These stones are let into each other with a fillet, framed round about the cavity to prevent leakage, and united to each other with so firm a cement, that they will sometimes sooner break (though of a coarse kind of marble) than endure separation. This train of stones was covered, for its greater security, with a case of marble stones laid over it in very strong mortar. The whole work seems endued with such absolute firmness, as if designed for eternity. But of this strong aqueduct, which

* If this be " stone accurate, and arches," or arches of any kind really existed, then it would decide, that the construction was not by Solomon, since in the detailed descriptions of his magnificent temple, no allusion is made to arches, which undoubtedly would, if known, have been resorted to in such an edifice. [En.] t The traveller evidently supposed the stones in which the earthen pipes were tightly enclosed, to have been the pipes themselves. [Ec.]

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 9

was carried formerly five or six leagues, the Turks have left only here and there a fragment remaining."*

Dr. Pococke, another English traveller, who visited the same region about half a century later, presents a nearly similar account of these works.!

" We spent," says he, " another day in seeing the pools of Solomon. Descending the hills of Bethlehem to the south, we passed over a narrow valley and ascended the opposite hills, on the sides of which there is an aqueduct which conveys the water from the sealed fountain to Jerusalem. It here winds round the side of these hills, and is afterwards carried through the plains to Jerusalem, on a level with the surface of the ground. * * * little beyond this place, we came to the pools of Solomon, as they are commonly called, for there is a tradition that these were made by him, as well as the aqueduct, which seems to be confirmed by a passage in Josephus, who says there were pleasant gardens abounding with water at Epham, about 50 furlongs, or 6 1-4 * miles from Jerusalem, to which Solomon used frequently to go.