre,” said he.

“Oh no,” said I, “its too little for you. You
don’t get it from me now. I’ll keep my piastre for
something else.”

At this moment he caught sight of the keeper,
and bobbed round a corner very unceremoniously
and disappeared.

262 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

On Holy Thursday, at the Grave, when the
Patriarch washed the feet of twelve of his clergy, a
number of pilgrims were put into good places, and
they looked on happily and simply, and enjoyed the
spectacle, crossing themselves and praising God.
What was their astonishment when after the service
they were confronted by a military-looking Greek
monk who suddenly called out, “Get your money
ready.” Poor mouzhiks, they had each to pay a
rouble for a compulsory blessing. I heard that
nothing less than a rouble would be taken, but I
suppose in some cases the monk took less, for “ ye
canna tak’ the breeks off a Hielander.” It is a good
arrangement of the Palestine Society, that ten shilling-
deduction which is made from the pilgrim’s money
on the day of arrival in Jerusalem, and paid to him
on the day when he departs. But for that the poor
peasants had surely finished up destitute.

There was plenty of incident in the too-full
hostelries during Holy Week. On Tuesday night
a great stir was caused by a madman running about
in his shirt and bellowing. This strange fellow was
a penniless, one-eyed beggar who had begged his
way from his native village. At Jerusalem he had
not a halfpenny, and he was allowed to sweep the
floors of our hostelry for his keep. We were all
wakened up by his strange lapse and the overseer
was brought ; the old man was captured and prevailed
upon to lie down again and sleep. As I had been
wakened up I came round and sat with the overseer

THE VIRGIN’S TOMB.

Where clear old Dyadya spent a night and felt that he was covered by her veil

VI IN THE HOSTELRIES 263

by the old fellow’s bench. He was evidently
anxious as to what the madman might do next. He
thought such characters should not be allowed in the
hostelries ; they were thought holy in their native
Russian villages and did no harm, but here under
the influence of Jerusalem excitement who could tell
what might happen ? No, he didn’t believe that the
old man was poor. He might easily be frightfully
rich. “ They are all gatherers and misers, that sort,”
said he. “ Last year just such an one died in one
of the small rooms. She had locked herself in and
no one could get to her for a long time. When
the door was forced the baba was found dead. She
had died of starvation. And of how much money
do you think she died possessed? You’d never
guess . . . five thousand piastres. There was a
whole pailful of Turkish ha’pennies alone.”

One morning a very queer character showed
himself in the hostelry and began a propaganda.
He averred that after a year and a half’s meditation
he had been received into heaven for twenty-four
hours, and conducted through its wonders by an angel-
officer, who told him many things that were wrong
on earth and bade him set them right. He was a
short peasant of middle age, rather stupid-looking,
but having a nervous affection that caused all his
features to jump and twinkle as he spoke.

I heard him saying, “ Ah, then the angel-officer
took me into a garden of heaven where were all the
souls of children under six years old, a garden full of

264 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

green apples and little birdikins.” When I came up
to listen he stopped in his harangue and pounced
upon my hand. There was a ring on my fourth
finger.

“ Take off that ring,” said he, “and put it on the
middle finger ; it is mortal sin to have it on the
fourth. So the angel-officer (atigelsky chin) in¬
structed me.”

Several peasants objected, saying that the third
finger was one of those used for crossing, and must
not be encumbered by earthly vanity. The old man
was obstinate, however, and insisted that he had a
newer revelation than they, the angel-officer having
mentioned that point particularly. The ring was
very tight on my finger and could only be removed
with great difficulty, so I did not take the prophets
advice. He offered to bless my third finger specially
if I felt any qualms, so I was obliged to explain that
the ring wouldn’t come off. That rather floored
him. The angel-officer hadn’t provided for the
eventuality.

There were quite a crowd of pilgrims round
about the prophet, some believing, others doubting,
a few trying to explain that the prophet meant he
had had a trance and seen a vision. The little old
fellow, who protested the truth of his experience and
the genuineness of his mission, was rather a queer
specimen of Russian humanity. It could not be
said he was mad, and though he never looked
anybody in the face I scarcely think he intended to

VI IN THE HOSTELRIES 265

deceive. Like old Abraham he had a grandmotherly
voice — a tone explained, perhaps, in the Russian
phrase, “Stupid to the point of sanctity.” He was
much pleased to have listeners, and vexed when any
went away quickly. He continuously adjured the
pilgrims to give ear attentively and take his words to
heart. Every now and then he would buttonhole a
promising looking disciple and address him in
honeyed accents —

“ The angel-officer showed me how to pray thus :
‘ Jesus, Son of God, have mercy ; Jesus, Son of God
have mercy ; Jesus, Son of God, have mercy . . .’
The angel-officer told me the praying beads may
be abolished ; the prayers can be counted just as well
on the fingers.”

He began praying on his fingers with great
celerity. “Five hundred,” said he, “is a perfect
prayer.” The pilgrims fell out with him because he
left out the words “ us sinners.” They declared
that the prayer should run, “Jesus, Son of God, have
mercy upon us sinners,” and that the omission was
not orthodox. They suspected him of being a
Molokan sectarian and were quite angry.

The prophet changed the subject.

“ People should not go so often to church, but
should do more good works instead. We should
have more mercy. We should not condemn
drowners, stiflers, non - communicants, wizards.
Especially, you dear babi , do not condemn wanderers
and strange persons in rags. The angel - officer

266 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

told me how you can save your house from evil
spirits without being inhospitable. Before you
light the fire in the morning cross the stove with
the sign of the cross ; before you go to bed at
night cross all the doors and all the windows . . .
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. When you boil potatoes cross the saucepan
and put the potatoes in three at a time. When the
potatoes are done, cross the pot again, and take
them out three at a time.”

“ But when you take them out they are hot,”
objected a baba . But the man from heaven was
equal to all such objections.

As Philip with a sack on his back shouldered
his way through the crowd, I asked him what he
thought of the prophet. “ On ne khoroshi,” said
he, “ no good. He is a monk who has had his hair
cut off. He will make a collection and to-night
get drunk.”

