but turning to the left, we slowly descended, skirting the high walls built behind a deep 
ravine, in which we perceived, from time to time, the stone foundations of Herod’s ancient 
inclosure. At every step we met Turkish burial-places, with tombstones surmounted by a 
turban. Those cemeteries, which the plague was nightly peopling, were filled with groups 
of Turkish and Arab women, weeping for their husbands or fathers. 
“ Those groups, seated there the whole day to weep, were the only sign of human 
occupancy that appeared in our circuit round Jerusalem. No noise, no smoke arose; and 
some pigeons, flying from the fig-trees to the battlements, or from the battlements to the 
edges of the sacred pools, gave the only movement in this mournful scene.” 1 
1 Travels in the East. 
THE POOL OF SILOAM. 
The site of this memorable fountain is not determinable from any of its notices in Scripture, 1 
but Josephus describes it as in the valley of the Tyropseon, on the south-east part of the 
ancient city, the precise situation in which we find the pool now bearing the name. 2 Jerome, 
about the close of the fourth century, describes it as “ a fountain at the foot of Mount Sion, 
whose waters do not flow regularly, but on certain days and hours, and issue with great 
noise from caverns in the hard rock.” 3 It is subsequently mentioned by a long succession 
of authorities, and Phocas (a.d. 1185) states it to have been “surrounded by arches and 
massive columns, with gardens below.” 
It is a small, deep reservoir, in the form of a parallelogram, into which the water flows 
from under the rocks, out of a smaller basin, or fissure in the rock, a few feet farther up. 
The reservoir is an artificial work, and the water comes to it through a subterranean 
channel from the Fountain of Mary, higher up in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The ridge 
Ophel ends here, just over the Pool of Siloam, in a steep point of rock, forty or fifty feet 
high. Along its base the water is conducted from the pool in a small channel hewn in the 
rock, and led off, to water the gardens of fig and other fruit-trees lying in terraces, which 
extend to the bottom of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, a descent of forty or fifty feet. 4 Siloam 
is now used as a public fountain; but it seems to have been once sacred to the uses of the 
Temple. Its perpetual stream was the subject of allusion by our Lord, and it was made the 
visible instrument of one of those mighty acts which He wrought among the people. 5 
1 Isaiah, viii. 6.—Nehemiah, ii. 15. 2 Bel. Jud. v. 4. 1. 
3 Hieron. Comm, in Esaiam, viii. 6. 1 Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 493, 501, &c. 
5 John, ix. 7—11. 
