This description shows the 'hussle and bussle' of the City in 1887. The City was governed by the Turks who, at the time, seemed to care little for the buildings or the Jews, both being in a sorry state.

Women with bundles of fagots upon their heads for fuel; ridiculous-looking Armenian females with baggy breeches instead of petticoats; Turkish soldiers in shabby blue uniform; beggars with long sticks in their hands, and the oddest mockery of cotton clothing; a peasant with his plough on his shoulder, taking it to the smith to mend or sharpen; camels with huge loads of olive-cuttings, or fagots, for fuel, the driver sitting aloft over all, with the guiding-rope in one hand arid a long pipe in the other - were only a sample of the ever-changing spectacle.

The citadel, which rose almost opposite my hotel, is one of the most striking features of the Holy City. It stands on Mount Zion, in the middle of the western side, occupying, with its ditch and walls, about 150 yards from north to south, and about 125 from east to west; another space being taken up on the south side by the Turkish- barracks.

Beyond these the splendid garden of the Armenian monastery runs, for perhaps 250 yards, inside the wall; the fortress, barracks, and garden occupying, in a continuous strip within the wall, the west side of Mount Zion, which means a great piece of the city.

The walk round the walls, which, of course, enclose everything - monasteries, gardens, Temple space, citadel, streets, and churches - is about two miles and a half. But it is about three miles and a half round Hyde Park, including Kensington Gardens.

The western side of the city is slightly higher than the eastern, the ground near the Joppa Gate and on Mount Zion, to the south of it, lying about 2,550 feet above the sea, while the Temple space is110 feet lower. There is thus a slope to the east in all the streets running from the west. But the Jerusalem of Christ's day lies many feet beneath the present surface, as the London of Roman times is well-nigh twenty-feet below the streets of today. The citadel stands on nearly the highest part of the town, and was connected originally with the great palace and gardens which Herod created for himself at this point.

All remains of the palace are buried, however, beneath more than thirty feet of rubbish, except portions of two of the three towers he built. " These huge fortresses," says Josephus, "were formed of great blocks of white stone, so exactly joined that each tower seemed a solid rock." One of them, named after his best-loved but murdered wife, Mariamne, has entirely vanished, but Phasaelus and Hippicus still in part survive. When they guarded the wall, thirty cubits high, which entirely surrounded Herod’s palace, with decorated towers at intervals rising still higher, they must have been imposing in their strength, to judge from the noblest relic they offer - the so-called Tower of David.

It stands on a great substructure rising, with a slope of about 45 degrees, from the ditch below, with a pathway along the four sides at the top. Above this, the tower itself, for twenty-nine feet, is one solid mass of stone, and then follows the superstructure, containing various chambers. The masonry of the substructure is of large drafted blocks, many of them ten feet long, with’ a smooth surface; that of the solid part of the tower has been left without smoothing. Time has dealt hardly with the stone of the superstructure, which is comparative modern, whilst that of the solid base and the substructure is rough with lichens and a waving tangle of all kinds of wall-plants.

Still, as one looks up from. the street, it seems as if the shock of a battering-ram could have had little effect on the sloping escarpment, or the solid mass over it. Nor would escalade have been easy, if indeed possible, when the masonry was new, so smooth and finely jointed is the whole.

Desirous to have a view of Jerusalem from a height, I ascended to the top of the Tower of David. The entrance from the open space before it is through a strong but time-eaten archway, surmounted by pinnacles, the fleurs-de-lis on the top of which, half overgrown by grass and rank weeds, show the work of the Crusading princes. Some town dogs lay below the rude bank of stone at the guard-house door, asleep by day, noisy enough by night.

A man sat on a rush stool beside the low wall, smoking his water-pipe; a second lay on the ground; a third had a small, low, round table before him, with a few oranges for sale, and meanwhile gravely sucking the long coiled tube of a water-pipe, holding discourse, in the intervals of breath-taking, with two neighbours on the ground near him, or with another who stood, in slippered feet, and turban, propping himself against his stick, a fierce club-like affair. Of course he was bare-legged. In Europe, all four would have been tattered beggars ; but they looked quite dignified in Eastern costume.

A causeway, slightly raised above the rough cobble stones of the open square, led over the ditch by a wooden bridge of carpentry so primitive that it might have been antediluvian, though really modern. Stairs on the outside of the great tower led half way beyond the solid base, and the rest was scaled by other stairs inside, by no means safe, for the Turk never repairs anything.

Round the top is a parapet, through the embrasures of which cannon might be turned on the city, which the position commands. But though there were some guns on the cemented roof, like everything else, they were far-gone in decay.

The view was very striking. Close at hand, to the south, beyond the barracks, were the gardens of the Armenian monastery, part of the grounds of Herod’s palace nearly two thousand years ago. Looking over the houses of the city, the eye was bewildered by the multitude of small domes rising from the flat roofs, to protect the tops of the stone arches below, for the houses are all built arch above arch. Of course, everything was old and weatherbeaten; every wall-top feathered with grass and weeds the walls unspeakably rude in their masonry; the one or two sloping roofs that showed themselves very woe-begone; everything indeed marking a city far sunk in decay, and at best only holding together while it could, with no prospect of returning to vigorous life.

Beyond the city nature redeems the sordid outlook. The hills rise on every side, recalling the words of the Psalmist, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem., so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even for ever. - -* On some such point of vantage, also, the prophet had imagined himself set as a warder, when he saw with the eye of the spirit, as if before him, the restoration of the city, after it had been laid desolate by the Chaldeans, and hailed the approach of the herald bringing the announcement that Jehovah was returning to Zion, as the leader of Israel from captivity.*

The four hills, north, east, and south, on which the city is built, could, more or less, be traced by deeper or slighter depressions. That on the north, on which the huge copper dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre rises, between two Mohammedan minarets, continues to mount with a very gradual ascent beyond the walls, presenting the only easy approach to Jerusalem from any side, and hence offering the point from which hostile armies have always assailed it.

On the north of the Temple grounds, and thus at the northeast corner of the city, lies the hill Bezeitha, part of the Mohammedan quarter of Jerusalem, which extends to the Damascus Gate, and, thence, down to the street which runs east from the Joppa Gate. The Temple space is thus guarded by Mohammedans at its different entrances. Directly east, and slightly lower, lay the wide open area, of somewhat less than thirty-five acres, where once stood the Temple. On the south-west stretched out Mount Zion, the highest and oldest part of the city; that part which David wrested from the Jebusites, and made his capital. The city wall at one time enclosed the whole of the hill, but part is now open ground, where the peasant drives his plough, fulfilling, even to this day, the words of Micah, that Zion would be ploughed as a field.

But the most extensive view is to the south-east, embracing the deep blue of the Dead Sea, the pinkish-yellow hills of Moab, and the sea of hills in the wilderness of Judea and beyond. Most noticeable of all, just outside Jerusalem, sloping upwards to the east, the Mount of Olives rose more than 200 feet above the Temple enclosure - that is, above the summit of the ancient hill of Moriah.

