Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

The position of the gates also-since the western part of the south wall, and they would surely be designed with some that the precincts of the Temple which regard to symmetry is another guide he built extended over the sites of Solto the selection of the oldest part omon's Temple and Solomon's palace, as of the work. Now, without going into also over the space near those buildings details, we may say that the evidence of in the south-west angle. Herod's Temthe walls is quite in harmony with the ple, in short, is thought to have had its supposition which places the first Temple north wall on the same line as Solomon's, on the summit as above described. This but to have been 900 feet square, instead also is quite new evidence, like that con- of 900 by 600. cerning the form of the rock. If the Somewhere near the present north wall Turkish authorities had not expressly of the Sanctuary was the Pool of Bethesforbidden excavations within the Sanctu- da. There are pools in that vicinity now, ary, it would be advisable to try to find fed, no doubt, by the same spring which the foundations of the north and south fed the Bethesda of St. John's Gospel; but walls of Solomon's Temple. If these at present it cannot be ascertained which should be discovered on the sites where- of them, or whether any of them, is that on they are supposed to have stood, little pool. There is reason to believe that doubt could remain as to the plan of this pools which once existed in that neighbuilding; but we must wait for more lib-borhood have disappeared, and that the eral times before this test can be applied. water is now collected in newer reserIt has been ascertained, however, by ex-voirs. The Pool of Siloam remains as of amination of the ground outside the old just at the junction of the Tyropæan Sanctuary walls, and by some observa- and Kedron valleys. A fountain known tions which it was possible to make now as "the Virgin's Fount" has been within them without disturbing the ground, identified with En-Rogel, which was a that along the line which is thought point in the boundary line between Judah to have been that of the north wall of and Benjamin, as recorded in the Book the Temple, the side of a natural valley of Joshua; it is the same En-Rogel by or an artificial ditch extended. Proba- which Ahimaaz and Jonathan* the son bly the two containing valleys of Mount of Abiathar waited on David's behalf for Moriah turned inwards and nearly met there; and advantage was taken of this circumstance by connecting the two with a ditch. Some part of the rock on this ditch side is known to be scraped-that is, cut to nearly a vertical plane. All this favours the idea that the wall of Solomon's Temple stood here.

But there is a portion of the present south wall which is, there can be no doubt, as old as the walls which have been suggested as being the east and west walls of the Temple enclosure. If the south wall of the ancient Temple was 300 feet away from this wall, what can this wall have been? The answer is that it was probably the wall of Solomon's palace, which is of antiquity equal to that of the Temple. The former building may have been built a little below the brow of the hill although the latter might not indeed, if we suppose the Temple on the plateau of the summit, there is no place near it for the palace without going a little down the hill. But if the palace occupied only a portion to wit, the south-east angle of what is now the Sanctuary, how comes it that the Sanctuary is now a rectangle with a continuous south wall running right across? Well, the supposition is that Herod built

tidings of the determination of the council of Absalom's rebellion; and it is that at which Adonijaht slew sheep and oxen when he laid claim to the kingdom. This is a very recent discovery, due to the survey which noted the rock Zoheleth, and so led to the identification of the fountain. The pools of Solomon were supplied from a fountain at Hebron, and they again supplied water to the city. Two aqueducts by which the water was conveyed have been traced. One is quite useless now, and the other of but little use. From the great number of channels and cisterns which have been discovered, it is clear that the Holy City was once very well supplied with water; but the aqueducts have been destroyed, or suffered to fall to decay, and the cisterns have been turned to the vilest uses. The very soil has been so poisoned by impurities, that a scratch or a cut on a workman's hand would not heal for a long time; and as for the water, it is in many places so contaminated by the neighbourhood of the drains as to be offensive to the taste.

The ancient articles brought to light by the exploration were but few. They ↑ Kings, i. 9.