However, Philip himself had partaken plentifully
enough of wine, at least one day recently, and had
slept like a log all through the festivities of Palm
Sunday.

To be drunk in Holy Week at Jerusalem was
counted terrible sin, and I must say that though
many of the peasants were heavy vodka drinkers,
there was very little drinking noticeable all the time
of Lent. On Palm Sunday, day of relaxation, I saw
the only drunken man before Easter Day. He
was bawling nonsense at one end of the hostelry,

VI IN THE HOSTELRIES 267

and I went along to him, sat beside him and stared
in his face teasingly. He was talking discon¬
nectedly and absurdly of the saints, and did not
notice my stare for some seconds. When he be¬
came aware of it he seemed troubled and asked me
what I wanted. I continued to stare without saying
a word. Then, to my astonishment, the old fellowr
dropped down on his knees in front of me, and with
tears in his eyes begged my forgiveness for his sin.

Arab women found their way into the hostelry
in Holy Week despite the regulations, and sold
bottles of spirits to the peasants, bottles of gin
and cognac in preparation for the festivities of
Easter day. Much liquor was bought and put
solemnly away, covered up and out of sight, till the
fast was over.

Another feature of the hostelries at this time was
the reinforcement of the beggar army. We were
infested with holy beggars — orthodox Arabs and
Syrians crossing themselves, pattering Russian and
showing their sores. Their clamour at dawn when
the pilgrims were in great numbers in the hostelry
yard was astonishing. They behaved very differ¬
ently from the beggars the Russian loves to en¬
courage at home. The true Russian beggars never
tyrannise over passers-by, but the Arab is a regular
parasite. All the time he begs he hates you ; and
whilst you give he despises you.

Two of the most interesting beggars in the
hostelry yard were a well-dressed dwarf and an

268 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vi

erratically wandering blind man. The dwarf ob¬
tained an extraordinary amount of money. All the
peasant women had pity on him. “ How could
such a little man live ! ” they asked, and they gave
him alms with conviction. Not only did they give
him grosch , but they brought their crusts of bread
for him also. The wily Syrian never refused any¬
thing, though, of course, he had no use for hard
black bread going mouldy.

The blind man was always walking irrelevantly,
and calling out at random even when there were no
passers-by. He had a rasping voice, and he cried
in an abrupt staccato —

“ Krista raddy ! Krista raddy ! ” a making Syrian
of the beautiful Russian cry, “ Radi Khrista ”
(“ For Christ’s sake ”).

One morning a silly old baba brought to the
neat little simpering dwarf a whole armful of bad
cabbage leaves, yellow and wilted. I watched the
beggar receive them and thank her, crossing himself
and thanking God. The baba went and the dwarf
remained with a contemptuous expression in his
eyes. In his arms was this unpleasant encumbrance
of cabbage leaves. Suddenly he had a happy
thought. The poor old blind man was just walking
into the church wall, and calling out as ever, “ Krista
raddy ! Krista raddy ! ” though no one was near.
The dwarf tripped over to him very solemnly and
deposited all the cabbage leaves in his arms.

“ Spasebo Tebye Gospody ! Spasebo Tebye

WASHING SHIRTS IN THE HOSTELRY YARD AT A FARTHING APIECE.

IN THE HOSTELRIES

269

Gospody ! ” said the blind man ecstatically, for he
knew not what he was receiving. Meanwhile the
artful dwarf tripped back to his place by the main
stream of passengers.

The dwarf and the blind man were gentle
beggars ; it must be said they were angels beside
the majority of Easterns. Fortunately no Arab
beggars were allowed inside the dormitories of the
pilgrims. There a different sort of beggar obtained.
Every morning good women came with sacks asking
for any crusts we could spare to give to the destitute
and the starving. Then also at dawn poor old
babas came and begged to wash our shirts for us
at a farthing apiece. Farthings meant much to
them, and for our part Easter was coming on,
and all our linen must be clean on the night of
going to communion. In the yard on Tuesday
and Wednesday might be seen scores of women
with tubs full of soap-suds and washing, and on lines
joined from roof to roof and coping to coping, long
strings of shirts of all imaginable hues.

VII

THE PILGRIMAGE CONCLUDED

COMMUNION

On Wednesday evening many of the pilgrims went
to the monastery of St. Constantine and St. Helena
to take part in the consecration of the holy oil. On
Holy Thursday, the day of their Easter communion,
the pilgrims went and wept at Gethsemane, and
followed down the road by which the soldiers led
Jesus to the house of the high priest Annas. From
the house of Annas they went across the way to the
house of Caiaphas. It is near Sion, and an
Armenian monastery is built there now. In the
court of the monastery the pilgrims showed one
another the vine which grows on the spot where St.
Peter denied Christ, and then they went along
the right hand side of Sion to the cave where the
apostle wept bitterly. Many of us went once more
to the Praetorium and the Church of Christs
torments, and saw where the Saviour was scourged,
where He was arrayed in purple and crowned with
thorns.

At five o’clock in the afternoon the Patriarch left

the patriarchate in solemn state and came to the

273 t

274 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

crowded Sepulchre, kissed the Stone of the Anointing
and the Sacred Tomb, and then mounting to his
throne in the Church of the Resurrection, blessed
the people of the Christian world gathered there —
north, south, east, and west. The great service
of Christ’s sufferings commenced. A deacon was
blessed by the Patriarch and began reading a psalm,
whilst another consecrated the church with incense.
The church was full of bishops and archbishops and
priests, who, after the Patriarch had read the first of
the “Twelve Gospels,” took it in turn to read the
others, in all the languages of the East — Greek,
Slavonic, Turkish, Roumanian, etc., etc. Two
deacons brought vestments for the Patriarch, two
others brought double and treble branched candle¬
sticks with candles burning, and two more brought
the Bible, which they held in their hands as in some
Anglican churches, and the Patriarch read, standing
on his throne. When he had finished he stepped
down with gold-chained censer and sanctified the
Sepulchre and the people with incense.