The back windows of the hotel looked down into a great pooi 144 feet broad, and 240 feet long, but not deep; the bottom of rock, covered with cement. It was well filled with water, which comes, during the rainy season only, by the surface drain, or gutter, leading from the "Upper Pool" in the Mohammedan cemetery, on the high ground west of the Joppa Gate, from which it runs underground. This seems to be the reservoir which Hezekiah constructed. The houses bordering the pool are of all heights; one with a sloping roof and a projecting rickety balcony, just above the water; another, roofed in the same way, but more than a storey higher, with a square wooden chamber, supported by slanting beams, built out, partly, it would seem,

I let the inmates drop a bucket through a hole in the floor, to the water. A frame of poles covered one flat roof, to support a mat awning in the hot months, a wooden railing acting as parapet on the pool side; projecting windows, larger or smaller, were frequent, one with boxes of flowers outside; and, of course, the roofs had their usual proportion of men idling over their pipes.

As everywhere else, the walls round the pool were thick with naturally sown wall-plants. The pool is capable of containing about 3,000,000 gallons of water, but it is in very bad repair. As to cleaning it out, nothing so revolutionary ever entered the brain of a Jerusalemite. The bottom is deep with the black mud of decayed leaves and vegetation, and one corner is a cesspool of the worst description. The water is said to be used only for household washing, but the poorer people frequently drink it in summer, when water is scarce, though it is then at its worst, having lain stagnant, perhaps for months, since the rains.

A few steps down David Street - leading east and west from the Joppa Gate to the Temple enclosure - brings you to Christian Street, which runs north; and close to this, on the under side, is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But what would anyone think of the street called after the hero-king of Israel, if suddenly set down at the end of it! It is a lane rather than a street, with houses for the most part only two storeys high, the ground one being given up to shops, if you can call such dens by that name. Over the doors a narrow slat of wood, old and twisted, built into the houses, gives shade to the goods.

The causeway is equally astonishing, for even a donkey stops, puts its nose to the ground, and makes careful calculations as to the safe disposition of its feet before it will trust them to an advance. No wonder the streets are empty after dark; without a lantern you would infallibly sprain your ankles, or break a leg. But during the day the stream of many-coloured life flows through this central artery of the Holy City in a variety to be found, perhaps, nowhere else.

The open space at the head of it, before the Tower of David, is always thronged, but every time you look at it, or from it, the scene is different. As soon as light breaks, strings of camels, led and ridden by dark-faced Bedouins, begin to swing through the Joppa Gate to the open space. Women from Bethlehem, with dresses set off with blue, red, or yellow, and unveiled faces, though they have veils over their shoulders Mohammedan women in blue gowns, which might be called by a humbler name if they were white: their eyes, the only part of their faces to be seen, looking larger than they are from the black pigment with which the edges of the eyelids are darkened;

Soldiers in a variety of strange uniforms; trains of donkeys with vegetables ; a stray Arab, in wild desert costume, with red boots, on a horse with a red saddle, his spear, more than twelve feet long, in his hand; women in white coverings put on over the dress from head to foot, puffing out like balloons as the wearer advances ; a half-naked dervish holding out his tin pan for alms, which he asks in the name of the All-Merciful; a company of Turkish soldiers, in poverty-stricken uniforms but strong fellows all, following their band, which plays only short, unmeaning flourishes, in the French style; Russian pilgrims; Jews of every nationality ; residents from all Western climes; - all these, with many others, pour on through the narrow gullet of David Street, or rest for a time in the market space. You may even see a family of gypsies encamped there, under their low black tent; for, within wide limits, everyone does as he likes in the East.

Christian Street is specially the quarter of the Christian tailors, shoemakers, and other craftsmen. Passing about 200 steps along it, we come to a very narrow street on the right, running downhill, with a frightful causeway. Turning into this, you presently come to a few steps on the left, which your donkey makes no difficulty in descending, and you are then in the open paved space before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is a favourite haunt of Bethlehemite sellers of momentoes in mother-of-pearl and olive-wood, which, with other trifles, are exposed on the pavement. At festival times the throng in this spot is curious in the extreme, made up as it is of men and women, children, priests, and laymen, from every country. The only entrance to the church is on the southern side, and it was closed, but a gift to the door-keeper turned the key.

Outside, the front of the great church is impressive from its evident antiquity. There were originally two round-arched gateways, but that on the right is built up, as is also the upper part of the other. Above these gateways are two arches of the same size and style, deeply sunk, in which are two round-topped windows of comparatively small size. On a ledge below them, where the pillars of the arches begin, some tasteful monk had put various pots of flowers, but he had forgotten the poor blossoms, and want of water had told sadly on them. The dome may well be regarded as worth looking at, since a dispute as to its repair was the ostensible cause of the Crimean War. The whole front dates from the twelfth century, when the Crusaders remodelled the building. The influence of the French art of that day is seen in the close resemblance of the ornamentation to that of some churches in Normandy. Indeed, a fine carving over one of the doors, representing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, was probably sent from France.

Just inside the door a guard of Turkish soldiers, kept there to secure peace between the rival Christian sects, jars on the feelings, as being sadly out of place amid such surroundings. But after all it is better to have quiet at even this price, than such riots and bloodshed as have disgraced the church at various times. Immediately before you is the " stone of unction," said to mark the spot on which our Lord’s body was laid in preparation for burial, after being anointed. It is a large slab of limestone, and has at least the merit of having lain there for seven or eight hundred years as an object of veneration to pilgrims.

A few steps to the left is the place where, as they tell us, the women stood during the anointing, and from this you pass at once, still keeping to the left, into the great round western end of the church - the model of all the circular churches of Europe - under the famous dome, which rests on eighteen pillars, with windows round the circle from which the dome springs.

In the centre of this space is the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, about twenty-six feet long and eighteen feet wide, a tasteless structure of reddish limestone, like marble, decorated all along the top with gilt nosegays and modern pictures, and its front ablaze with countless lamps. Inside, it is divided into two parts the one marking, as is maintained, the spot where the angels stood at the Resurrection; the other believed to contain the sepulchre of Christ. Huge marble candlesticks, with gigantic wax candles lighted only on high-days, stand before the Chapel of the Angels, on entering which pilgrims take off their shoes before treading on ground so sacred.

A hole on each side of the entrance shows the scene of one of the few mock-miracles still played off on human credulity, for through them the" Holy Fire," said to be sent from heaven, is given out, every Greek Easter, amidst a tumult and pressure of the outside crowd which seems to threaten numerous deaths. On the evening before the day of the Fire, every spot inside the church is densely packed with worshippers, sleeping as they stand, in weary expectation of the approaching event, or, if awake, crossing their breasts, sighing aloud, and, if possible, prostrating themselves on the floor.

The next forenoon, a Turkish guard, in double line, opens a passage round the sepulchre, broad enough for three men to pass through abreast, and outside this armed wall the crowd is pressed into the smallest possible space. How so many human beings get into so small a standing-ground seems, itself, miraculous.

