The Great Bulk Of The Pilgrims Make Their Way By Sea To The Port Of
Jaffa.
A number of families will charter a vessel amongst them,
all bringing their own provisions, which are of the simplest and
cheapest kind.
On board every vessel thus freighted there is, I
believe, a priest, who helps the people in their religious
exercises, and tries (and fails) to maintain something like order
and harmony. The vessels employed in this service are usually
Greek brigs or brigantines and schooners, and the number of
passengers stowed in them is almost always horribly excessive. The
voyages are sadly protracted, not only by the land-seeking, storm-
flying habits of the Greek seamen, but also by their endless
schemes and speculations, which are for ever tempting them to touch
at the nearest port. The voyage too must be made in winter, in
order that Jerusalem may be reached some weeks before the Greek
Easter, and thus by the time they attain to the holy shrines the
pilgrims have really and truly undergone a very respectable
quantity of suffering. I once saw one of these pious cargoes put
ashore on the coast of Cyprus, where they had touched for the
purpose of visiting (not Paphos, but) some Christian sanctuary. I
never saw (no, never even in the most horridly stuffy ballroom)
such a discomfortable collection of human beings. Long huddled
together in a pitching and rolling prison, fed on beans, exposed to
some real danger and to terrors without end, they had been tumbled
about for many wintry weeks in the chopping seas of the
Mediterranean.
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