There were many Russians at the Church of the
Sepulchre, but more Greeks and Syrians and Arabs.
The peasants preferred to take the communion
service at the Russian Cathedral where the clergy
all spoke Russian, and everything was done in a
language comprehensible to them. In the old days
the service took place with greatest pomp at Sion,
and the True Cross, with an extraordinary representa¬
tion of the bleeding and suffering Jesus, was set up

COMMUNION

VII

275

in the church. But for convenience the Greek
clergy have centralised everything at the Sepulchre.
They have made of it a church that can be used for
any purpose and on any day, instead of reserving to
it its especial significance and function. In doing this
they have erred in instinct or have been betrayed
by cupidity. The whole orthodox idea of the special
sacredness of special places tends to be lost by this
barbarism. Perhaps all will be put right some day.
Already there is a strong feeling of difference in the
Russian branch of the Greek Church. Russian
Christianity is living and growing whilst that of the
Greeks is dying and corrupting. The Greek clergy
do not recognise that fact ; the contempt which they
mete out equally to their own Greek peasants and
to the Russian peasants is quite absurd in the latter
case. The Russians have superstition, they are
simple, they can be deceived, but they have life,
they have some individual and real revelation which
came, not as spoon meat from an idle priest, but as
vision from the Living God. If the Russian nation
continues on the upgrade in the Powers of Europe
the Sepulchre may fall into their hands, and indeed
all the power of ministration at the shrines of
Palestine. From the point of view of Christianity
such a change would benefit every one.

All the pilgrims I knew, even commercial Philip,
even many of the feeble people in the hospital,
communicated on Thursday night, on the very day
of the year and at the very Jerusalem where the

276 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

beautiful rite of communion was given first of all.
To the peasants this service had a great significance ;
they felt in a more real and mysterious way their one¬
ness in Christ, the mystic felt the transubstantiation
of the elements more vitally, the superstitious more
materially and awfully. Greatest of all religious
treasure brought from Jerusalem they accounted the
fair white loaves which were blessed on the Eve of
Good Friday and returned to them on the morrow.

THE ARMENIAN GRANDMOTHER WHO ASKED ME IF I HAD THE

TATTOO MARK ON MY ARM.

■

• >

BRINGING OUT THE HOLY SHROUD

On Good Friday in the outer Jerusalem world
began the hurly burly of Easter. In the hearts of
individual pilgrims were holiness and peace, but in
the life of the thousands trooping the cobbled
streets began clamour and confusion without
remission. The noisy have it all their own way in
this world, a hundred noisy ones in a quiet city
make a city noisy, and here at Jerusalem those of
noisy soul numbered thousands rather than hundreds.
The simple peasants were called upon to live a life
of complete ecstasy in the heart and uttermost con¬
fusion in the mind. Nominally the pilgrims were to
go to high vespers at 2 p.m., to the all night service
at 8.30 p.m., to the receiving of the Sacred Fire at
noon on Saturday, and to the Easter Vespers on
Saturday night, but many a mouzhik set out on
Friday afternoon for the Life-giving Grave, and was
completely lost, not only to the rest of us, but to
himself, wedged in the crowd of all the nations at
the Sepulchre. Others with express purpose took
up their stand in the great church, intending to

277

278 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

remain all the time. For all, except those long
familiar with the ritual, the services were more
mysterious than intelligible. It was rather hard on
those who wished to be at Golgotha on Good
Friday, to put their fingers in the holes in the cross
where the nails had been, to kiss the flower-strewn
shroud, to see the fire actually burst forth out of the
rock on Saturday, and to see the Patriarch when he
came forth on Easter night telling the world that
Christ had risen indeed. So great was the crowd
of pilgrims, and so uproarious the more Eastern of
them, that the priests themselves were unable to
fulfil all the prescribed rites. Much that can be
seen at the ordinary churches of Greek Christianity
was necessarily omitted owing to the crush and the
readiness of the Turkish troops to fire on the people
at the least provocation. But perhaps it was only a
rumour that parts of the service had been omitted ;
there were hundreds of short little men and women

wedged in the crowd for whom all might have been
omitted, and they would have been just as wise. If
these did not grumble they led a life of faith.

At nine o’clock on Good Friday began the
reading of the Great Hours, and at two in the after¬
noon High Vespers commenced. The Church of
the Life-giving Grave was crammed to the despera¬
tion point with pilgrims who had taken up the places
which they did not intend to forsake till the fire
burst forth on Saturday afternoon. I found a
position near the Stone of Anointing, now richly

VII BRINGING OUT HOLY SHROUD 279

draped and adorned, and if I did not see all that the
purple robed clergy accomplished I could at least
console myself with the thought that I had friends
in every part of the cathedral, each seeing the
ritual from a different point of advantage or dis¬
advantage.

We heard the sonorous chiming of the bells and
the sweet singing of the choristers, breathed the
incense, and sang the alleluias and amens, and calls
for mercy, and we tried to cross ourselves at the
appropriate points. Many men and women got
down on their knees despite the crush, and remained
down among other people’s legs abasing themselves
and praying with intense fervency.

The service was but a preliminary one, and we
were left to push and jostle one another till half-past
eight. All the Easterns began to shout and sing,
and try to make elbow room, with such clamour that
it might have been a town hall mob waiting for an
election result rather than the worshippers at the
Holy of Holies. The Russians, however, stood
motionless and taciturn. They knew how to wait, to
be silent, and endure.

There was a hush when the clergy reappeared,
and I shall never forget the thrilling strangeness of
the scene, the sea of white faces like those of so
many corpses risen from the dead, the dim light of
many coloured lamps and innumerable candles, the
extraordinary melody and mystery of the chiming of
the bells above us. When the crowd ceased to talk

280 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

and shout, to listen to the bells, it was as if we
strained our ears for intelligence of heaven.

The service went forward in pomp and order, a
labyrinthine procession with the swaying of censers,
stately movements of the priests and the monks,
blasts of heavenly singing from the choir, and
sepulchral pronouncements in unearthly voices from
the priests. Two by two we saw the archimandrites,
the priests and the deacons, and indeed all the lower
clergy, go up to the Patriarch to receive his blessing
before putting on their processional robes of velvet.
We saw the deacons robing the Patriarch himself,
and the whisper went round that the Sacred Shroud
would now be taken in procession.

