Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1892 — BY BAIL TO JERUSALEM. [ARTICLE]

BY BAIL TO JERUSALEM.

The Whistle of the Locomotive Now " Heard in the Holy City. London Daily News. The first locomotive from Jaffa has arrived, at Jerusalem. In this event we have a new and ample text for the preachers. The associations of the Holy City and its contact with the railway system is something incongruous to contemplate. It will be sufficient to excite the wrath of. Mr. Ruskin, as it must appear to him to be a greater sacrilege than that of the British tourist shooting on Mt. Sinai. Letters received from Jerusalem by the Palestine Exploration Fund, dated the 22d ultimo, announce that the locomotive had reached the city on the previous day. Trains are not yet running, but the rails are all laid down all along the line, and our Paris correspondent says that the line, which is being made by a French company, will be opened on the 20th of this month. The terminus is unfinished ; it will bo on the west of the road to Bethlehem, not far from the south end of theMontefiore Almshouses. The Wadi Rababah, perhaps better known as the Valley of Hinnom, will separate the railway station from the town ; and it will thus be about a half mile from the Jaffa Gate. . Luckily, the Temple site,with Gethsemane and the Mount of Glives, is on the opposite side of the town, and will not be much disturbed by the noise of the railway. It may be mentioned that the Wadi Rababeh means “The Valley of the Lute ;” the Arabs will now have to call it—if Arabic words can be found for the sentence—“ The Wadi of the Railway Whistle. ”