PART he saw within the Harem is also worth reading. We found nearly everything mentioned by him, and very much as he describes them. The beauty of the interior of the Mosque is greatly marred by numberless contrivances for illuminating the edifice, and by railings and galleries which The Rock. seem to answer no particular end that I could discover. The greatest curiosity is certainly the immense stone from which the name, Es Sakhrah (the Rock), is derived. It is a mass of native rock, the sole remnant of the top of the ridge of Moriah, some sixty feet long by fifty-five wide, and ten or twelve feet high on the lower side. All the rest of the ridge was cut away when levelling off the platform for the Temple and its courts. No tool of iron has left its mark upon this Sakhrah, and I please myself with the idea that it was the basis on which the altar of sacrifice was arranged. Nor am I convinced by the reasoning of those who hold that the Temple was a small edifice erected further to the south. It is not yet proved that the substructions by which the area in that direction has been extended are not of an age long posterior to Solomon, and therefore, on any scale of measurement, it must remain a matter of uncertainty just how far northward the Temple stood. Hence I do not quarrel with the tradition that the Mosque of Omar is on the site of that sacred sanctuary; and if this be so, the Sakhrah may well mark the exact spot of the altar. Beneath the south-east end of it is a cavern, the bottom of which is covered with the usual flooring of the country. Stamp upon it, and you discover that there is a well or shaft below; and the sheikh of the Harem told me that this shaft terminated in a horizontal passage leading southward from some place further back under the edifice, and that water descended along it. May not the blood and the ashes from the altar have originally been cast into this pit, and thence washed down into the valley of the Tyropean or of the Kidron, quite beyond the precincts of the holy house? Those who now speak of fountains in the enclosure must mean merely places where water is obtained from cisterns below the stoa. The curb-stones of these openings are deeply worn by the ropes of those who have drawn from these enormous reservoirs during many hundred years. El Aksa. Vaults. El Aksa was undoubtedly a Christian church, and probably the one built by Justinian. In converting it into a mosque, but little alteration was necessary, and hence we have the columns very much as they were in the original building. There is a close resemblance to the interior of the church at Bethlehem. The vaults beneath are very remarkable, but whether any of the huge limestone columns, with their architectural peculiarities, were of Solomonic times, I will not attempt to decide. It is my opinion, however, that there is nothing absurd in ascribing arches and columns to that age, for they were both employed in architecture long anterior to it. Instead of attempting to describe these vaults, columns, gateways, and mysterious passages, I must direct you to the works of others, and to the numerous drawings of artists. I ran about, half wild with excitement, until I was quite exhausted. The main vaults now accessible are beneath the south XLIV. eastern corner of the area. The piers which sustain the most eastern group CHAPTER are arranged in lines running from south to north, parallel to the outside wall of the Harem. There are fifteen rows, at very unequal distances, ranging The piers. from about six to twenty-three feet apart. And so also the length of the lines is very different. Those which extend furthest northward may reach two hundred feet, while the shortest terminate at the solid rock in less than forty corner. VAULTS UNDER EL AKSA. feet. The piers are built of blocks about four feet square more or less, rudely bevelled, and laid up somewhat carelessly. This group of piers and vaults is succeeded by another further west, similar to it, but less every way, and they extend to the substructions beneath El Aksa. No one can examine them for an hour without being convinced that the pillars are made out of older ruins, and that the vaults spread over them are comparatively modern. There are many remains, however, extremely ancient, particularly near the south-east The roof has fallen through in several places, and we descended to the vaults from one of these openings. The time will come when these interesting remains, in a most remarkable locality, will be fully cleared of rubbish, and thoroughly explored by scientific architects, and then we shall know what revelations they have to disclose. The description of these will take volumes, and, moreover, they will be very dry to all but artists and minute critics. I looked at the various traditional sites, Moslem and Christian, sat down on Solomon's throne and Mohammed's judgment-seat, and stood on the top of the Golden Gate for an hour, looking at this most suggestive spot View from and its surroundings. Olivet is beautiful, even in its present desolation; and the the area itself, with its mosques, minarets, oratories, columns, cypress, kharûb, Gate. olive, and other trees, form a tableau which will never be forgotten. Golden PART IV. Carrying sheaves. Nehemiah speaks of bringing sheaves into Jerusalem: 1 is it not singular that the people should carry their grain into the city to thresh it? It would be strange with us, because our citizens are not husbandmen. In the East, however, the farmers all live in villages and towns, and go forth tc cultivate the surrounding country. It is not unusual, therefore, for them to bring their harvest home to thresh it; and thus we find that Araunah the Jebusite had his threshing-floor on the present site of the Temple in the days of David.2 The farmers brought their grain within the walls of Jerusalem at the time of Nehemiah to secure it against robbers, for the country was then in an unsettled and unsafe condition; and I do not suppose that he rebuked them for adopting this precaution, but because they did the work on the Sabbath. They made the disturbed state of the country an excuse for violating the law of God, which was clear and emphatic on this very point: “In earing time and harvest thou shalt rest.' ."3 These people, as thousands still do, set aside this command, and maintained that during harvest and the vintage