The clergy began to issue into the body of the
church, three hundred of them with crosses and
banners, silver clubs, candles, heavily bound Gospels.
The Patriarch came forth carrying the Gospels in
one hand and his staff in the other, and two deacons
waved incense toward him unceasingly. From the
choir in the gallery above and from many pilgrims
came a sweet volume of song.

After slowly circling the ark of the Grave the
Patriarch and his clergy mounted to Golgotha, where
on a table under the place where our Lord was
crucified, lay a shroud of white hand-spun linen,
embroidered in many coloured silks with a re¬
presentation of Jesus lying in the Sepulchre. The
shroud was also covered with freshly picked flowers
that had been scattered upon it by the monks, and

CHURCH OF THE LIFE-GIVING GRAVE: THE ENTRANCE TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

VII BRINGING OUT HOLY SHROUD 281

which would be scrambled for later on by the crowd
eager to take home tokens of almost miraculous
power.

As the procession came up, those who had
Gospels placed them on the shroud, and then the
Patriarch read the last chapters of St. Matthew. A
prayer was said for the various orthodox kings, and
the choir began singing an oft-repeated “ O Lord
have mercy.”

From Golgotha the procession came down to the
Stone of Anointing, and I saw four bishops carrying
in their right hands Bibles and lighted candles, and
in their left hands the precious shroud full of flowers.
They held the shroud by tassels, and carried it three
times round the Stone before placing it finally upon
it. For the pilgrim in his heart it was Jesus
Himself that the flowers symbolised, Jesus taken
down from the cross, and now to be buried in the
Sepulchre. When the priests sprayed rose water
upon it and poured sweet-smelling ointments, it was
as if the body of Jesus were being again anointed.

What a crush there was about the Stone! We
could scarcely breathe. I heard several gasps and
cries from old folk injured in the press.

Here at the Stone was a further reading of the
Gospel, prayers, the singing of canticles, and a short
but simple sermon, to the effect that Christ had
suffered for our sins and that His precious body
had been anointed with sweet oil and wrapped in
fair linen. The sermon ended, the shroud was

282 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

upborne once more and carried in procession three
times round the ark of the Grave. The same four
bishops then carried it into the sacred interior and
placed it in the hollow of the rock where originally
Jesus’ body was laid.

When the bishops came out once more the
Patriarch, taking a censer in his right hand, him¬
self entered and began a lamentation in a loud and
trembling bass. It was the signal for great emotion
throughout the church, cries in all languages, moans,
shouts. Then the Patriarch came out again, and
in clouds of incense swung his censer toward the
worshippers and marched round the ark once
more.

Sermons and prayers followed in various
languages and much wonderful singing. Then all
the clergy went in to do homage at the Sepulchre,
all in their rich purples, with their pale strange
faces, and with their long hair hanging over their
shoulders. Their aspect was what might have been
a dream of Jesus sleeping in the grave.

When all had kissed the shroud and come out
again there was a prolonged singing of canticles.
The lights in the ark were put out and the doors
closed. A Turk was given wax, and the lock was
sealed with four seals, and an Arab soldier with a
gun was put on guard at the entrance.

At three o’clock at night the service ended ; the
clergy were disrobed, and the lights were put out.
Great gloom enveloped the church, a gloom only

VII BRINGING OUT HOLY SHROUD 283

intensified by the smoky lights of the many tallow
candles in the hands of the pilgrims and the church
servants. The inferno of noise re-asserted itself, to
continue without interruption till two o’clock in
the afternoon.

Ill

THE SACRED FIRE

The receiving of the Sacred Fire is not primarily
an object of Russian pilgrimage. For the Greeks
and the Orthodox Arabs and Syrians it is the crown
of the pilgrimage, but the Russians are often advised
by their priests to regard the ceremony as un¬
important. It certainly is not biblical, it is not an
emblem of Christ’s life upon the world. It is
something accidental and additional, a heritage of
paganism, and a mountain of superstition.

In the first century of Christianity the Patriarch
Narcissus, finding the lamps in the Sepulchre short of
oil, went to the brook of Siloam for water and filled
the vessels of the church therewith. Fire came
down from heaven and ignited the water so that
it burned like oil, and the illumination lasted
throughout the Easter service. Every Easter
Saturday since then fire has appeared from heaven
at the Sepulchre.

The miracle is not a new conception. In the
Old Testament days fire came down from heaven
and consumed the agreeable sacrifice. The Sacred

284

VII

THE SACRED FIRE

285

Fire of Holy Saturday is sent by God as a sign
that the sacrifice of His Son has been acceptable to
Him. Perhaps in its origin the miracle was a way
for the Fire-worshippers to pass over into Christianity
without shock. It is even to-day a great pagan
festival, and there are as many Moslems as
Christians eager to light their lamps and candles
from it on Holy Saturday afternoon.

Every Jerusalem Moslem believes in the Holy
Fire — it is the angel of his home ; he lights the fire
on his hearth from it and believes that it gives him
fortune. Jerusalem in a strange way identifies its
prosperity with the miracles of the Sacred Fire, and
its inhabitants know that but for the influx of visitors
to see it from all the country round, and from even
the ends of the earth, they would all be much poorer.

I have said that the Russians rather slighted it,
but that does not mean that many did not regard it
as an extraordinary wonder, a miracle absolutely
authenticated.

I had a long talk with Liubomudrof. He held
that the Sacred Fire breaking out was the sign sent
from God that out of death would spring life, that
Jesus had died, but that He would conquer death.
I held that the priests produced the fire chemically,
and that they understood it as a symbol and a rite.

“ That is worldly wisdom,” said he in his
oracular way, “ the cunning deceive, and the
simple are deceived. There are, I know, frauds,
priestly sleight-of-hand, juggling tricks worked by

286 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

the devil and exposed by man. Who is there to
believe ? What is there to believe ? There used
to be faith by which mountains could be removed,
but the only person who had faith enough to do it
was the devil, and he is always doing it. But I
have always understood that at the Sepulchre on
Holy Saturday God gave a palpable sign. Though
all other miracles were frauds, inventions, sleight-of-
hand, yet the Sacred Fire was a heavenly manifesta¬
tion on earth.”

