" At about 140 paces from Solomon's pools, is the fountain from which principally they derive their waters. This the friars believe to be that sealed fountain to which the Holy Spouse is compared, [Cant. 4, 12,] and in confirmation of this opinion, they pretend a tradition, that Solomon shut up these springs and kept the door of them sealed with his signet, to the end that he might preserve the water for his drinking in the natural freshness and purity. Nor was it difficult thus to secure them, they rising under ground, and having no avenue to them but a little hole like the mouth of a narrow well. Through this hole you descend directly down, not without some difficulty, for about four yards, and then arrive in a vaulted room fifteen paces long, by eight broad. Joining to this, is another room of the same fashion, but somewhat less. Both these rooms are covered with handsome stone arches* very ancient, and perhaps the work of Solomon himself. You find here four places at which the waters rise from these separate sources ;
it is conveyed by little rivulets into a kind of basin, and from thence is carried by a large subterranean passage down into the pools. In the way, before it reaches the pools, there is an aqueduct. of brick pipes which receives part of the stream, and carries it by many turnings and windings about the mountain to Jerusalem."
Again, in speaking of the environs of Bethlehem, the same traveller thus more