The pilgrims representing every country of Eastern Christendom - each race by itself, in its national dress, not a few women among them, some with babies in their arms, wailing above the hubbub of many languages - have been standing in their places for at least ten hours, yet they show no signs of weariness. Every face is turned to the Fire-hole; the only distraction arising when great pewter cans of water are brought round by the charity of the priests. Patient and stolid, the Russians and Armenians stand quietly, each pilgrim holding aloft in his hand, to keep them safe, a bunch of, perhaps, a dozen candles, to light at the "Fire" when it should appear. The Egyptians sit silent and motionless. The Greek Christians, mostly Syrians by birth, are restless with hysterical excitement. Occasionally, one of them would struggle up to the shoulders of his neighbours, and be pushed over the heads of the crowd towards the front. Chants repeated by hundreds of voices, in perfect tune, are frequently raised; among others - " This is the Tomb of our Lord" ; "God help the Sultan"; "O Jews, O Jews, your feast is a feast of apes " ; " The Christ is given us with His blood He bought us. We celebrate the day, and the Jews bewail"; "The seventh is the Fire and our feast, and this is the Tomb of our Lord."

Amidst all the wild confusion the patience of the soldiery was admirable, though at times there seemed danger. A lash from a thick hippopotamus-hide whip carried by the colonel, however, instantly administered where there seemed risk of disturbance, restored peace as by magic. About one o’clock the natives of Jerusalem arrived, bursting in suddenly, and surging along the narrow lane; many of them stripped to their vests and drawers. To clear the line once more, after this irruption of a second crowd, was difficult, but it was at last done, amidst loud shouts of "This is the Tomb of our Lord," repeated over and over, with wondrous rapidity.

The Rotunda now contained in its little circle of sixty-seven feet diameter, from which the space occupied by the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre must be deducted, about 2,000 persons; and the whole church, perhaps, 10,000; but at last the chant of the priests was heard in the Greek church, and the procession had begun. First came very shabby banners the crosses, above them, bent on one side. The old Patriarch looked frightened, and shuffled along with a dignitary at both sides carrying each a great silver globe, with holes in it, for the Fire which was to be put inside. Now rose a chorus of voices from the men, and shrill cries from the women; then all was still. Two priests stood, bareheaded, by the Fire-hole, protected by guardians at their side.

Suddenly a great lighted torch was in their hands, passed from the Patriarch within, and with this, the two priests, surrounded by a body-guard of gigantic men, turned to the crowd they and their guard trampling like furies through it. In a moment the thin line of soldiers was lost in the two great waves of human beings, who pressed from each side to the torch, which blazed over them, now high, now low, as it slowly made its way to the outside of the church, where a horseman sat, ready to rush off with it to Bethlehem. A wild storm of excitement raged, as the lights spread over the whole church, like a sea of fire, extending to the galleries and choir. A stalwart negro struggling and charging like a mad bull, ran round the church, followed by writhing arms seeking to light their tapers from his then, as they succeeded in doing so, some might be seen bathing in the flame, and singeing their clothes in it, or dropping wax over themselves as a memorial, or even eating it. A gorgeous procession closed the whole ceremony; all the splendour of jewelled crosses, magnificent vestments, and every accessory of ecclesiastical pomp, contributing to its effect.

But we must return to the chapel. In the centre, cased in marble, stands what is called a piece of the stone rolled away by the angels; and at the western end, entered by a low doorway, is the reputed tomb-chamber of our Lord, a very small spot, for it is only six feet wide, a few inches longer, and very low. It seems to belie its claim to be a burial-place by the glittering marble with which it is cased, but it is solemnly beautiful in the soft light of forty-three gold and silver lamps, hung from chains and shining through red, yellow, and green glass; the colours marking the sects to which the lamps belong: thirteen each for Franciscans, Greeks, and Armenians, and four for the Copts. The tomb itself is a raised table, two feet high, three feet wide, and over six feet long, the top of it serving as an altar, over which the darkness is only relieved by the dim lamps.

Due east from the Rotunda is the Greek nave, closed at the far end by a magnificent screen. A short column in the floor, which is otherwise unoccupied, marks what was anciently believed to be "the centre of the world " ; for has not Ezekiel said, "This is Jerusalem; I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries, that are round about her ‘~ ?*

Garlands of lamps, gilded thrones for the Bishop and Patriarch, and the lofty screen, towering up to the roof, carved with figures in low relief, row above row; the side walls set off with panels, in which dark pictures are framed; huge marble candlesticks, two of them eight feet high - all this, seen in the rich light of purple and other coloured lamps, makes up an effect which is very imposing.

At the western extremity of the sepulchre, but attached to it from the outside, is a little wooden chapel, the only part of the church allotted to the poor Copts; and further west, but parted from the sepulchre itself, is the still poorer chapel of the still poorer Syrians, which, however, has probably been the means of saving from marble and decoration the so-called tombs of Joseph and Nicodemus, which lie in their precincts, and in which rests the chief evidence of the genuineness of the whole site, for it is certain that they, at least, are natural caves in the rock.

It would be idle to dwell on the multitudinous sacred places gathered by monkish ingenuity under the one roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which must weary the patience of the pilgrims however fervent. Two spots only deserve special notice. On the east of the whole building, from behind the Greek choir, a staircase of twenty nine steps leads down to the Chapel of St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, who in the year AD 326, at the age of nearly eighty, visited Palestine, and caused churches to be erected at Bethlehem, where Christ was born, and on the Mount of Olives, from some part of which He ascended to heaven. Nothing is said till the century after her death about her discovering the Holy Sepulchre, or building a church on the spot, but legend and pious fraud had by that time created the story of the" Invention (or Finding) of the Cross." In a simpler form, the chapel has been ascribed to Constantine himself, who, it is affirmed by a contemporary, caused the earth under which the enemies of Christianity were said to have buried, the Holy Sepulchre to be removed, and built a church over it.

Robinson, who gives a full quotation of the authorities on the subject, thinks there is hardly any fact of history better accredited than the alleged discovery of what is called the true cross. Thus, Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem from AD 348 onwards, only about twenty years after the event, frequently speaks of his preaching in the church raised by Constantine to commemorate it, and expressly mentions the finding of the cross, under that emperor, and its existence in his own day. Jerome also, in AD 385, relates that in Jerusalem, Paula, his disciple, not only performed her devotions in the Holy Sepulchre, but prostrated herself before the cross in adoration. But, though a cross seems to have really existed, and is said to have been found underground, how easy would deception have been in such a case, and how improbable that any cross should have lain buried for 300 years.

It is very striking to come upon a vaulted church, with high arches, carved pillars, glittering strings of lamps, exquisite screens, and large sacred pillars, so far underground. But there is still another below it. Thirteen steps more lead to the "Chapel of the Finding of the Cross," which is either a cavern in the rock artificially enlarged, or an ancient cistern, about twenty-four feet long, nearly as wide, and sixteen feet high, paved with stone. It contains an altar, and a large portrait of the Empress Helena, but is so dark that candles must be lighted to see either. This was the place, says tradition, where the three crosses of Calvary were found; the one on which our Saviour died being discovered by taking the three to the bedside of a noble lady afflicted with incurable illness, which resisted the touch of two, but left her at once when the third was brought near.

