and the depth twenty-five feet. Of the second the length is four hundred and twenty-five feet, and the average breadth two hundred and four. Of the third the length is five hundred and eighty-three feet, and the average breadth one hundred and seventy-five. These have not continued entire for so many ages, merely to suit the purpose of the pasha of Egypt, the temporary lord of Palestine, or to supply water to Gentiles that tread Jerusalem under foot.

Some cultivated spots scattered throughout the land, in the vicinity of a town or village protected by a Turkish governor or an Arab sheik, still show what the vine-clad hills of Israel were, and what they are yet destined to be; and more delicious fruits may yet be found in that desolate land than wealth can command or art produce in less genial climes; and grapes and other fruits may still be gleaned, which put to shame the best artificial vineries of England.

The village of Kurieh, in the mountains, on the way from Gaza to Jerusalem, is embosomed among olives, pomegranates, and large fig-trees, a solitary palm rising above the cluster. Many of the terraces are finely cultivated, showing what these mountains might speedily become.1 Near Kuloneah, on the same road, about five miles distant from Jerusalem, figs, olives, and vines have resumed their place on many terraces; and the bottom of the valley, though stony, exhibits all the richness and beauty of a land once the garden of the Roman empire. It is, so far as cultivated, an orchard of fruit-trees, intermingled with vineyards, in which vines, figs, olives, pomegranates, peaches, &c., conspire, in rich luxuriance, to show what fruit Judea can produce wherever it is re-cultivated, even where the ground

1 Narrative, p. 164.

is very stony, while many far larger, and naturally far richer valleys, and hills alike terraced throughout, are utterly waste.

We cannot pass by the waste places around Jerusalem without looking to a more sure augury of a plenteous produce and a returning glory than that of the fairest flowers or the richest fruit. Desolation has indeed come up upon the land, and environed the now feeble walls of Jerusalem. The hills around it are waste. Upon them, except occasionally, and partially along the valleys at their base, there is scarcely a field that is ploughed, except that, according to the word of the Lord, which Zion itself has become. In the bottom of the deep valley of Jehoshaphat, over the brook Kedron, large and venerable olive-trees keep their place in the garden of Gethsemane, once stained with that blood which shall redeem from the curse the land, the people, and the world. A few trees are thinly scattered over the mount, whose name still tells that it was once in truth the Mount of Olives. "The Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody." "Break forth into joy, sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord hath comforted his people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be more appropriately our theme, in treating, at another time, if God will, on the covenant with David. It is not from the waste places around it, nor from a city often visited by plague, oppressed by strangers, and trodden down of the Gentiles, that any shadow can be seen of the eternal excellency which the Lord will make it, nor can any

1 Isaiah li. 3.

2

2 Ibid. lii. 9.