I tried to point out that all events were really
miracles, therefore full of mystery. That our life
was nothing but miracles, that we were borne up on
miracles like a ship on the waves of the sea, but
that did not please the Comic at all. He was out
to see a definitely explained infraction of the har¬
mony of nature, a real impinging of the after life
upon the present life, heaven upon earth, and he
had in readiness a lamp with two wicks which he
intended to light with “ the light that never was on
sea or land,” and take back to Russia to his cottage
and his church.

Before leaving Jerusalem I gave to Liubomudrof
as a parting gift a little Gospel, and I wrote within
it the aphorism, “ True Religion takes its rise out
of Mystery, and not out of Miracle.” In Liubomu¬
drof s ever-revolving whimsical mind such a thought
might well find ground to grow and blossom. In it
lies salvation in the hour of doubt.

VII

THE SACRED FIRE

287

The Church of the Sepulchre, of Golgotha, and
of the Resurrection, was crowded even to the point
of sacrilege, and a little army of Turkish soldiers
forced the crowd back, and kept space for the
Patriarch and his clergy taking the service. Practi¬
cally every pilgrim in Jerusalem was standing some¬
where either without or within, and some were
waiting in quieter corners even a few streets off
looking towards the Sepulchre, and feeling that
though they saw nothing, yet they were taking
part and were actually present. All had their
candles ready to light when others more fortunate
should burst out of the crowd carrying the sacred
flames. Many had the lanterns in which were
enshrined little ikons and lamps. These lanterns,
with lamps lit from the Sacred Fire, the peasants
hoped to preserve till they got back to Russia, to
carry in their hands even as they walked from
Odessa home, and to treasure as they would the
water of life or the philosopher’s stone. Alas ! it
was often a difficult matter keeping the lamp
a-burning all the way, through rain and tempest,
and through stress of circumstances on the road.
Some Russian writer will perhaps collect one day
stories of the adventures of the Sacred Fire ; it
would be a piece of national literature.

About two o’clock in the afternoon the shouts and
shrieks of the worshippers were hushed at the
appearance of the Patriarch and his clergy and the
commencement of the great litany. The Patriarch,

288 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

twelve archimandrites, and four deacons were all
dressed publicly in shining white by the servants of
the church. That done a procession formed of
surpliced clergy carrying banners depicting Christ’s
sufferings, His crucifixion, burial, and glorious
resurrection. These clergy walked in pairs, and
after them also in pairs came others carrying wonder¬
working crosses, then appeared a great number of
clergy in pairs, many of them carrying sheaves of
candles (thirty-three candles in a sheaf, one for
each year of the life of Jesus). Directly the Sacred
Fire appeared the clergy would light their sheaves
of candles and distribute them to the pilgrims.
Behind all came the Patriarch carrying his staff.
Three times they went round the ark of the Grave
with hymns, and then standing outside the door of
the Sepulchre the Patriarch took off his mitre and
all the emblems of his earthly glory before entering.
A dragoman broke the seals with which the door of
the Sepulchre was sealed and the Patriarch was
allowed to go in. Before entering deacons gave
him armfuls of candles to light when the fire should
appear.

The disrobing of the Patriarch before his
entrance to the shrine of shrines is by way of pro¬
testation that he takes no chemicals — or at least
the simple understand it so. He went into the
chamber in a state as near to nakedness as decency
permitted, and when he had entered, the door was
immediately shut upon him again. The throbbing

VII

THE SACRED FIRE

289

multitude was filled with a strange silence, and the
minds of many people occupied with conjectures as
to what was happening in the Holy of holies into
which the Patriarch had disappeared, and from
which in a short while would appear the sign from
heaven, the one slender sign for them of God’s
interference in a prosaic world.

The suspense was awful, the outbreak of the
heavy bells above us something unearthly. Every
neck was craned just as every limb was squeezed
and crushed in the great “ passion towards the
Sepulchre.” In those minutes of “God’s hesitation”
there passed in the minds of the believers ages of
exaltation mingled with doubt.

At last from the wall of the north side of the
Ark of the Grave burst a great blaze of yellow light
illumining the heads of the throng, and spreading
with strange rapidity, as candle was passed to candle.
From the interior of the ark sheaves of candles all
lighted were handed out by the Patriarch, the
sheaves having, as I said, thirty-three candles in
each — the years of Jesus’ life. Quick as thought
the years and candles were distributed, clutched,
hung overhead on ribbons, dropped to the close
wedged crowd. On our faces and our clothes hot
wax kept dropping, and now and then flames singed
our ears. “ Never mind,” said one pilgrim to me,
“ the sacred fire cannot hurt any one for the first
half-hour after it has come.” Exalted Easterners
took whole sheaves of lighted candles and plunged

29o WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

them into their bosoms to extinguish them ; many
wilfully applied the flames to their bare flesh and
cried out in joy and ecstasy. Hundreds of pilgrims
produced their black death -caps filled with sweet
scented cotton -wool, and they extinguished the
candles in them. These death -caps embroidered
with bright silver crosses they proposed to keep
to their death days and wear in the grave, cotton¬
wool and all. Other pilgrims carefully preserved
their Sacred Fire, and getting out of the mob
as quickly as they could carried it to the hostelry,
protecting it from the wind with their open palms.
Others, more provident, lit the wicks in their double
lanterns.

As for the crowd, as a crowd it was to all appear¬
ance mad with ecstasy as if under the influence of
some extraordinary drug or charm. The people
shouted, yelled, sang, danced, fought, with such
diversity of manner and object, and in such a variety
of dress and language, that the calm onlooker
thought of the tale full of sound and fury told by
an idiot and signifying nothing. There was one
guiding cry, however, that one taken seemingly
from the lips of the Patriarch, and repeated in every
language of the Orthodox East, — Kyrie eleison,
Christos Voskrece, Christ is risen, and as on
Easter Eve in Russia the happy Slavs kissed one
another in rapture, finding themselves once more in
the moment of revelation brothers and sisters in
Christ and full of love for one another.

