DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0235
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 219
their character, to say that I have heard them
talk of the Saviour, and of every incident in his
history, as a man with whom they had been fa-
miliar in his life; of the Virgin nursing the " litile
Jesus;" of his stature, strength, age, the colour of
his hair, his complexion, and of every incident in
his life, real or supposed, from his ascension into
Heaven down to the " Washing of his linen."
At the foot of the hill, on the borders of the val-
ley of Jehoshaphat, beneath the Mount of Olives,
we came to the Garden of Gethsemane. Like the
great battle-grounds where kingdoms have been
lost and won, the stubborn earth bears no traces
of the scenes that have passed upon its surface ;
and a stranger might easily pass the Garden of
Gethsemane without knowing it as the place where,
on the night on which he was betrayed, the Sav-
iour watched with his disciples. It was enclosed
by a low, broken stone fence, and an Arab Fellah
was quietly turning up the ground with his spade.
According to my measurement, the garden is forty-
seven paces long and forty-four wide. It con-
tains eight olive-trees, which the monks believe to
have been standing in the days of our Saviour, and
to which a gentleman, in whose knowledge I have
confidence, ascribed an age of more than 800 years.
One of these, the largest, barked and scarified by
the knives of pilgrims, is reverenced as the iden-
tical tree under which Christ was betrayed ; and
its enormous roots, growing high out of the earth,,
could induce a belief of almost any degree of anti~
their character, to say that I have heard them
talk of the Saviour, and of every incident in his
history, as a man with whom they had been fa-
miliar in his life; of the Virgin nursing the " litile
Jesus;" of his stature, strength, age, the colour of
his hair, his complexion, and of every incident in
his life, real or supposed, from his ascension into
Heaven down to the " Washing of his linen."
At the foot of the hill, on the borders of the val-
ley of Jehoshaphat, beneath the Mount of Olives,
we came to the Garden of Gethsemane. Like the
great battle-grounds where kingdoms have been
lost and won, the stubborn earth bears no traces
of the scenes that have passed upon its surface ;
and a stranger might easily pass the Garden of
Gethsemane without knowing it as the place where,
on the night on which he was betrayed, the Sav-
iour watched with his disciples. It was enclosed
by a low, broken stone fence, and an Arab Fellah
was quietly turning up the ground with his spade.
According to my measurement, the garden is forty-
seven paces long and forty-four wide. It con-
tains eight olive-trees, which the monks believe to
have been standing in the days of our Saviour, and
to which a gentleman, in whose knowledge I have
confidence, ascribed an age of more than 800 years.
One of these, the largest, barked and scarified by
the knives of pilgrims, is reverenced as the iden-
tical tree under which Christ was betrayed ; and
its enormous roots, growing high out of the earth,,
could induce a belief of almost any degree of anti~