Remounting the steps, you are led by a stair from the Greek choir to what is said to be Golgotha, or Mount Calvary, now consecrated by three chapels of different sects, the floor being fourteen and a half feet above that of the church below. An opening, faced with silver, shows the spot where the cross is said to have been sunk in the rock, and less than five feet from. it is a long brass open-work slide, over a cleft in the rock which is about six inches deep, but is supposed by the pilgrims to reach to the centre of the earth. This is said to mark the rending of the rocks at the Crucifixion. But there is an air of unreality over the whole scene, with its gorgeous decorations of lamps, mosaics, pictures, and gilding; nor could I feel more than the gratification of my curiosity in the midst of such a monstrous aggregation of wonders.

Faith evaporates when it finds so many demands made on it - when it is assured that within a few yards of each other are the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac;

of the appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene;

the stone of anointing ;

the spot where the women stood at the solemn preparation for the tomb;

the place where the angels stood at the Resurrection;

the very tomb of our Lord; the tombs of Joseph and Nicodemus ;

the column to which Christ was bound when He was scourged ;

His prison ; the scene of the parting of the raiment;

of the crowning with thorns;

of the actual crucifixion; of the rending of the rocks;

of the finding of the true cross;

of the burial-place of Adam,

under the spot where the cross afterwards rose;

the tree in which the goat offered instead of Isaac was caught, and much else.

The display on the stalls varies of course with the season. In the market before the citadel, cauliflowers, and vegetables generally, are the main features in March, but as the year advances, cucumbers, tomatoes, grapes, figs, prickly pears, pomegranates, from the neighbourhood, and oranges, lemons, and melons from Joppa and the plain of Sharon, are abundant. Roses are so plentiful in the early summer that they are sold by weight, and every window and table has its bunch of them. The butchers, like members of the trade elsewhere, shout out their invitations to come and buy, and the fruit-sellers rival or outdo them. by assurances that they are parting with their stock for nothing.

Women from Bethany or Siloam, in long blue cotton loosely fitting sacks, sit here and there on the side of the streets at any vacant spot, selling all kinds of rural produce. Bright-coloured kerchiefs round the head distinguish them from their sisters of Bethlehem, who have white veils over their shoulders and bright parti-coloured dresses. Young lads wander about offering for sale fiat round "scones" and sour milk. The grocer sits, pipe in mouth, in his primitive stall, behind baskets of raisins, dates, sugar, and other wares. No such tumble-down establishment could be found in the worst lane of the slums of London. The two half-doors - hanging awry, which close it at night, are dangerously shaky ; the lock is a wooden affair, of huge size; a rough beam set in the wall perhaps seven feet from the ground, supports the house overhead, while some short poles resting on it bear up a narrow coping of slabs, old and broken, to keep off, in some measure, the sun and rain. The doors, when closed, do not fit against this beam by a good many inches; and there is the same roughness inside. Rafters, coarse, unpainted, twisted, run across; a few shelves cling, as they best can, to the walls, and hooks here and there, or nails, bear up part of the stock.

A cobbler’s shop, yonder, next an old arch, is simply the remains of a house long since fallen down. A low butcher’s block serves as anvil on which to beat the sole-leather, a narrow shelf holds a row of bright red and yellow slippers with turned-up toes, and there are two other and shorter shelves with a similar display. The master is at work on one side, and his workman on the other, close to the entrance, for there is no light except from the street. The slippers of the two lie outside, and a jar of water rests near, from which they can drink when they wish. A few old short boards jut out a foot or two over the shelf of slippers above, to give a trifle of shade. There is no paint; no one in the East thinks of such a thing; indeed, such dog-holes as these shops defy the house-painter.

Arabs and peasants, on low rush stools, sit in the open air, before a café, engrossed in a game like chess or draughts; the stock of the establishment consisting of the table, a small fire to light the pipes and prepare coffee, some coffee-cups, water-pipes, and a venerable collection of red clay pipe-heads with long wooden stems.

Grave men sit silently hour after hour before such a house of entertainment, amusing themselves with an occasional whiff of the pipe, or a sip of coffee. But all the shops are not so poor as the cobbler’s, though wretched enough to Western eyes. David Street can boast of foreign goods, but only in small quantities and at fabulous prices. Towards the Jewish quarter most of the tradesmen are shoemakers, tinsmiths, and tailors, all of them working in dark arches or cupboards, very strange to see.

To walk through the sloping, roughly paved, narrow streets of the modern Jerusalem, seemed, in the unchanging East, to bring back again those of the old Bible city. One could notice the characteristics of rich and poor, old and young, townspeople and country folks, of both sexes, as they streamed through the bazaars and the lane-like streets.

The well-to-do townspeople delight to wear as great a variety of clothes as they can afford, and as costly as their purse allows. Besides their under-linen and several light jackets and vests, they have two robes reaching the ankles, one of cloth, the other of cotton or silk. A costly girdle holds the inner long robe together, and in it merchants always stick the brass or silver pen and ink case. A great signet ring is indispensable. Many also carry a bunch of flowers, with which to occupy themselves when they sit down or loiter about. The head is covered with a red or white cap, round which a long cotton cloth is wound, forming the whole into a turban.

The peasant is clad much more simply. Over his shirt he draws only an "abba" of camels’- or goats’-hair cloth, with sleeves or without, striped white and brown, or white and black. It was, one may think, just such a coat which Christ referred to when He told the Apostles not to carry a second. If he has any money, the peasant carries it in the lining of his girdle; and hence the command to the Apostles, who were to go forth penniless, that they were to take no money in their girdles.

The water-carriers attract customers by their cry or by the ringing of a small’ bell, or take it to houses, and are the most meanly clad of any citizens. A shirt, reaching to the knees, is their only garment. The Gibeonites whom Joshua had to spare, were thus doomed to the hardest fate, next to death, when sentenced to perpetual slavery, with the special task of hewing wood and drawing water for the community.

Female dress is strangely like that of the men, but while the poor peasant-woman or girl has often only a long blue shirt, without a girdle, her sisters of the town, where they are able to do so, draw a great veil over them, covering them from head to foot.

A natural and earnest wish of a poor girl of Jerusalem is to be able to hang a line of coins along her brow and down her cheeks, for she sees rich women round her with a great display of such adornment on their hair, and notices that even the children of the wealthy have numbers of small gold coins tied to the numerous plaits which hang down their shoulders; indeed, some children have them tied round their ankles also.

The double veil, falling both before and behind, is not so frequent as in Egypt, but it would appear to have been more common among Jewish women anciently, at least in worship, if we may judge from the command of St. Paul that the women should never appear in the congregation at Corinth without having their heads covered.