CARRYING THE SACRED FIRE IN A HOLY LANTERN.

The pilgrims try to keep the fire alight till they get back to their villages in Russia. Then they light
candles with it, before the ikons in their houses and in the churches.

THE SACRED FIRE

VII

291

It was the trial of their lives for the little khaki-
clad Turkish soldiers, and it seemed to me from
what I heard that they failed to keep the crowd
back. When the Patriarch appeared to bless the
people there was a regular stampede towards him,
and despite the whir and crack of whips, and un¬
gentle pounding from butt ends of rifles, the orthodox
Arabs burst through, and picking up the frail little
greybeard of a Patriarch carried him in triumph to
the altar. The crowd, however, began to move out,
and few of us had any choice of road ; we just
walked in the direction in which we were pushed.
I for my part was very glad to reach the hostelry
again.

EASTER

“When are you going home ? ” was the commonest
whisper in the hostelries on the afternoon of Holy
Saturday. “ On the first boat I can,” was the
commonest reply. The Consul was besieged by
pilgrims asking leave to start on the morrow, and
the general office of the Palestine Society was filled
with pilgrims seeking to take out the ten shillings
deposited against their homeward journey.

The streets and the shops were packed with
peasants buying keepsakes, ikons, and memorials to
take with them home to their native villages. On
Holy Saturday, and indeed throughout Holy Week
the owners of trunk shops did a great trade, and
many were the newly varnished cedar trunks that
appeared in the hostelry, holy trunks which were
taken to the priests to receive blessing, and on which
was written in big letters, “With the Benediction of
the Holy City of Jerusalem.” Since the peasants
could not write, a great sale was done in ready-written
letters which would do to send to any friend in
Russia, letters full of high-sounding phrases and

292

VII

EASTER

293

pious opinions all written with superb flourishes of
caligraphy in gold-coloured ink. Many thousands of
such letters were posted in Jerusalem at Easter, but,
I fear, very few reached their destination. At least
I sent one of them to a friend of mine in Russia and
it never arrived there. I rather suspect that as
many addresses were indecipherable, some one in
charge got rather a fever for gleaning unused stamps,
but perhaps in this I am uncharitable.

For the rest the pilgrims filled their cedar chests
with the most interesting holy ware, — death-caps,
shrouds, rizas, myrrh, frankincense, baptism crosses,
thorn - crowns, little pictures of sacred places,
panoramas, stereoscopes, pictures of the Mother and
Child cut on tablets of mother-of-pearl, pictures of
the Crucified One cut on little wooden crosses, cakes
of Bethlehem clay, paper bags full of Jerusalem
earth, other bags containing lumps of Aceldama,
bottles of holy water, Jordan water, Galilee water,
bottles of specially prepared holy oil to be used to
burn before the ikon at home, pillow-cases full of
sweet-smelling herbs of miraculous healing power,
sheaves of olive branches, cedar branches and palms,
bunches of withered flowers from Bethany and
Nazareth. There were praying-beads in multifarious
variety, rosaries of ebony, of cedar, of imitation
amber, and of vulcanite, of bright china or glass, even
of olives that had been taken from Jerusalem trees
and dried. There were ikons in plenty, large and
small, representations of the saints in gilt frames,

294 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

pictures from the Bible story and from the lives of
the Fathers, pictures of the great shrines. Every
pilgrim took pictures back to Russia to put up on
his cottage walls — pictures are very precious to
those who cannot read.

As I said, the vendors of all “holy” wares did a
lively trade this week, but as Easter day approached,
and the breaking of the Great Fast into rejoicing
and festivity, a new type of hawker appeared in the
streets and in the purlieus of the hostelry — the Arab
peasant woman with chickens for sale and the wily
Turk with bottles of brandy. There was more
arakhc i1 sold in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday than
in the rest of Lent put together. And the pilgrims
demanded it. I noticed an old stalwart being
pestered by a Turkish delight man as we came from
the receiving of the Sacred Fire.

“That’s all right,” said he, “tasty, no doubt, but
arakeetchka , have you got a bottle of arakeetchka ?
No ? Akh then, away with you ! ”

The pilgrim waved his hand in disgust.

Of course scarlet pace-eggs appeared everywhere ;
and the pilgrims told one another the story of how
St. Mary Magdalene, being too poor to make a rich
present to the Emperor Tiberius, took him a red
varnished egg, saying, “ Christ is risen,” an act which
so astonished the monarch that he ceased persecuting
the Christians, and ordered Christ to be numbered
among the gods. At the Sepulchre we all saw the

1 Turkish vodka.

YII

EASTER

295

picture of St. Mary Magdalene offering the egg to
Tiberius, and it gave a new reality to the custom of
the Russians of giving one another blood-red eggs
on Easter day, saying to one another the while,
“ Christ is risen ! ”

I saw that many pilgrims took as many as a
dozen eggs, which they proposed to give to their
home folk when they got back to Russia. Some
packed the eggs carefully with paper in boxes,
others put them in a bag at the bottom of their
sacks — alas !

On Saturday also appeared the Easter cakes,
almost as in Russia, cakes which were taken to
church to be blessed, and in which lighted candles
were stuck. All pilgrims had kulitch and paskha
as in Russia, even the poorest, and of course they
laid aside bits to take home also. Then many
bought baskets of Jaffa oranges, even pedestrian
pilgrims, forgetful of the fact that they had at least
to carry them from Jerusalem to Jaffa: once on the
boat the baskets would speedily be lightened.

All Saturday night the hostelry was like a seething
ant-heap, pilgrims going out and coming in with cakes
to be blessed, and all manner of Easter purchase.
Some heard the Easter service at the Life-giving
Grave, and more perhaps at the Russian cathedral.
No matter what ordinarily dark and deserted street
of the Holy City one traversed, it was on Easter
night mysteriously populous. As dear old Dyadya
said to me, “Only the Jews are asleep.”