2 Samuel, xvii. 17.

were principally lamps and vases, weights, | them down-bring down, that is, some of bronze figures, and sepulchral chests. the finest and most massive masonry in The seal of Haggai the son of Shebniah the world, which rested on the rock, by was found in the rubbish of the Tyropean removing some of the rubbish which had valley, at a depth of 22 feet. But of the accumulated beside it! Captain Warren few articles found, it is remarkable that was, however, even with the intelligent hardly any are Jewish. A great mass of Pacha as far as examining the walls went, details has been given, which, though as as we shall see directly. First let us exyet they have led up to nothing positive, plain that the method of examination may, after further inquiry, be found to which Captain Wilson, when he made contain the keys to many disputed ques- the survey, was not provided with the tions; for the work of the survey is not means of following, and which Captain likely to perish; what has been done is Warren did adopt in all his principal exdistinctly recorded on drawings with di- aminations was the rough-and-ready mensions and levels, so that the work style of mining made use of in sieges, can at any time be farther prosecuted the same being taught to all officers of without having to repeat any of the oper- Royal Engineers at the school of Miliations already registered. tary Engineering. A well or shaft, three But while we are gratified at the clear or four feet square, is commenced, and unquestionable results of these en- and as soon as it has been excavated terprises, we must not overlook the risk to a slight depth, wooden frames of a and toil by means of which they were strength in inverse proportion to the successful. Captain Warren and his as- self-supporting power of the earth, clay, sistants would seem to have been daily gravel, or other soil, are introduced. in peril of their lives; the climate pun- Where the ground has any tenacity at all, ished them, their work was dangerous, the first three or four feet of shaft can be and the Turkish officials continually sunk before a frame is fixed, and then thwarted them. One of these enlightened the frames can be built in one over anpersons explained to Captain Warren the other from the bottom upwards; but as whole structure of the noble Sanctuary- the depth increases, this method becomes the very place that the Christian world impossible, and a frame has to be fixed is yearning to know even a little concern- under those already in place as soon as ing-winding up with the information there is space dug out for it. The cases that the sacred rock, Sakhra, lies on the or frames are in four parts, made with top leaves of a palm-tree, from the roots mortises and tenons, so that they may be of which spring all the rivers of the earth; easily put together; and if the soil be and that the attempt of a Frank to pry very loose indeed, it may be necessary to into such matters could only be attended excavate one side only of the shaft, then by some dire calamity befalling the coun- to fix the half of the frame, and aftertry." From functionaries with minds wards to excavate the other side and fix thus cultivated much sympathy or aid the rest of the frame. The series of was not to be expected; and although cases or frames forms a strong wooden our explorers were fortified by a vizierial lining to the shaft. Any part of the linletter from Constantinople, excuses were ing liable to extra pressure may, of course, continually invented for interfering with be strengthened by screwing on addiand restricting the proceedings. The tional planks. Captain Warren appears probability that they might disturb the to have carried these shafts to a greater graves of some of the faithful was contin- depth than is usually necessary in miliually put forward as a reason for inter- tary mining, for we find him sometimes rupting the search. The orientals, it sinking 90 feet below the surface of the seems, can form no higher idea of our ground. But the art of military mining objects than that we are seeking for includes something more than making buried treasure, which, although they wells and going up and down in them; have not the energy to look for it them- it can from the bottom or from any stage selves, they cordially grudge us. The of the shaft commence and produce a vizierial letter unfortunately excepted the subterranean passage or gallery, either Noble Sanctuary from the places where horizontal or inclining upwards or downdigging was to be permitted; conse- wards, and so give means of moving quently Captain Warren commenced op- about in the recesses of the earth. The erations outside its walls; whereupon galleries are supported by timbers and the Pacha forbade him to dig within 40 planking much in the same way as the feet of the walls, lest he should bring mines are lined. The breadth and depth