Among the poorer classes in Jerusalem, as elsewhere in Palestine, both men and women tattoo themselves. The women darken their eyelids, to brighten the eyes and make them seem larger, and often puncture their arms fancifully, as a substitute for arm-rings. Among the peasant-women the chin and cheeks, also, are often seen with blue punctured marks, and the nails are very generally dyed red.

From the bazaars, the street running almost directly north leads to the Damascus Gate, the entrance to the city from the north. No more thoroughly Oriental scene can be imagined than that offered when, standing at this gate, you look at the two streets which branch off from it. The houses are very old, with a thick growth of wall-vegetation wherever it can get a footing. Flat roofs one cannot see, but only the low domes covering the tops of arches. The house-corners, the few pieces of sloping roof, the ledges jutting out here and there, the awnings of mats stretched on epileptic poles, and projecting over the streets, the woodwork filling in the round of arches used as cafés or for business, and even the time-worn stones of the buildings, as a whole, form a picture of dilapidation which must be seen to be realised.

The causeway is, of course, antediluvian. Men, in all kinds of strange dress, sit on low rush stools in the street along the front of this building, some of them enjoying the delicacies of a street cook, whose brazier is alight to provide whatever in his art any customer may demand.

Some sit cross-legged on the stones; others literally on nothing; their feet supporting them without their body touching the ground: a feat which no Western man could perform for more than a few minutes together. Camels stalk leisurely towards the gate; a man on the hump of the foremost, with his feet out towards its neck. Long-muzzled yellow street-dogs lie about, or prowl after scraps. On the right a two-leaved door, which would disfigure a respectable barn, hangs open, askew, and reveals the treasures of some shop-keeper; grave personages sit along the wall beside deep baskets of fruit; a turbaned figure passes with his worldly all, in the shape of some sweetmeats, on a tray, seeking profitable sale. A wretched arch admits to the street beyond, but into this, with its stream of passengers, I did not enter.

At the head of the Street on the left hand a group of Bedouins were enjoying their pipes in the open air, and of course there were idlers about; but the rest of the street was almost deserted. From this point you enter a street famous as the Via Dolorosa—the way, it is imagined, by which our Saviour went from the judgment-seat of Pilate to His crucifixion. That no reliance can be placed on this identification is, however, clear from the self-evident fact that the route taken must depend on the situation of Pilate’s Hall, of which nothing is known, though it seems natural that it should have been on the high ground of Zion, where the procurator lived, in the palace of Herod. Moreover, the Jerusalem of Christ’s day perished, for the most part, in the siege of Titus, so that even the lines of the ancient streets, traced over the deep beds of rubbish left by the Romans, must be very different, in many case’s, from those of the earlier city.

This, however, has in no degree fettered monkish invention, for there are fourteen stations for prayer in the Via Dolorosa, at which different incidents in the story of the Gospels are said to have taken place. It rises gently to an arch, said to mark the spot where Pilate, pointing to the bruised and stricken Saviour, said, " Behold the Man! " Before reaching this you pass the place at which Simon of Cyrene is said to have taken up the cross, and that where Christ fell under its weight. The house where Lazarus of Bethany dwelt after being raised from the dead, and the mansion of Dives, are also shown.

Pilate’s judgment-hall is affirmed to be identical with the mansion of the Pasha of Jerusalem, at the Turkish barracks on the north-west corner of the Temple enclosure, which is said to be the old tower called Antonia by the Romans, and used by them to control the worshippers at the Passoiver season, but the main structure is comparatively modern, though some old stones remain at the gateway. Passing on a sho’rt distance, we come to a pool on the right, which claims to be that of Bethesda; it is not clearly mentioned before the tenth century, and may have been built by the Ro’mans or early Arabs. This huge, basin— perhaps the great fosse made to protect the Temple space—is in great part excavated in the living rock, and is 360 feet long, .126 feet wide, and 8o feet deep; but it is so filled with a mass of rubbish, rising thirty-five feet above a great part of the bottom, that it is difficult to realise the full size or depth. Such a work speaks for the grand ideas of its originator, whoever he may have been. The north wall of the Temple enclosure rises high over the "pool" to the south, and deepens the impression of its hugeness. Steps, very irregular, lead down to the bottom. at the west end, and the pressure of the water is provided against at the east end, where the hill rapidly descends, by a dam forty-five feet thick, which serves also as part of the city wall (John V. 2). But the true pool of Bethesda has been discovered during excavations beside the church of St. Anne, a little north of the great pool at the north-east corner of the wall of Jerusalem. It has been found, in accordance with ancient tradition, to consist of two pools side by side. One of these is thirty feet deep, fifty-five feet long from east to west, and twelve and a half feet broad from north to south, a flight of steps leading down its side. The seco’nd pool, alongside of this one, is sixty feet long, and of the same breadth as the other.

About seventy-five yards no’rth of the great "pool" is a fine specimen of Crusading architecture—the tniple-naved pure Gothic church of St. Anne, formerly used as a mosque, but after many centuries giyen back to the Christians as a gift of the Sultan to Napoleon III. at the close of the Crimean War. A huge cistern excavated in the rock below it and carefully cemented is actually claimed to have been the home of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary.

Three gates to the west open into the Temple enclosure, but entrance by these is strictly prohibited to any save Mohammedans. Indeed, it is only a few years since that unbelievers were permitted to enter at all; but this bitter fanaticism has now yielded so far that a fee enables strangers to enter, if duly attended by one of the richly-bedizened " cavasses," or consular servants. The great Gate, at the foot of David Street, and thus almost in the centre of the western side of the enclosure, admits you by a few steps upwards, to the sacred precincts, which embrace an open space of thirty-five acres, the walk round which is nearly a mile. Lying about 2,400 feet above the Mediterranean, this spot is comparatively cool, even in summer. The surface was once a rough hill sloping or swelling irregularly, but a vast level platform has been made, half under Solomon, the other half by Herod, by cutting away the rock in some places, raising huge arched vaults at others, and filling up the hollows with rubbish and stones.

Near the north-west corner the natural rock appears on the surface, or is only slightly covered, but it was originally much higher. The whole hill, however, has been cut away at this part, except a mass at the angle of the wall, rising with a perpendicular face, north and south, forty feet above the platform. On this, it seems certain, the Roman Fort Antonia was built, for Josephus speaks of it as standing at this corner on a rock fifty cubits high. This platform is, moreover, separated from the north-eastern bill by a deep trench, fifty yards broad, and this, also, agrees with what the Jewish historian says of Antonia. The north-east corner has been "made" by filling up a steep slope with earth and stones, but the chief triumph of architecture was seen on the south, where the wall, built by Herod, rose from the valley to a height almost equal to that of the tallest of our church-spires, while above this rose the king’s porch, a triple cloister, higher and longer than York Cathedral; the whole, when fresh, glittering with a marble-like whiteness.

