414 
THE HOLY LAND. 
TVeUs. 
CHAP, given by the sacred historian and by Josephus, — 
, and the text of Scripture so decidedly marks its 
locality, at the farthest extremity of Bethlehem 
(with reference to Jerusalem), that is to say, near 
the gate of the town on the eastern side ' (for 
David's captains had to fight through all the 
garrison stationed within the place, before they 
reached it^) — this may have been David's 
Well. It is known to travellers who have 
, . . . seen the wells of Greece and of the Holii Land, 
Antiquities "^ 
of Eastern that tlicrc cxists no monument of antient times 
more permanent than even an artificial ivell; 
that vases of terra cotta, of the highest antiquity, 
have been found in cleansing the wells o^ Athens .- 
and if they be natural sources, springing from 
cavities in the limestone rocks of a country 
where a ivell is the most important possession 
of the people, (in which number this well of 
Bethlehem may be classed,) there seems no 
reason to doubt the possibility of its existence 
in the remote ages to which a reference is now 
(l) " Bethlehena in dorso sitaest angiisto, ex omni parte vallibus cir- 
cumdato. Ab Occidente in Orientem mille passibus longa, humili sine 
turribus muro: in cujus oiientali angulo quasi quoddam naturale 
Semiantrum est," &c. Beda in Ubro de Locls Sanctis, cap. viii. 
. (2) This appears by the context, (2 5a»i.xxiii. 14. 16. J " And the 
gacrison of the Philistines was tlien in Beth-lehem And the 
three might}' men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew 
water out of the Weil of Bethlehem, that uas hy the gate," <^c. 