296 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

At midnight at the Grave the Patriarch, with his
priests and twelve surpliced boys carrying candle¬
sticks, moved in solemn procession thrice round the
Grave, singing, “ Of Thy rising, O Christ our
Saviour, the angels in the heavens are singing ! ”
Once more the Ark of the Sepulchre was enveloped
in clouds of incense, and a voice came forth to the
thousands of pilgrims, “Rejoice! Christ is risen.”
Then we all sang the famous hymn, Christos
Vorkrece , and kissed one another. The Patriarch
took an arm-chair in the church of the Resurrection,
and the worshippers surged towards him to give
the Easter kiss.

Then at one in the morning we passed out, and
thronged into the Russian cathedral, now joyously
illuminated with coloured lights, and we heard the
service in familiar church Slavonic. And we all
kissed one another again. What embracing and
kissing there were this night ; smacking of hearty
lips and tangling of beards and whiskers ! The
Russian men kiss one another with far more hearti¬
ness than they kiss their women. In the hostelry I
watched a couple of ecstatical old greybeards who
grasped one another tightly by the shoulders, and
kissed at least a score of times, and wouldn’t leave
off.

When I came into the hostelry about three in
the morning there was a savoury smell of cooking,
many oil stoves were alight, many benches were
spread with meat and wine for the breaking of the

VII

EASTER

297

fast. In the refectory, the tables had all been
spread long since, and priests had sprinkled holy
water there, and blessed the Easter meal. Yevgeny
took me into the Spiritual Mission, and I found the
Easter tables more gloriously heaped up with viands
than in the refectory. Every monk or priest I met
saluted us with, “ Christ is risen ! ” and we replied,
“Yes, He is risen!” and kissed one another.
There commenced a day of uproarious festivity.
The quantity of wine, of cognac, and arakha con¬
sumed at the Rasgovenie , the breaking of the fast,
would no doubt appal most English. And the
drunken dancing and singing would be thought
rather foreign to the idea of Jesus. But I don’t
know. To my eyes it was all an expression of
genuine joy, an overflowing of the heart — the true
answer to the tidings, “Jesus was dead, but behold
He is risen, and is alive for evermore ! ”

It was a most affecting festival. Never shall I
forget the tear-running, exalted faces of the pilgrims
I saw at the Sepulchre later in Easter day, bowing
themselves once more at the hollow in the rock,
and blessing God that they had lived to celebrate
Easter at Jerusalem itself. At the thought of all
their pilgrimage behind them, and of the glorious
Easter morning at last achieved, something melted
in the heart of every pilgrim. Their faces caught
the radiance of a vision, the gleam which shows
itself on the countenance of the dying when they
catch a glimpse of something of heaven. In every

298 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

mans life there is a melting moment. I imagine
that when the prodigal son came in sight of his
father’s house tears began to trickle down his face,
and when he saw his father running to meet him
the tears poured down in floods. So is it with the
pilgrim.

OUTSIDE THE CATHEDRAL DOOR.

THE ARCHIMANDRITE’S FAREWELL

“ Dear compatriots, beloved brothers and sisters in
the Lord ! Let us give thanks unto the Lord !

“ Long did we have the wish to come to this
Holy Land and see with our own eyes the places
where our Lord Jesus Christ lived and died, the
wish of every orthodox Russian Christian. But the
way was long and hard, and there were seas to
cross, and many of us were so old that we could
hardly dare hope to succeed. But see, beyond
every expectation and hope we have actually found
the Holy Land, have been in Bethlehem where the
Child was born, and in Nazareth where He lived
thirty years. We have washed our sinful bodies in
the holy Jordan streams where He was baptized,
have climbed Tabor where He was transfigured,
showing His godly glory to His disciples. We
have been on Eleon where He was taken up into
heaven ; we have lived and walked in Jerusalem
where He was crucified, buried, and raised from
death. The names of the places in which we have
prayed have made our very hearts tremble. We

299

3oo WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

have walked the road that He walked, breathed the
same air, looked at the same mountains, hills,
valleys, and ravines. We have seen the garden of
Gethsemane, where the Lord loved to be alone, and
where before His crucifixion He prayed in agony.
We have seen where the temple stood, and whence
were driven out the money-changers. In a word,
we have been to all the sacred places we could find
and have prayed in them. We have followed in
the footsteps of Jesus Christ from Bethlehem to
Golgotha. Great has been the mercy of God, and
v/hilst we yet live we ought constantly to thank
Him and pray for those who have helped us on the
road. We have had blessing that is denied to
many far better than ourselves. And don’t forget
that to whom much is given of him much is asked.
When we go back to Russia we must never forget
our visions. Remember, dear brothers and sisters,
that from us palmers much more is demanded than
from others.

“ Do you remember, brothers, that on the way
when we had to cross the sea there arose a great
storm, and we said to one another that we should
never live to pray at the Sepulchre? Well, see
God has enabled us to pray at all the Holy Places,
to live quite a long time in Jerusalem, and to gather
at last to go home again. Glory to God, Glory to
God ! Blessed is the Lord God of Zion living in
Jerusalem !

“It is true that it is partly owing to the fatherly

VII ARCHIMANDRITE’S FAREWELL 301

kindness and care of the gentleman most worthy to
honour, our Emperor, that we have been enabled to
pilgrimage hither, and also to the Grand Duchess
Elizabeth Fedorovna. We must remember that but
for their care we might have fared hardly in this
land where our tongue is not spoken. This is not
hospitable and stranger-loving Russia. Here no
one gives anything except for money. Here also
are the enemies of Christianity, Mahometans, and
Jews, and not only they, but the enemies of Russia,
the foreign and unorthodox Christians. God has
inspired the Tsar to make a very loving provision
and protection for us. So, glory be to God, all is
happily ended and we have lived as in a dream.
The time comes for us to return home to Mother
Russia once again. Let us not forget to pray God
earnestly to preserve us from the perils of land
and sea.