of them are kept as short as possible, in jeopardy being Captain Warren himand there is usually no more than room | self, and his most useful and adventurous for a man to crawl along in them. It chief assistant, Sergeant Birtles. The was by means of his burrowing power Sergeant, while they were examining that Captain Warren out-witted the Pacha. some vaults near the west wall of the He obeyed the direction to dig at least Sanctuary, "clambered up a piece of 40 feet away from the walls; but as soon wall where the stones were sticking out as he was down to a convenient depth he like teeth. At about 8 feet from the burrowed back to the wall, and then along ground one of these gave way, and he its face, so as to examine it, without the fell back with it in his arms. Luckily, Pacha being, in the first instance, at all it was so heavy that they turned in fallthe wiser. Afterwards, the limit of 40 ing, and fell together sideways; it then feet was encroached on, little by little; rolled over on to him, and injured him and the Pacha, when he came to know severely, so that he could barely crawl that the miners had had their will in spite out into the open air. He suffered from of him, seems to have taken the frustra- this injury for some months." At anothtion of his orders with the philosophy of er time the same adventurous explorer a Turk, and not to have been extreme in was, by a fall of rubbish behind him, marking the distance of the shafts from blocked up without a light for two hours. the wall. But he continued to be ob- The following adventure occurred in a structive and disagreeable in a variety vault under the convent of the Sisters of of ways; and first among the difficulties Sion: with which Captain Warren had to contend, and which he patiently grappled with, was the hostile spirit of the local government. Then came the morbid effects of the climate, and of the air of wells and tunnels in soil charged with all manner of impurities. The party sickened one after another; every one appears to have been attacked by fever; some of the non-commissioned officers had to be invalided and sent home; and one of them died. Thirdly, there were the natural difficulties of making the explorations, which were so great and numerous that the party may be said to have wrought constantly in peril of their lives. The shingle, or stone-chippings, was, as has been said, so loose that when once set in motion it flowed like water. It rushed into the shafts and galleries at times, completely flooding the passages, and threatening to overwhelm the ex- Another time Captain Warren descendplorers. Sometimes it ran away from ing from a private garden through a outside their casings, or from beneath tank's mouth found part of the aperture them in their shafts, or from before them to be so small that he could not succeed in their galleries, leaving vast and dan- till he had stripped nearly to the skin. gerous chasms; and on one or two occa- Then he found himself in a cistern havsions compelling them to leave the place ing in it three feet of water; but on where they were, fill up their excavations, lighting up some magnesium wire, he saw and be cheated of their reward after days such a series of arches as made him of labour. And the flowing of the shingle think at first that he must be in a church. was dangerous, not only for what it could So he signalled for Sergeant Birtles to do itself: when it gave way, it allowed come down too; but the Sergeant, after heavy stones that might have been rest-considerably injuring his shoulders in the ing on it to fall; and these thundering attempt, was unable to pass the narrow into a shaft or gallery were anything but pleasant or harmless intruders. Scarcely an excavation was undertaken without a contretemps that might have been a fatal accident the persons most frequently

I looked into this passage, and found it to open out to a width of 4 feet, and to be full of sewage 5 feet deep. I got some planks, and made a perilous voyage on the sewage for about 12 feet, and found myself in a magnificent passage cut in the rock 30 feet high, and covered by large stones laid across horizontally. Seeing how desirable it would be to trace out this passage, I obtained three old doors, and went down there to-day with Sergeant Birtles. We laid them down on the surface of the sewage, and and throwing it in front of us. . . . advanced along by lifting up the hindermost In some places the sewage was exceedingly moist and very offensive, and it was difficult to keep our balance whilst getting up the doors after they had sunk in the muck. [The earth level suddenly changed and they had to descend.] Everything had become so slippery that we had to exercise great caution in lowering ourselves down, lest an unlucky false step might cause a header into the murky liquid.

