164 



ERNEST W. GUENEY MASTERMAN^ ON 



complete repair, and we had the pleasure of taking Sir Moses 

 Montefiore and Lady Montefiore to see the Temple area, and the 

 Governor handed us, with pleasure, a cup of water from that 

 aqueduct ; — but it was broken afterwards, and left broken. But I 

 think, with Sir Charles Wilson, that it could easily be kept in 

 repair. 



The Secretary. — Mr. Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, I 

 think, on the whole, we may satisfy ourselves that things are better 

 now in the way of water supply in Jerusalem than they were when 

 Mrs. Finn lived there, and when I passed through it in 1884. We 

 had then to depend on one single supply for drinking water. That 

 was a spring down at the foot of the wall in the valley of the Kedron, 

 but now I think it is a great encouragement to those who contem- 

 plate, as I hope many people do, a visit to the shrine of Jerusalem 

 (Christians as well as Jews), that they will now have an opportunity 

 of drinking pure water. You may not be able to get such a supply 

 as you have in London for your " Turkish bath," sponge, or English 

 bath, but at any rate you get a supply of pure water, and you would 

 be less liable to maladies from the water supply than you would 

 have been a few years ago. 



No doubt Sir Charles Wilson is perfectly right — that this recon- 

 struction of the old aqueduct by some engineer, whose name I do 

 not know, but who was employed by the Turkish Governor, did not 

 carry out his work as it would have been done by an English 

 engineer, or the English Government. But if it gives half the supply 

 of pure water that was formerly delivered to the inhabitants, they 

 may consider themselves fairly well off. I should only regret if, 

 as Sir Charles Wilson seems to think, this infinitesimal improvement 

 should have the result of delaying to a distant date a more complete 

 reconstruction of the wonderful aqueduct and supply that was made 

 in the time of Solomon from Solomon's Pools. 



I do not think anyone has satisfactorily answered the question — 

 Where does this water come from that supplies Solomon's Pools 1 

 It is really a most remarkable spot. There are two or three Pools, 

 I think, Mrs. Finn ^ 



Mrs. Finn. — Three pools, and they all have a different supply. 

 They are not all supplied from one source. 



The Secretary. — I thought they were all supplied from the 

 head. 