Level as is the surface thus secured by almost incredible labour, it covers wonders unsuspected, for the ground is perfectly honeycombed with cisterns hewn in the rock. The water for them was supplied by springs, wells, rain, and aqueducts, though their size was so great in some cases that, as a whole, they could store more than 10,000,000 gallons of water; one cistern—known as the Great Sea—holding no less than 2.000.000 gallons. The supply for this vast system of reservoirs seems to have been abundant in Bible times, but they have lain empty now for centuries.

Nearly in the centre of the great open area is a raised platform of marble, about sixteen feet high, reached by broad steps, and on this stands the so-called Mosque of Omar, or rather Dome of the Rock, built over the naked top of Mount Moriah, whence Mohammed is fabled to have ascended to heaven. Dated inscriptions from the Koran represent that it was built between the years A.D. 688 and A.D. 693, under the reign of the Caliph Abd-el-Melek. It has eight sides, each sixty-six feet in length, so that it is over 500 feet in circumference. A screen, divided by piers and columns of great beauty, follows the lines of the eight sides, at a distance of thirteen feet from them, and, then, within this, at a further distance of thirty feet, is a second screen, circling the sacred top of the mountain, relieved in the same way with pillars, which support aloft the beautiful dome.

Outside, the height of the wall is thirty-six feet, and there are four doors. Round the platform the walls are cased some yards high, with coloured marbles, above which is an exquisite series of round arches, two-thirds of them pierced for windows. The whole wall, above the marble casing, is covered with enameled tiles, showing elaborate designs in various colours, a row in blue and white on which are verses of the Koran running round the top. Within, the piers of the screens are cased in marble, and their capitals gilded ; the screens themselves, which are of fine wrought iron, being very elaborate, while the arches under the dome are ornamented with rich mosaic, bordered, in letters of gold, by verses from the Koran, and an inscription, stating when the mosque was built. The walls and dome glitter with the richest colours, in part those of mosaics, and the stained glass in the windows exceeds, for beauty, any I have seen elsewhere.

All this exquisite taste and lavish munificence is strangely expended in honour of a hump of rock, the ancient top of Moriah, which rises in the centre of the building, within the second screen, nearly five feet at its highest point, and a foot at its lowest, above the marble pavement. But to the Mohammedan it is sacred, almost entirely, because he believes that this vast rock bore the Prophet up, like a chariot, to Paradise; the finger-marks of the angel who steadied it in its amazing flight being still shown to the credulous. Yet this rough mountain-top has an absorbing interest to the Jew and the Christian alike. It was here that the Jebusite, Araunah, once had his threshing-floor, heaped up his sheaves and cleansed with his shovel or fork the grain which his threshing-sledge had separated from the straw. No place so suitable could have been found at Jerusalem; and it had the special sacredness of having been the scene, in early times, of the offering of Isaac by the Father of the Faithful.

In later days, also, a special sanctity is associated with this spot as that on which, in all probability, the great altar of the Jewish Temple stood. Huge vaults exist on the north side of the Temple area, and if these, and the loose earth over them, were removed, the rock would show a perpendicular face, part of it having in ancient times been cut away, while a gutter cut in it has been found, perhaps made to drain off the blood of the sacrifices on the altar.

Underneath the rock, reached by a flight of steps, is a large cave, the roof of which is about six feet high, with a circular opening in it, through which light enters. The floor sounds hollow, and so do the rough sides: a proof, say the Mohammedans, that this mountain is hung in the air. There is, however, probably, a lower cave, or possibly a well, but no one is allowed to find this out. To the Mohammedan world Moriah is "the Rock of Paradise, the Source of the Rivers of Paradise, the Place of Prayer of all Prophets, and the Foundation Stone of the World."

A church stood here for generations under the Crusaders, and Frankish kings offered up their crowns to Christ before the rock on the day of their coronation.

The Mosque el-Aksa, which stands at the south end of the great enclosure, was originally a church built by Justinian in the sixth century in honour of the Virgin. The noble façade of arches is, however, Gothic, and appears to have been the work of the Crusaders. Within, there are seven aisles, pillars a yard thick, and a dome rising over the centre of the transept; but the effect of the whole is poor, for the building, though measuring 190 feet by 270 feet, is whitewashed and coarsely painted. Beside this church the Templars once had their residence; and the twisted columns of their dining-hall still remain. The struggle between Moslems and Christians, at the capture of Jerusalem, was especially fierce in this building, the greater part of the ten thousand who perished by the sword of the Christian warriors falling inside and round these walls.

A flight of steps outside the principal entrance leads down to a wonderful series of arched vaults, which help one to realise vividly the vast substructures needed to bring this part of the hill to the general level.

In one part of the Temple enclosure is a Mohammedan pulpit, with a straight stair, and a beautiful canopy resting on light pillars : a work of special beauty. Minarets rise at different points around. Fountains, venerable oratories, and tombs dot the surface. The massive Golden Gate still stands towards the centre of the eastern wall, though long since built up, from a tradition that the Christians would one day re-enter it in triumph. It was always the chief entrance to the Temple from the east, but seems to have been kept closed from a very early period.

The view of the Mount of Olives from the Temple area is very fine, for only the Kedron valley, which is quite narrow, lies between it and Moriah. Mount Zion rises on the south-west, but it is only by the houses and citadel that you notice the great elevation. The Crescent flag is seen waving over the old Tower of David. On the south-east is the Valley of Jehosaphat, the name given to the upper part of that of the Kedron. - From south-west to north-west the city rises like an amphitheatre round the sacred area. Part of the Enclosure is paved with slabs of limestone, feathered with grass at every chink, and sprinkled, in spring-time, with thousands of bright flowers. Olive-trees and cypresses flourish here and there, and give most welcome shade.

It was much the same thousands of years ago on this very spot. The Psalmist could then cry out, "I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God." "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. "

Here, protected by high walls, reclining under the peaceful shade of some trees, the pious Israelite realised his deepest joy, as he meditated on God, or bowed in prayer towards the Holy of Holies, within which Jehovah dwelt over the Mercy seat. It was his highest conception of perfect felicity that he "should dwell in the house of the Lord forever. "

Hither, from Dan to Beersheba, streamed the multitude that kept holyday, ascending with the music of pipes and with loud rejoicings to the holy hill, bringing offerings of cattle, sheep, goats, and produce and fruit of all kinds, to the King of kings. Here the choirs of Levites sang the sacred chants; here the high priest blessed the people, year by year, as he came forth from the Holy of Holies, into which he entered with the atoning blood, his reappearance showing that his mediation had been accepted, and their sins forgiven. Here, as we are told by the Son of Sirach, thousands on thousands cast themselves on the ground, at the sight of their priestly mediator, fresh from the presence of the holy and exalted Lord of Hosts. And at an earlier time it was here, upon the entrance of the ark into the newly-built Holy of

Holies, at the Temple dedication under Solomon, that "it came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers, as one, made one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good ; for His mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. "

The heavenly and earthly Fatherland of the Israelite thus seemed here to fade into each other. Who does not remember the touching cry of the Jewish prisoner from the sources of the Jordan, on his way to exile? "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. . . . For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

Nine small arches, spanning the valley, preserve the memory of the aqueduct which once poured its clear waters into the great cisterns on Mount Moriah: an incalculable benefit to a city so naturally deficient in its water-supply. It was to repair this artery of the common life that Pilate took funds from the Temple treasury, and thereby roused the fury of the priests at what they were bold enough to denounce to the ignorant multitude as a robbery of the Church. Under the Turks, this monument of wise beneficence is of no’ benefit to Jerusalem.

