felt at once the difficulty suggested by Prof. Robinson, from having just observed the extreme solidity and antiquity of all the lower part of the southern wall of the Haram enclosed within the city. I visited the spot again soon after, for the purpose of examining this point. It is obvious that the wall lies in its massive original strength, unmoved and immoveable. At the point where the city wall meets it, or, rather, connecting this with that of the Haram, you will recollect, is a large irregular building, now unoccupied.* Its lower rooms adjoining the garden or field within the city, are accessible from it. I entered the one adjacent to the Haram, whose wall forms one of its sides, and exhibits the same appearance as without; excluding up to this point the supposition of any breach in it, since its foundation.

My attention was now arrested by another object. The arch which forms the ceiling of the room, as it rises from its eastern wall, twelve or fifteen feet above the floor, cuts off the square corner of a sculptured stone, projecting several inches from the solid wall of the Haram, with its side and front profusely ornamented, though now blackened. It struck me at once, that this was a portion of the ancient gateway discovered by Mr. Catherwood, and described in the Researches.t

"I now went round by St. Stephen's gate to examine the spot without the wall; remarking, as I passed the Golden Gate, that the architecture which I had just seen was of the same florid character. I found a room in the exterior building, east of the one in which I had been, the entrances to which were closed. But it evidently did not embrace the whole width of the ancient gateway, the eastern part of whose ornamented arch with other relics, still remained in the wall outside. In the summit of this arch is a window, which the accumulation of rubbish here has left not more than ten feet above the ground. I climbed up to this window, on the

* Described in the Bib. Res. as a low, square tower, forming a gateway or entrance to the city, now closed. Vol. I. p. 387.

I have a distinct recollection of having in like manner noticed this sculptured stone; but as we then had no suspicion of the existence of the gateway, this led to no further results.-R.

wall, and looked through the iron grating. I found myself directly over the gate, (or over the eastern part, for it was double,) and the broad passage [aisle] leading down to it, extending, with a row of columns in the middle, as far as I could I observed a door near the bottom of the passage opening to the east.

see.

"I found here, unexpectedly, a solution of the difficulty which I had felt. Here were the 'vaults' which Maundrell saw. They could have been no other; and the two aisles' of these and their general appearance accord with his description. The same may, perhaps, be said of the other travellers referred to. In their day, the outer building probably did not exist; and the passage-way was visible from an opening in the city."

The very next day, Jan. 11th, Mr. Wolcott again visited, with Mr. Tipping, an English artist, the western room first above described, in which he had noticed a portion of the gateway; and while pursuing their examination, they were enabled, by the aid of a Mussulman boy, to obtain access to the eastern room already mentioned. Here they very unexpectedly found themselves before the entrance of the western half of the double gateway, which opens into the said room. They entered the avenue under the Mosk, and traversed its aisles, taking then but a cursory view. Under date of Jan. 25th, Mr. W. writes as follows:

"I have again visited the passage and gateway under the Haram for a more particular examination. The evidences of its antiquity are unquestionable. Connected with each gate are two marble Corinthian columns, indicating, as Dr. R. has observed, a Roman origin; and there are also works of Saracenic work of a still later date. But the foundations are Jewish; and both walls of the passage are composed in part of smooth, bevelled stones. The arches are of hewn stone, and are the noblest that I have seen in the country. As I walked through the broad aisles, in a stillness broken only by the sound of my footsteps, it was a thrilling thought, that I was treading one of the avenues through which the tribes had pressed to the temple. I seemed to see the throng of worshippers, and to hear their chant: 'I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. I will pay my vows now in the presence of all his people, in the court of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord.'

"I subsequently visited the place with Mr. Tipping, who has taken an accurate drawing of it. We took a few measurements. The bottom of the passage is now lower than the ground without; but as rubbish has collected here, it must once have been higher. Its width is forty-two feet; leaving, exclusive of the columns in the middle, about nineteen feet for each aisle. Between the gates is a partition extending ten or twelve feet within, composed of stones of that length and of great thickness; that of one which we measured was four and a half feet. The two longest stones which I saw, were in one of the side walls, each thirteen feet in length and bevelled. The first column is twenty feet high, and fifteen and a half feet in circumference, and is a single block; its capital being a part of it. Beyond the second column, the floor of the passage is raised several feet, and in the western aisle is mounted by steps. In the eastern aisle, in place of steps is a layer of immense stones with their ends bevelled; and upon it, eight or ten feet back, is a wall of mason-work, a little higher than the upper floor of the passage. Of the columns on the elevated portion, only the first is round, and of a single stone, like the lower ones; the rest are square and built with masonry. The upper end of the western aisle is parted off into a small room. At the head of the eastern is the entrance from above, by a common picket gate, to which a few steps lead down, and through which we could see the green grass of the Haram.† A Mihrab [niche of prayer] has been erected here, and another at the foot of the aisle. They have also been placed in the recesses of two door-ways near the bottom, on each side of the gateway, which have been walled up. We have ascertained that the place is still visited for Muslim devotion. We were fortunate in finding it vacant. An owl perched on the capital of one of the columns, and a bat which flitted across the aisles, were the only living things we saw,-representatives of the mournful decay of the glory of the place."

