Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, east from the Latin Hospice

Underwood & Underwood · (c) 1902

We have taken our stand on the Casa Nuova or Latin Hospice, an old building in the heart of Jerusalem, and are looking out eastward over the ancient tiled housetops and past the city wall. Bethlehem was six miles away at our right; Nazareth is between 60 and 70 miles distant at our left; 35 miles away behind us, beyond the mountains, is Joppa, on the shore of the Mediterranean. Far off beyond that horizon lie the lands of the Wise Men of the East. "Yonder is the Mount of Olives, crowned by a modern Russian tower... There on the left is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which millions of the Christian world believe - although scholars disagree about it - covers the site of the Cross and the Tomb of Jesus Christ. As we look across the city, we see a mass of small domes around a large domed building. That is the Dome of the Rock, which almost everybody calls wrongly "The Mosque of Omar." It is the site of Solomon's Temple and covers the traditional rock where Abraham made ready his offering and David built his altar. Farther to the right is a new, pointed tower with scaffolding around it - that belongs to the Church of St. John, the headquarters of the Knights of St. John in the crusading ages. It now belongs to the German Government." (From Travelling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope, by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, D.D., with special "keyed" maps; published by Underwood & Underwood.)