he Holy Cross stood. And on either side of it were the sockets
which received the crosses of the two thieves. And a few feet away,
covered by a brass slide, was the cleft in the rock which was made by
the earthquake. It was lined with slabs of reddish marble and looked
nearly a foot deep.

Priests in black robes and tall, cylindrical hats, and others with brown
robes, rope girdles and tonsured heads, were coming and going around us.
Pilgrims were climbing and descending the stairs, kneeling and murmuring
unintelligible devotions, kissing the star and the cleft in the rock and
the icons. Underneath us, though we were supposed to stand on the hill
called Golgotha, were the offices of the Greek clergy and the Chapel of
Adam.

We went around from chapel to chapel; into the opulent Greek cathedral
where they show the "Centre of the World"; into the bare little Chapel
of the Syrians where they show the tombs of Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathaea; into the Chapel of the Apparition where the Franciscans say
that Christ appeared to His mother after the resurrection. There was
sweet singing in this chapel and a fragrant smell of incense. We went
into the Chapel of Saint Helena, underground, which belongs to the
Greeks; into the Chapel of the Parting of the Raiment which belongs to
the Armenians. We were impartial in our visitation, but we did not have
time to see the Abyssinian Chapel, the Coptic Chapel of Saint Michael,
nor the Church of Abraham where the Anglicans are allowed to celebrate
the eucharist twice a month.

The centre of all this maze of creeds, ceremonies and devotions is the
Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, a little edifice of precious marbles,
carved and gilded, standing beneath the great dome of the church, in the
middle of a rotunda surrounded by marble pillars. We bought and lighted
our waxen tapers and waited for a lull in the stream of pilgrims to
enter the shrine. First we stood in the vestibule with its tall
candelabra; then in the Angels' Chapel, with its fifteen swinging lamps,
making darkness visible; then, stooping through a low doorway, we came
into the tiny chamber, six feet square, which is said to contain the
rock-hewn tomb in which the Saviour of the World was buried.

Mass is celebrated here daily by different Christian sects. Pilgrims,
rich and poor, come hither from all parts of the habitable globe. They
kneel beneath the three-and-forty pendent lamps of gold and silver. They
kiss the worn slab