Note Note IX — NOTES TO CHAPTER IV.

The fact that there is only one entrance to the Church of the Resurrection is the cause of many serious accidents at times when there is any great gathering of people, particularly at Easter. This is especially the case when the times of the celebration of this festival by the different sects coincide. During the eight years which I spent at Jerusalem, not an Easter passed without some such casualty. Some were suffocated; some fainted in the crush, were trampled upon, and received serious injuries; some had their limbs broken. These accidents are constantly repeated, yet no one ever thinks of taking any means to avoid them, though it would be so easy to open the other door. It is well known how in 1836 Ibrahim Pasha attended the Greek service of the Holy Fire, and a quarrel arose betwixt the Greeks and the Armenians: the whole multitude sought some way of escape, and such was the crowding at this the only single door, that the conqueror got out with much difficulty by passing over thirty dead bodies that lay there, the victims of the crush. (See Curzon's Monasteries of the Levant, chap. 16.)