South of the Sultan’s Pool the valley turns east and becomes very narrow, steep rocks forming its wall on the under side, while on the upper side Mount Zion descends in steps like terraces. Olive and almond trees cast their shadows over the little stony fields in the hollow and on the rocky sides of the hills, while on the east the walls of Jerusalem look down into the ravine. The whole scene is beautiful in its quiet repose. Yet it was in this narrow valley, now filled with fruit-trees and springing grain and sweet flowers, that the Israelites once offered their children to Moloch, and these very rocks on each side have re-echoed the screams of the innocent victims, and the chants and drummings of the priests, raised to drown the cries of agony. It is well called the Valley of Hinnom - " the Valley of the Groans of Children (Strictly, "of the Children of Groaning."): a name which perpetuates the horror once excited by the scenes it witnessed.

Ahaz and Manasseh had set a royal example in this horrible travesty of worship, by burning alive some of their own children; and what kings did commoners would be ready to copy. Yet who can tell the agony of soul it must have cost a father or mother, among a race where sons were so great a glory, to give up one to such a death, as a religious act? How many among ourselves would be capable of a tribute of devotion to the true God fit to be mentioned alongside of this, as a surrender to Him of all that the heart loves best? That love could only console itself by thinking that to pass, through the fire, to Moloch, was to be for ever with their Lord.

But so deeply had the horrors of the past printed themselves on the popular mind, that when the idol was destroyed by Josiah the spot was called Tophet "the Abomination " - "the Place to be Spat upon " ; and in later times the very words GeHinnom—" the Valley of Hinnom " - slightly changed into Gehenna, became the common name for hell.

The Hill of Evil Counsel rises on the south from the valley of Hinnom, owing its name to a tradition that the house of the high priest Caiaphas, in which the leaders of the Jews resolved an the death of our Lord, stood there. Beneath it the steep rocky sides of the valley are pierced with a great number of tombs, showing that this spot was used in ancient times as a cemetery. Some are cut into domes in the rock and ornamented, others are mere holes for bodies, hewn in the. face of the hill.

Most of the entrances appearing to have been closed by a stone door, turning on a socket hinge, and secured by bolts. Close at hand, but a little higher up the valley, is a spot with the evil name of Aceldama - " the Field of Blood," on which rises an old ruin, forming a flat-roofed cover to a dismal house of the dead. Two caverns open in the floor, their rocky sides pierced with holes for bodies; and galleries of tombs run into the hill from the bottom. Holes in the roof are still seen, through which the corpses were let down by ropes, and there are marks of steps by which the tombs were entered. Here, say the local traditions, was "the Potters’ Field," bought for the burial of strangers by the high priests with the thirty pieces of silver for which our Saviour was betrayed. Clay from around it is still used by the potters of Jerusalem.

About a hundred steps from Aceldama Hinnom. merges into another valley running along the south side of the city. Where the two thus join, Cheesemakers Valley, between Mounts Moriah and Zion, opened out, in ancient times, before it was filled up by the wreck of the city and Temple. On the south-east, the hill descends in huge steps, plentifully strewn with stones, and pitted with cisterns and small caves, in which the goats sleep at night, but veiled in part by olive-, almond-, and pomegranate-tree’s. Rough, stony, and swift in its descent, the south slope of Moriah is diligently cultivated wherever possible - of course in a rude Oriental way. On the lower of these slopes and terraces the Nethinim, or Temple slaves, lived in olden times, while on those higher up and nearer the Temple were some of the houses of the priests. Shafts sunk near these show how stupendous the labours spent by the Hebrew kings on fortifying Jerusalem must have been, for the wall is yet standing to the height of sixty-six feet below the rubbish of ages, and the face of the hill was found to have been cut away, where needful, into perpendicular scarps from forty to sixty feet high.

Rounding this southern end, formerly called Ophel, and turning a little way north, you reach the famous Pool of Siloam, on the western side of the valley. It is fifty-two feet long and eighteen wide, with some piers, like flying buttresses, on its north side, while part of a column rises in the middle of it. These are the remains of an old church, built over it thirteen hundred years ago, or of a monastery, erected at a spot so sacred, in the twelfth century. It was apparently to this pool that Christ sent the blind man to wash his eyes, and the miracle which followed invested it with such reverence that baths were erected under the church, to let the sick benefit by the wondrous water.

You go down eight ancient stone steps to reach the water, which is used by the people for drinking, for washing their not particularly clean linen, and for bathing. Everything around is dilapidated, :the stones loose, and in many cases fallen; the approach rough as the bottom of a quarry. At the north end a small tunnel opens in the rock, bringing the water from the Spring of the Virgin, which lies higher up the valley. This ancient engineering work is about two feet wide, and from two to sixteen feet in height, with a branch cut due west from it to a basin within the line of the ancient walls, where a round shaft more than forty feet deep has been sunk to reach it.

On the top of this a great chamber hewn in the rock, with a flight of steps leading down to it, made it possible for the citizens to cut off the supply of water from an enemy, while themselves enjoying it in safety. A notable discovery connected with the cutting of the. main tunnel, which is nearly one-third of a mile long, was made in 1880, by a youth, while wading up its mouth. Losing his footing, he noticed, as he was picking himself up, what proved to be an inscription left by the workmen, when they had finished their great undertaking. It appears that they began at both ends, but as engineering was hardly at its best three thousand years ago, their course was very far from being exactly straight, windings of more than 200 yards, like the course of a river, marking their work.

This undertaking, so wonderful’ for such an age and for so small a people, seems to date from about the eighth century before Christ. The depth of the tunnel below the surface, at its lowest, is 156 feet. The slope is very gentle, so that the water must always have flowed with an easy leisure from the spring to the pool, a characteristic which reminds us of the words of Isaiah, "the waters of Shiloah that go softly".

The present pool, into which the water still flows, was not originally, however, the only reservoir supplied by it. The remains of four other basins have been discovered, which, were apparently once connected with it; and a little way from it, down the valley, is an ancient "Lower Pool" which lies to the east of the upper one, but now has its bottom overgrown with trees, the overflow from the higher pool having for centuries trickled past it instead of filling it. This lower pool is famous for an old mulberry-tree, carefully guarded by stones, marking the spot on which, according to tradition, the great Prophet Isaiah was sawn asunder by Manasseh.