“ One word more, dear brothers and sisters,
pilgrims and pilgrimesses ! Some of our brothers
returning from the Holy Land have thought that
they have done all earthly, that they have attained
to sainthood, and that nothing more is asked of them
below. Please don’t act so ! Remember what the
Lord said : ‘ So likewise ye, when ye shall have
done all those things which are commanded you,
say, We are unprofitable servants : we have done
that which was our duty to do’ (St. Luke xvii. 10).
Let us be humble, counting ourselves the last, the
worst of all. Who can say why it was the Lord

302 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

God enabled us to pray at holy places ? Perhaps
it was because we were in such danger of sin,
perhaps as a last means of saving us from sloth
and wickedness.

“ Then again, we have seen much that is evil in
the Holy Land. Do not let us, therefore, take home
tales of evil things seen and heard there. Forget
that which was not good. Do not lie about the
sacred places, and don’t make up stories and fables.
Say only what you yourselves have personally known
and felt. Especially must I say to you, dear sisters
and pilgrimesses, hold your tongues. In much
speaking lies not salvation. How often after we
have spoken do we not shed tears and wish we had
been silent. And may God of Zion, Maker of
heaven and earth, bless you and lead your steps into
the way of truth, and enable you to see the blessed
Jerusalem, not this earthly, but the heavenly one.”

• ••••••

So the pilgrimage was over, and a new pilgrimage
commenced, the 7000 had to make their way home.
It was difficult to accommodate more than 1000 on
a boat, and so, many pilgrims had to wait a long
while. In the interim some went to Nazareth, and
others to Egypt and Mount Sinai. Philip was
waiting for the third boat, a better one than the
others. Liubomudrof went to Mount Sinai on a
camel. Father Yevgeny left on the Monday in
Easter for Mount Athos. Before taking leave of
me he invited me to come and stay with him at the

A PRIEST GIVES HIS BLESSING.

vii ARCHIMANDRITE’S FAREWELL 303

Pantaleimonsky monastery as long as I liked. Dear
old Dyadya was taken ill and lay in the hospital on
Easter day. I fear that perhaps he died at
Jerusalem, and that the cross he bought at Golgotha
he could not bring to his village church after all.

I for my part left Jerusalem by train and got on
to the first boat, determined to get to Russia before
the closing of the seas by war. I left Jerusalem on
Easter day, and as few pilgrims cared to do that
I had a less troublesome passage than most. Poor
other pilgrims ! Most of them had to wait a whole
month at Mount Athos because of the war. Mv

boat, the Tsaritsa , was the last of the Russian vessels
to get through the Dardanelles before the Straits
were closed. Every one was talking about the war.
A monk expressed the opinion to me that there was
only one reason for the Turkish- Italian war — the
nations were beginning to fall upon one another
without cause, in anticipation of the Last Judgment.
This year Tsargrad (Constantinople) would fall, as by
prediction, Easter and the Feast of the Annunciation
coinciding this year ; next year by the Dead Sea
the dreadful Judgment would take place. I thought
how triumphant he would be when the coming eclipse
of the sun took place and what the pilgrims would
think.

As we neared the straits Italian warships passed
us. All day we speculated on our chances of getting
back to Russia before a blockade of the Dardanelles.
Even the captain was doubtful. Early in the

304 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vii

morning we came to the Hellespont and the faded
white and yellow settlement called the port of the
Dardanelles. We shut off steam and waited, waited
all day, and with us a continually increasing crowd
of other vessels — passenger steamers, commercial
steamers, a black collier, a deserted-looking German
boat heaped up with timber, a sailing vessel from
Greece. Hour after hour went past. We heard
cannonading behind us, and stared at the horizon
vainly trying to understand it. We watched the
Turkish soldiers all in khaki marching on the shore
from earthwork to earthwork and pictured the
ensuing war. At last many soldiers came on
board and an officer chatted with the captain.
There was a buzz of French all around us and many
smiles. We were to be taken through. A pilot
came out once more ; the waiting vessels, fifteen of
them, formed into single file, and in a strange
procession followed up the historic strait between
seemingly impregnable forts. We were free to go
on to Russia . . . and how glad !

We at least kept burning our sacred fire, for we
had calm weather, but what of all those other
pilgrims who followed us in storm and rain only
to find the way barred by war ? I searched the
columns of Russian newspapers in vain for in¬
telligence of their fate. Alas, few Russians even
know that there are pilgrims making this remarkable
journey ; the papers only recorded the losses of the
grain merchants and the shipping companies. But

VII ARCHIMANDRITE’S FAREWELL 305

I heard afterwards the men pilgrims were put
ashore at Mount Athos, the women remaining on
board, for at the Holy Island nothing female is
allowed, not even a hen.

We went on to Odessa over grey seas reflecting
grey skies. “ I suppose possibly there will be snow
in Russia,” said a pilgrim to me doubtfully, “there
is generally snow at this time of the year though the
spring is due.”

“We ourselves are carrying the spring,” said I,
pointing to the swallows which were darting in and
out of the cordage.

The pilgrim was affected.

“ Where did they come from ? ” he asked.

“From the south,” said I. “They slept on
deck last night. Come, IT1 show you their little
home.”

I took him to a coping over a tool-room and
wash-house, and there, sure enough, were five or
six even now perching delicately and lifting their
little tail feathers.

“Travelling Zaichoni without paying for a ticket,”
said the pilgrim with a grin.

When we came in sight of Russia the pilgrims

lifted their hats and kissed one another again, and

sang praises unto the Lord. Then Odessa received

us, and when we had passed the Custom-house we

went from the dock to the churches to give thanks

and receive blessing. We went out into the

city, some to the monastery hostelries, others to

3o6 WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS vn

beer- houses and restaurants, some started their
tramp home to their native villages, others went to
the trains. The everyday commenced, full of trivial
interest. It was strange to hear people all about us
talking of wages and work, and the prices of this
and that. We seemed very far away from Jerusalem.
We were, indeed, the furthest possible, for we were,
I think, just starting on a new pilgrimage and in a
new way.

I said Good-bye to them all, and went away to a
little town in the Caucasus, to take from Jerusalem
a stout little cross for an old grandmother to hold
in her hand when the time should come for her
to die. She had asked me to bring it for her. And
I took her a holy cross-marked pillow-case on which
to rest her head at night and give her visions of
Jerusalem in her dreams.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

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