they must work on the Sabbath day-so they treaded their wine-presses, gathered grapes and figs, and brought in sheaves on that day. If Nehemiah were here now, he would be grieved with precisely the same violations, and might also find men of Tyre who bring fish, and all manner of ware, to sell on the Sabbath ; nor would he be able to break up these practices, and free Jerusalem from that sin on account of which God brought all this evil upon this city.5 No traveller thinks of leaving Jerusalem without paying a visit to the Wailing Wailing-place of the Jews in the Tyropean, at the base of the wall which supports the west side of the Temple area. Those stones, no doubt, formed part of the foundations of the holy house, placed there certainly not later than the time of Herod, perhaps long before. They are, however, not very large, and here, as everywhere else about Jerusalem, either the stones have been broken and ensmalled, or the measure used by Josephus was much shorter than has been assumed, or he greatly exaggerated. The latter is true, at any rate. There is not a specimen in any part of the Temple area, or about the Castle of David, which even approaches the size of those which he repeatedly affirms were placed in these towers and walls. Still, those at the Place of Wailing are large enough for all the purposes of strength and durability. Jews' place. Antiquity tom No sight meets the eye in Jerusalem more sadly suggestive than this wailing of the cus- of the Jews over the ruins of their Temple. It is a very old custom, and in past ages they have paid immense sums to their oppressors for the miserable satisfaction of kissing the stones and pouring out lamentations at the foot of their ancient sanctuary. With trembling lips and tearful eyes they sing, “ Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, Neh. xiii. 15. 2 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 18. 3 Exod xxxiv, 2L where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant CHAPTER things are laid waste." 1 XLIV. between South of this Wailing-place are the great stones of the arch which Dr. Arch of Robinson identified as part of the bridge on which Titus stood in order to hold bridge a parley with the Jews in the Temple. One of these stones is twenty-five Zion and feet long, another a little more than twenty, and the whole width of the bridge Morial was about fifty-one feet, while its length across the Tyropean to the perpendicular face of Zion could not have been less than three hundred and fifty. Of course there must have been several piers and arches. The whole causeway is supposed to have formed a magnificent passage from Zion to the south porch of the Temple. The identification, history, and object of this gigantic work have in our day furnished an arena of debate and strife almost as noisy and earnest as when the Temple was sacked and burned by the Romans. It is subsiding now, and we shall do nothing to renew it. In consequence of a vast growth of cactus in that neighbourhood, and the closing of the blind paths Isa. Ixiv. 9-11. PART IV. Size of Jerusalem. Number habitants. which formerly led to it, one cannot reach the spot without much trouble, and few travellers now visit it. Looking down upon the city this morning, and comparing the area with that of other great capitals, the question how Jerusalem could have accommodated the vast multitudes that resided in or resorted to her continually, occurred to my mind with unwonted emphasis. It has perplexed many before you, but the problem has been embarrassed by of her in- extreme assumptions. We are not required to find room for more than 200,000 regular inhabitants at Jerusalem in her highest prosperity and largest expansion. As to the 2,565,000 assembled at the Passover in the time when Cestius was governor, or the 1,200,000 shut in by Titus and his army, they were not citizens, but strangers. Josephus has given us an elaborate and minute topographical description of the city, from which, if no mistake has crept into his numbers, it is certain that the area within the walls did not much exceed one mile square. Other statements give larger dimensions, but we shall adhere to the thirty-three furlongs of Josephus for the entire circuit of the walls. Allowing for the Temple, there could not have remained more than the above superficies for dwellings, markets, offices, shops, streets, pools, and all other purposes and demands of a great city. Reasoning from these data, and from the statistics of modern European cities, Mr. Fergusson, in his ingenious but reckless critique, reduces the population to a very low figure indeed, and scouts the numbers of Josephus with utter contempt. But there are many circumstances overlooked or overleaped by Mr. Fergusson which must be carefully considered and allowed for if we would arrive at even an approximation to the truth. I do not believe his basis of calculation, that no modern European city has more than 25,000 inhabitants to the square mile. But admitting this extreme statement, it does not follow, because modern cities have only this number, that therefore Oriental cities in olden times had no more! We must remember that those ancient cities were built within walls; that gardens, parks, and open spaces were excluded, and the entire area occupied with buildings; that the streets were narrow, and covered over with houses; that stores, shops, markets, etc., were small, and had dwellings in the rear and above them; that the houses were several storeys high; that Orientals have even now but little furniture, and can and do crowd into very small apartments—an entire family in one room-many families in a single house; that the topography of Jerusalem, broken into valleys, is favourable to the erection of houses having many storeys, as in certain parts of Edinburgh, for example; and, finally, that the pressure of a constant necessity would lead both the government and the people to make provision to receive within the walls the largest possible number. These things considered, it will not appear unreasonable to allow for ancient Jerusalem twice as many rooms on the ground floor as can be found in a mile square of any modern European city, and double the number of people, on an average, to each room. This would give 100,000 inhabitants upon Mr. Fergusson's own data. But there were doubtless two if not three storeys to the |