Memories of Bethany

The traveller in Palestine is to this day shewn, in a sort of secluded ravine on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives (about fifteen furlongs or two miles from Jerusalem), a cluster of poor cottages, numbering little more than twenty families, with groups of palm-trees surrounding them, interspersed here and there with the olive, the almond, the pomegranate, and the fig.[2]

This ruined village bears the Arab name of El-Azirezeh--the Arabic form of the name Lazarus--and at once identifies it with a spot so sacred and interesting in Gospel story. It is described by the most recent and discerning of Eastern writers as "a wild mountain hamlet, screened by an intervening ridge from the view of the top of Olivet--perched on its open plateau of rock--the last collection of human habitations before the desert hills that reach to Jericho. ... High in the distance are the Peræan mountains; the foreground is the deep descent of the mountain valley."[3]

"The fields around," says another