glad to subsist upon the berries that ripened by the road, who, before
this great flux, might have shared the bread and flesh of the
monasteries.

But this was not the greatest of their difficulties. On their
arrival in Jerusalem they found that a sterner race had obtained
possession of the Holy Land. The caliphs of Bagdad had been succeeded
by the harsh Turks of the race of Seljook, who looked upon the
pilgrims with contempt and aversion. The Turks of the eleventh century
were more ferocious and less scrupulous than the Saracens of the
tenth. They were annoyed at the immense number of pilgrims who overran
the country, and still more so because they showed no intention of
quitting it. The hourly expectation of the last judgment kept them
waiting; and the Turks, apprehensive of being at last driven from the
soil by the swarms that were still arriving, heaped up difficulties in
their way. Persecution of every kind awaited them. They were
plundered, and beaten with stripes, and kept in suspense for months at
the gates of Jerusalem, unable to pay the golden bezant that was to
facilitate their entrance.

When the first epidemic terror of the day of judgment began to
subside, a few pilgrims ventured to return to Europe, their hearts big
with indignation at the insults they had suffered. Everywhere as they
passed they related to a sympathizing auditory the wrongs of
Christendom. Strange to say, even these recitals increased the mania
for pilgrimage. The greater the dangers of the way, the more chance
that sins of deep dye would be atoned for. Difficulty and suffering
only heightened the merit, and fresh hordes issued from every town and
village, to win favour in the sight of Heaven by a visit to the holy
sepulchre. Thus did things continue during the whole of the eleventh