*Mr. Catherwood supposed the bottom of the gateway to be fifteen or twenty feet above the ground outside; Bib. Res. I. p. 451. He would seem not to have passed out into the exterior building; and probably judged merely from the window and the external traces as seen outside.-R.

See Bib. Res. I. p. 450.

In another part of the same letter Mr. Wolcott speaks of the square exterior building above mentioned, in the following manner :

"Mr. Tipping and myself are fully persuaded, that this was never a gate. The stones with which the arch (forming the supposed entrance) is walled up, appear to be of the same age with the others; and this, you know, is the common mode of building. The outer layer appears indeed to have been laid up subsequently; but the inner fits in with the walls of the apartment, and would seem to have been built at the same time. There might possibly have been an open court here. But a gate would be supposing a thoroughfare, where every appearance is against it; and would require passers in and out to mount ten or twelve feet into a large building, pass through it, and descend; which their animals certainly could not do.* We cannot discover the faintest trace of a gate or passage way; nor in such proximity to the Dung-gate, so called, could there have been occasion for any. There are two or three similar, but smaller arches walled up in the adjoining eastern room; and three or four more further east, in the southern wall of the Haram. The wonder is, to what use the building could ever have been applied; and that such an excrescence on the Haram should have been permitted."

This building both Mr. Smith and the writer were led to regard as a gate walled up, from its general resemblance to the walled-up portals of the gate of Herod and the Dung-gate so called. We noticed it first from the outside, and had no doubt of its being such a gate, leading apparently up into the Haram. But as we then had no suspicion of the existence of the ancient subterranean gateway; and as, on examining it from the inside of the city, we found it apparently leading into the city, in the same way as the Yâfa gate and others, we rested in this supposition, without giving the walls so close an examination as Mr. W. appears to have done.

So far as my

* This account I do not fully understand. recollection goes, the floor of the western room which we entered, was nearly, or quite, on the same level as the ground farther west. At any rate, the room had then recently been used as a stable for horses or mules.-R.

† See Bib. Res. I. p. 387.

Knowing what we now do, we can more easily understand what the older travellers say of the "vaults," and may also perhaps account for the external building. In Felix Fabri's time, A. D. 1483, the city wall had not yet been rebuilt; and he speaks here of "many great hewn stones lying in the open street; over which stones he climbed up to the wall, and entering through a hole [probably the portal of the ancient gateway] came into high, long, beautiful, arched vaults, under the area of the temple." Here was then no city wall; but there would seem to have been a thoroughfare. The wall was built in 1542;† and in 1697 Maundrell goes and visits the entrance of the vaults at a point within the city. From all this it seems to me possible, and perhaps not improbable, that, when the city wall was rebuilt, this external building was erected as a gateway to accommodate a former thoroughfare here leading out of the city, and also to cover the portal of the ancient subterranean gateway, which was then still used as an entrance to the Haram; that the external opening in this building towards the South, was early walled up and the thoroughfare cut off, still leaving open the portal leading up under the Mosk; that it was in this state when Maundrell saw it, he having entered from the west; and that, since his day, this portal has been further closed by the partition wall dividing the building into two parts, or at least by walling up any passage through it which might formerly have existed. At any rate, I could wish the building might be examined in connexion with some such mode of explanation; and if this conjecture should turn out to be without foundation, some other better hypothesis might then be suggested.

Fountain under the Grand Mosk.-The information we were able to collect respecting this fountain; our attempts to obtain permission to descend into the well; and the reasons which compelled us to leave the enterprise unfinished; are all detailed in the Biblical Researches, Vol. I. p. 508 sq. The well is more than eighty feet deep; the mouth of it is on a platform, or rather the flat roof of a low building, eighteen or twenty feet above the level of the adjacent street. We ascended to it, in all our visits, by a flight of steps from the street leading to the southernmost entrance of the Haram.

* Reissb. ins h. Land p.

279.

† Bib. Res. I.

p.

384.