'Dear sister,' I whispered, 'I think it will be better for me to leave you for a few moments. It will be sooner over, and you will find me in the garden presently.' And gently unclasping her hands, I left her alone with Arthur Trafford.
[UNDERGROUND JERUSALEM.]
As is pretty well known, Jerusalem, the City of David, rendered glorious by the Temple of Solomon, has undergone extraordinary vicissitudes; has been sacked and burned several times, the last of its dire misfortunes being its destruction by Titus in the year 70 of our era, when there was a thorough dispersion of the Jewish race. This ancient city, however, which is invested with so many sacred memories, always revived somehow after being laid waste, but in a style very different from the original. As it now stands, Jerusalem is a comparatively modern town, built out of ruins, and only by difficult and patient explorations can portions of its ancient remains be identified. Of the old memorials the most remarkable are those underground; that is to say, in vaults and obscure places only to be reached by excavation.
The notification of this fact brings us to a brief but we hope not uninteresting account of what in very recent times has been done, and is now doing by the Palestine Exploration Society, by means of extensive excavations, of which a carefully written description is given in Captain Warren's Underground Jerusalem.
In February 1867, Captain (then Lieutenant) Warren started for Palestine with three corporals of Engineers, and on the 17th arrived at Jerusalem after a prosperous and uneventful journey. The city does not seem to have struck him as being either picturesque or beautiful. 'It is a city of facts,' he says, 'and but little imagination is required to describe it.' Yet when viewed from the Mount of Olives, with the hills of Judah stretching to the south, and the rich valley of the Jordan glowing like a many-hued gem beneath the vivid sunlight, and the mountains of Moab cleaving with their purple beauty the soft clear blue of the Syrian sky, he does not deny to it a certain charm; but his heart was in his work, and his work lay in the old walls, particularly those which marked the almost obliterated inclosure of the Temple.
This edifice in the latter days of its glory, after it had been partially rebuilt by Herod the Great, was a splendid building. To enable us to realise its gigantic proportions, Captain Warren tells us that the southern face of the wall is at present nearly the length of the Crystal Palace, and the height of the transept. The area within its walls was more extensive than Lincoln's Inn Fields or Grosvenor Square, and the south wall offered a larger frontage and far greater height than Chelsea Hospital. It was built of hard white stone, and was enriched with a variety of coloured marbles, with graceful columns, with splendid gates overlaid with gold and silver, with gilded roofs, and with all the gorgeous detail of costly arabesque and carving. So rich was it in its dazzling magnificence, that it aroused the envy and cupidity of all the nations around, and finally fell with the city it adorned before the conquering arms of Titus. The Roman general tried in vain to save it; fired in the wild fury of the onslaught, it was consumed to ashes; and its very foundations so obliterated by the superincumbent rubbish, that for ages its precise site has been unknown. In fact the only sites in Jerusalem which were known with absolute certainty were the Mount of Olives and Mount Moriah. Now, in consequence of the discoveries made during the course of his excavations, Captain Warren has been able to identify the walls of the Temple and to make a plan of its courts. He has also found the spot where the little Hill of Zion formerly stood, the Valley of the Kidron, and the true position of the Vale of Hinnom; but to accomplish all this he has had many difficulties to contend with, quite apart from the necessary labour attending the excavations. The civil and military pachas did all in their power to hinder him, and would not allow him to begin to dig at all until a firman from the Sultan arrived authorising his operations. In the interval of enforced leisure, before the Vizieral permission arrived, he paid some necessary visits in Jerusalem, and then made arrangements for a tour in the lonely wilderness country which stretches to the east of the city.
A camp-life, we are told, is at once the most healthy and the most enjoyable in the East. In summer, the domed houses of Jerusalem are intolerable from heat and unpleasant odours; but out on the wide open upland, with a good horse, galloping along the dewy plains in the fresh exhilarating morning breeze; or stretched at night on a carpet of wild-flowers, lazily watching the pitching of the tent; or following with idle glance the myriads of bright-hued birds that dart like rainbow-tinted jewels from branch to branch of the fragrant wild myrtle—there is no land like Palestine for enjoyment. Look where you will, the view is interesting; that village nestling on the hill-side is Nain—the Fair; that picturesque rounded hill clothed to the summit with wood is Tabor; yonder dazzling snow-crowned mountain is Hermon; and far off in the hollow of the plain, silent and still, you may see gleaming in the sunshine the sullen waves of that mysterious Sea that ages ago ingulfed the guilty Cities of the Plain. Around you, too near sometimes to be pleasant, are the black tents of the Bedouin, true sons of the desert, whose wild life has a zest unknown to the courts of kings: greedy of bakshish, arrant thieves, and utterly reckless of human life, the Bedouins can be very unpleasant neighbours; and Captain Warren conceived, probably with truth, that the Bedouin encamped near him had all the will to be troublesome, but fortunately lacked the power.
Having examined the aqueducts which anciently brought water to the Pools of Solomon, Captain Warren visited and explored a curious cave at Khureitûn, or rather a series of four caves opening into each other, which appeared to him to be the veritable Cave of Adullam, where David and his band of malcontents found refuge.
Permission from the Grand Vizier having arrived, and the necessary interview with Izzet Pacha being over, the excavations were at once begun, and then the magnitude of the proposed operations was for the first time fully realised by Captain Warren. He had heard vaguely that modern Jerusalem was built upon sixty feet of rubbish; but he found that the layers of accumulated debris extended to one hundred and thirty, and sometimes two hundred feet in depth. For workmen, he had the peasantry around, who were unaccustomed to the use of the spade and barrow. They worked only with the mattock, and used rush-baskets for carrying out the earth. Another obstacle to progress was the want of wood; not a plank was to be obtained except at a fabulous price. In spite of all these difficulties, however, he discovered in the first four months a portion of the ancient city wall; he identified the real Kidron Valley, which runs into the present one, and is choked up with rubbish to the depth of one hundred and fifty feet; and ascertained that the present brook Kidron runs one hundred feet to the east of, and forty feet above the true bottom of the stream. Thus it would seem that the desolate inclosures of modern Jerusalem, its paltry and yet crowded bazaars, and its gloomy narrow streets, entomb with the beauty and glory and hallowed memories of the past, even those landmarks of nature which we are accustomed to consider most changeless and imperishable. Beneath its wastes lie forgotten valleys and hills, streams which have ceased to flow, and fountains which have long been empty and sealed.