opening, and had at last to go and get the owner's permission to pull down the upper mouth of the shaft. This accomplished, he speedily got down and joined his officer, who was waiting all this time

in the cistern. The Captain, however, place. Just here I involuntarily swallowed a while directing Birtles' steps, fell himself portion of my lead pencil, nearly choking for a over a large stone into the water flat on minute or two. We were now going in a zigzag his face. The weather was frosty, and a direction towards the northwest, and the height bath in one's clothes, as he says, not increased to 4 feet 6 inches, which gave us a little breathing space; but at 1050 feet we were pleasant under the circumstances. The reduced to 2 feet 6 inches, and at 1100 feet we building they were in was not a church, were again crawling with a height of only I foot but an extensive underground area, sur- 10 inches. We should probably have suffered mounted by groined arches resting upon more from the cold than we did, had not our many piers. Its present use is as a tank, risible faculties been excited by the sight of our but it is not yet clear whether it was fellah in front plunging and puffing through the originally so or not. In following the water like a young grampus. course of an aqueduct which they traced for 250 feet in one direction and 200 feet in another, this was the sort of passage which they had in some places to make:

"Sometimes we could crawl on hands

One can hardly wonder that these poor men got fevers; the marvel rather is how they were able to persevere at all with such work to its completion. They cerand knees; then we had to creep side-tainly were strangely protected. Once on ways; again we lay on our backs and having worked their way to the bottom wriggled along." But this was a mild of a well, they saw a piece of loose maaqueduct adventure compared with another which we quote:·

Our difficulties now commenced. Sergeant Birtles, with a fellah, went ahead, measuring with tape, while I followed with compass and field-book. The bottom is a soft silt, with a calcareous crust at top, strong enough to bear the human weight, except in a few places where it lets one in with a flop. Our measurements of height were taken from the top of this crust, as

it now forms the bottom of the aqueduct; the mud silt is from 15 inches to 18 inches deep. We were now crawling all fours, and thought we were getting on very pleasantly, the water being only 4 inches deep, and we were not wet higher than our hips. Presently bits of cabbage-stalks came floating by, and we suddenly awoke to the fact that the waters were rising. The Virgin's Fount is used as a sort of scullery to the Silwân village, the refuse thrown there being carried off down the passage each time the water rises. The rising of the waters had not been anticipated, as they had risen only two hours previous to our entrance. At 850 feet the height of the channel was reduced to I foot 10 inches, and here our troubles began. The water was running with great violence, I foot in height; and we, crawling full length, were up to our necks in it.

I was particularly embarrassed: one hand necessarily wet and dirty, the other holding a pencil, compass, and field-book; the candle for the most part in my mouth. Another 50 feet brought us to a place where we had regularly to run the gauntlet of the waters. The passage being only I foot 4 inches high, we had just 4 inches breathing space, and had some difficulty in twisting our necks round properly. When observing, my mouth was under water. At 900 feet we came upon two false cuttings, one on each side of the aqueduct. They go in for about 2 feet each. I could not discover any appearance of their being passages: if they are, and are stopped up for any distance, it will be next to impossible to clear them out in such a VOL. II. 54

LIVING AGE.

sonry (which was afterwards found to weigh 8 cwt.) hanging 40 feet above their heads. One of the feebly-held stones starting would have sent the whole mass on them, and there they would have ended their labours, crushed and buried in a deep enough grave, had the least thing gone wrong; but with the greatest coolness and care they climbed up to the top, using many odd means of raising themselves, but doing all so cleverly as to emerge unhurt. Here is another of Captain Warren's escapes, quite as worthy to be called hair-breadth as many that make the excitement of fiction, which we cannot refrain from quoting:

About a mile south of the village of Lifta, on the crest of a hill, is a chasm in the rocks, about which there are many traditions, and which we failed to explore in the spring. We went there last Monday, provided with three ladders, reaching together 120 feet, and a dockyard rope 165 feet long. We had three men to assist in lowering us on the rope. The entrance from the top just allows of a man squeezing through; but as you descend the chasm opens out, until at 125 feet it is about 15 feet by 30 inches. At this point is a ledge, and we rested there while we lowered the ladders another 30 feet, to enable us to descend to the bottom, which is at the great depth of 155 feet from the surface. The chasm is exactly perpendicular, and the bottom is horizontal. Water was dripping quickly from the rocks, but ran out of sight at once. On the floor was a rough stone pillar, and near it the skeleton of an infant; close to the pillar is a cleft in the rock, very narrow, into which water was running. I got down into this; but it is a crevice which gets narrower and narrower, and there being no hold, I slipped down until my head was about 4 feet below the surface. Here I stuck, every moment jamming me tighter down the cleft. Ten minutes of desperate struggling, and the help of a friendly

grip, brought me to the surface again, minus a considerable portion of my skin and clothing. On ascending we had some little excitement: at one time the grass-rope-ladder caught fire; at another, the men suddenly let me down nearly 3 feet, the jerk nearly wrenching the rope out

of their hands.

