2.

Since travel is becoming a necessary part of education, and a journey
through the East is no longer attended with personal risk, Jerusalem will
soon be as familiar a station on the grand tour as Paris or Naples. The
task of describing it is already next to superfluous, so thoroughly has
the topography of the city been laid down by the surveys of Robinson and
the drawings of Roberts. There is little more left for Biblical research.
The few places which can be authenticated are now generally accepted, and
the many doubtful ones must always be the subjects of speculation and
conjecture. There is no new light which can remove the cloud of
uncertainties wherein one continually wanders. Yet, even rejecting all
these with the most skeptical spirit, there still remains enough to make
the place sacred in the eyes of every follower of Christ. The city stands
on the ancient site; the Mount of Olives looks down upon it; the
foundations of the Temple of Solomon are on Mount Moriah; the Pool of
Siloam has still a cup of water for those who at noontide go down to the
Valley of Jehosaphat; the ancient gate yet looketh towards Damascus, and
of the Palace of Herod, there is a tower which Time and Turk and Crusader
have spared.

Jerusalem is built on the summit ridge of the hill-country of Palestine,
just where it begins to slope eastward. Not half a mile from the Jaffa
Gate, the waters run towards the Mediterranean. It is about 2,700 feet
above the latter, and 4,000 feet above the Dead Sea, to which the descent
is much more abrupt. The hill, or rather group of small mounts, on which
Jerusalem stands, slants eastward to the brink of the Valley of
Jehosaphat, and the Mount of Olives rises opposite, from the sides and
summit of which, one sees the entire city spread out like a map before
him. The Valley of Hinnon, the bed of which is on a much higher level than
that of Jehosaphat, skirts the south-western and southern part of the
walls, and drops into the latter valley at the foot of Mount Zion, the
most southern of the mounts. The steep slope at the junction of the two
valleys is the site of the city of the Jebusites, the most ancient part of
Jerusalem. It is now covered with garden-terraces, the present wall
crossing from Mount Zion on the south to Mount Moriah on the east. A
little glen, anciently called the Tyropeon, divides the mounts, and winds
through to the Damascus Gate, on the north, though from the height of the
walls and th