The Virgin’s Well, from which the whole supply comes, lies at the bottom of two flights of stone steps - thirty in all - broken and partly ruined, and has the glory of being the only spring rising in the Temple Mount. Its basin is about twelve feet long, and five wide, and the bottom is covered with small stones; but it is no longer worthy of its fine name, for two men were bathing in it when I saw it last. The waters have the curious feature of overflowing into the tunnel only at intervals: from three to five times a day in rainy winter, twice a day in summer, and only once a day in autumn, while after a dry winter the overflow takes place only once in three or four days.

Explanation is easy. A deep natural basin in the interior of the rocks is fed by numerous streamlets, but it has only one narrow outlet, which begins near the bottom: of the basin, and after rising above the top of it again descends, outwards. Whenever the stream rises to the bend in the outlet it begins to flow through it, and continues to flow, on the principle of the syphon, till the water in the hidden rock-basin has been lowered to below the point at which the bend commences. It is very possible that this peculiarity marks it as the Dragon’s Pool of Nehemiah.; * popular superstition supposing that the intermittent gush of waters was due to a gigantic water-monster in the hill, which drank up the stream and vomited it forth, in turn. The taste of the water is slightly salt and very unpleasant, from its having filtered through the vast mass of foul rubbish on which the city stands, and which has been soaked with the sewage of many centuries. The bottom is covered with a black slimy deposit, two or three inches thick. Still, from time to time water-carriers come to fill their water-skins; and women, with their great jars on their shoulders, repair to them, likewise, for their household supply.

South of Siloam there is an open space at the union of the different valleys. Here, in ancient times, David and Solomon had their royal gardens. Today, the hollow, and even the lower slopes at the sides, are still covered with gardens, watered by countless rills from the pool, so that every bed of flowers or plants is constantly moist. When the heat of summer has burned up the landscape, till rock and soil alike are mere yellow stone, these gardens and terraces, fed and quickened by the never-ceasing flaw, are richly green.

It was the opening spring when I gave myself up to the impressions of the spot. The light filled the heavens; Ophel and Moriah rose in long slopes or huge steps on the one side of the valley, and the village of Siloam, with its flat-roofed stone houses clinging to the bare hill, on the other old walls of loose stone stretched, apparently without any plan, hither and thither over the hollow of the valley; the fruit-trees of these regions were putting out their leaves; the gardens were beautiful with tender green; the soft murmur of flowing water was like a lullaby to care; and, as a setting to this fair picture, there was enough of barrenness on the hills around to heighten its charms by contrast. After the long cold months all the seeds of life were quickening, at once, in the sunshine.

A short distance south of the gardens is En Rogei, "the Fountain of the Spy," or, "the Fuller’s Spring," which used to be in the king’s gardens. Its present Arab name is "Job’s Well, though the patriarch had never, of course, any connection Well,"

Through how many ages it has been used by man, may be in part realised from the fact that it is mentioned, under the name En Rogel, in Joshua, as the boundary between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. It was here that Adonijah "slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle," and invited to the feast all his brothers, David’s sons, and all the officers of his father, intending through their help to seize the kingdom and exclude Solomon.

It was only natural that he should have expected to reign, for after Absalom’s death he was the eldest living son of David, having been born in Hebron, before his father’s accession to the throne of Israel. Like Absalom, he was at once handsome and ambitious, and resembled him also in being heartless, for he did not wait for his father’s death to get the throne. Surrounded, like’ a king, with a bodyguard, and followed by a strong force of retainers, he fancied all would prosper, now that David was sinking to his death. He had, moreover, the support of Joab and of Abiathar, the high priest. But Nathan the prophet spoiled the plot, and the shouts—" God save King Adonijah! " - were rudely interrupted by the huzzas hailing Solomon as the new monarch. It was enough. The guests vanished. Joab and Adonijah escaped, for the time, though the new prince's clemency, but they could not leave off plotting, and, ere long, fell victims of a new attempt to seize the throne.

The well - 125 feet deep - is lined with masonry, with a huge rock-hewn reservoir at the bottom. The well is entirely dependent on the rainfall, but, deep though it be, it overflows after four or five days of winter rain. Towards autumn, when many cisterns in Jerusalem have but little water, and that very bad, a great quantity is obtained from it, hundreds of asses being employed daily in carrying filled water-skins up to the city, 600 or 700 feet above. The villagers of Siloam, on the hill to the north-east of the well, drive a trade of their own in carrying water up to the city for sale to the poorer people; but they are a sorry set of cheats, often filling their skins, more or less, with air. Their extreme poverty is their only excuse, for they get no more than from a penny to sixpence for a skinful of water delivered in the city.

The view from En Rogel is very striking. The hills rise high, both east and west. One of them, known as the Hill of Offence, from the belief that it was here that Solomon built temples to the gods of the neighbouring people. The Hill of Evil Counsel, opposite, is far less uninviting, for its slopes show patches of grain between the outcroppings of rock, though a solitary, weird-looking tree on its bare top is hardly a pleasant landmark.

The Kedron valley runs northwards, past the Mount of Offence, stretching for nearly a mile and a half, first north, then west. It is best known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Opposite Ophel, perched on a very steep and slippery scarp cut in the face of the hill, lies the village of Silwan, or Siloam. There could hardly be a better defence than its difficult approach, which must at all times have made it a striking feature in the valley. I was glad to get down to the valley, after having looked into the village, which is a curious place, part of the inhabitants living in large caves and tombs of great antiquity. There are some houses, but they are very rude: generally mere hovels, built at the mouths of tombs that form part of the ancient cemetery of the Jews, of which many remains are seen in the Valley of Hinnom.

Everything is filthy in the extreme, even for the East, and the villagers, as becomes such a place, have a bad name for dishonesty. Very strangely, about a hundred of them are called Men of Dibon, and form a distinct body, apparently the descendants of a colony of Moabites sent from Dibon, in Moab, perhaps in connection with the altar of Chemosh, built by Solomon.

From whatever stock they are derived, the villagers are as industrious as they are churlish or given to larceny. I noticed two of three poor little oxen which had been let out to pick what they could get from between the stones on the steep hill-side: a rare sight in Palestine. A goatherd was playing on his monotonous reed pipe before his black flock, as they followed him along the side of Mount Moriah. A bare-legged, turbaned figure, in a loose white shirt, was guiding a primitive plough with one hand, the other holding a long goad, with which to quicken the speed of his slow oxen.

Near En Rogel some sheep were grazing. The Siloam poultry scratched the dust before the hovels of their owners, and crowed lustily against others at a distance. Some women in blue cotton passed with baskets of vegetables on their heads, and a knot of idlers gossiped under the shade of a fig-tree. A picture, one could not help thinking, of how it must have been in ancient Israel.

Making my way down the steep path, I crossed over to the Virgin’s Fountain, to remind myself of the fantastic legend from which the place takes its name - that here the Virgin washed the swaddling-clothes of our Lord—and to listen once more to the murmur of the water, and then went down the two flights of steps to the opening of the tunnel which conducts it to Siloam, the favourite bathing-place of the men and boys of the neighbourhood.