Antres vast, and deserts wild, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

the Arabs, and was in every way qualified for his office. The people who did the work were Arabs from Siloam and Lifta, villages near Jerusalem, and Nubians and men from the city. There was, of course, the usual higgling about wages; but when this was over, it was found that the true Now and then they had a comic adven-believers were constantly seized with an ture-as, for example, when Sergeant inclination to pray during working hours, Birtles, down a shaft and working lateral- although they were never seen to do so in ly through a wall, found himself in an un- their leisure times, so that it became nederground smithy. The conscience of cessary to make a deduction from the pay the smith told him that the intruder must for every prayer, which had the effect of be a gin come to torment him for his hard considerably moderating the religious arbargains, and he accordingly fell on his dour. One good old fellow and old fellah, knees before the apparition. It is, how- though, did submit to the deduction, and ever, comforting to know, that of all their ask leave regularly on Fridays to go to moving accidents in the Mosque; and the directors cleverly proposed that he should pray for all, and, in consideration of so doing, receive pay for the time of absence. This arrangement smoothed matters greatly. The wages fixed were rather high, but the officer was able to adhere to them, and the men did not at all relish being sent off the works. It was customary for the sergeant to keep always enough money about him to settle with a man and discharge him on the spot, if he wouldn't be When the offence obedient and work. was idleness, the culprit had the choice of being punished with the corbatch, or being discharged, and he generally chose the corporal punishment. The fellahin understand, Captain Warren says, the meaning of justice, but not the power of kindness. After a time they began to understand him, and he could always command labour at the known rates. strange village the higgling would have lasted a day or more, and, after all, the employer would have been imposed on. The arts of these people are very cunning. They practise upon Europeans, and act their parts so cleverly, that it requires much experience to escape being Of course the small staff sent out from taken in. Though some of them are England could do no more than direct the smart, strong men, they cannot manage various operations and keep account of barrow-work at all; wheeling seems in a them. Native labour had to be largely very short time to exhaust them altogethused, and very troublesome and inefficienter. The patriarchal feeling is still so gangs they appear for the most part to have been, requiring all the skill and tact of the Engineers to get work out of them. It is a remarkable fact that Jews, as workmen, were found to be utterly useless. We might have added that they were useless in any capacity as regarded the explorations, had it not been that one Jew turned out a capital overseer, who administered the corbatch in first-rate style when the men were idling, showed no fear of

only one had at all a serious termination. They had been making a cut some 20 feet deep through a bank of earth that lay against a wall of the city, and the men (natives) were just getting into the excavation to set to work-only six of them were dangerously advanced-when the bank gave way, falling in upon the wall, and partially inhuming the six men. One of them was wholly buried; but before the second slip occurred which took him from their sight, they saw for a second or two his ghastly face. They were all extricated the other five with ease, but this man only after some digging; and when the latter was got out he had to be carried to his friends at Bethlehem. His pay was drawn for two weeks; but they could never see the man again, and were left to conjecture either that he had not been much hurt and had been drawing pay while able to work, or that he had died soon after the accident, and his brother had concealed the death that he might get the pay.

In a

strong among them, that it was soon found that by treating the elders with a little consideration, a pretty stern discipline could be maintained among the younger. Every man was searched when he came off the works, and as another precaution against dishonesty, people of different races were mixed together in the gangs. No thief could trust a man of another

It seems that he was a descendant of the Prophet.

« VorigeDoorgaan »