arm, from whence the blood streamed most profusely. I bound up the wound with my handkerchief, and recommended the bandage to be kept on till the morning, conceiving the blood to be the most efficient plaster :— for this slight effort at surgery, I received a collection of wild flowers gathered from the brow of the mountain, and wove into a rude garland.

We reached the city between nine and ten o'clock; the gates had long been closed, and we were obliged to make a circuit of three-fourths of the walls, so as to enter by the gate of Damascus, which our Turks summoned by discharging their pistols.

DEAR E

LETTER XI.

To SIR G. ET, BART.

Jerusalem.

THIS afternoon we examined the vestiges of antiquity immediately without the city. Passing the valley of Gehinnon, I observed several excavations, which were probably the receptacles of the dead, though they want the distinctive marks of sepulchres. Further up the acclivity, there are some whose designation is less equivocal; but our drogoman was more than usually embarrassed by inquiries, of a nature seldom contemplated by his employers in the convent; and we were hurried on to those places with whose traditionary histories he was far better informed. The whole of this ascent is in great measure new ground for the research of the antiquarian; and if the continuance of peace, by the facilities it may afford of exploring these remote regions, should induce future

travellers to make Jerusalem an object of patient investigation, it is here probably that they will find the amplest scope for the exercise of their various erudition. Proceeding northerly, but keeping on the eastern side of the brook Kedron, we arrived at three structures, which are generally described as the tombs of Jehoshaphat, of Absalom, and of Zechariah. The first mentioned of these is believed to have contained the ashes of the monarch, from whom the valley has received its title. It is a kind of grotto, very little raised above the surface; the entrance is very low, and the proportions are extremely ungraceful, but the portal is adorned with an elegant frieze: the other two are hewn out of the rock, and appear as if detached from the mountain, of which they still constitute an integral part. Their height is from eighteen to twenty feet, and the breadth about eight: the lateral walls are square masses, relieved by pilasters crowned with Ionic1 capitals. The roof of that which is

1 The Vicomte de Châteaubriand describes these columns as being of the Doric order: his descriptions in every other instance were found to have been so minutely correct, that it was not till after repeated examination, confirmed by the observations of his friend, that the writer could prevail on himself to note them as Ionic.