Louis Gregory at the Tomb of the Báb

*A retelling based on **A Heavenly Vista: The Pilgrimage of Louis G. Gregory**. The indented passage is Gregory's own words.*

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In *A Heavenly Vista* Louis George Gregory records his first visit to the Tomb of the Báb on Mount Carmel, in April 1911. The Master was then in Egypt. Gregory had spent several days with Him at Ramleh, near Alexandria, and had come on to Haifa by steamer with two fellow pilgrims, Neville Meakin and Louisa Mathew. The ship reached the Bay of Haifa about dusk, and in the darkness a small boat brought them ashore. They spent the night at a small German hotel.

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The next morning two of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's sons-in-law, Mírzá Jalál and Mírzá Hádí, called on them with Mírzá 'Ináyatu'lláh. That afternoon the pilgrims went up to the Tomb of the Báb and the Hospice nearby on Mount Carmel. At the Tomb they met several other pilgrims. Gregory's account of the visit itself is brief:

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> Removing our shoes in accordance with Oriental custom, we > reverently entered the Tomb, where prayers were chanted by one of > the Persians.

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He described the Tomb, halfway up the mountainside, as stately in proportions, with a commanding site. Close by stood the clump of cypress trees where Bahá'u'lláh used to sit. From there he looked across the bay to 'Akká within its gloomy walls, and beyond it to the snow-capped summit of Mount Hermon; he could see, too, the Brook Kishon, where the Bible places Elijah's slaying of the prophets of Baal.

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That evening a Bahá'í meeting was held at the home of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Haifa. About twenty-five men were there, and a child, and they rose to greet Gregory as he came in. Among them were Mírzá Hádí and Mírzá Jalál, and Mírzá Ḥasan, who was in charge of the Hospice and had been exiled from Adrianople with Bahá'u'lláh.

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*A retelling based on **A Heavenly Vista**. For the fuller account, see the original.*

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