west, and not very far from the south-west corner, is the Wailing Place of the Jews. From the Jaffa Gate we may reach it by going down David Street and through the fruit bazaar, and then turning through a by-lane. The Wailing Place is a narrow court, in which the temple rampart happens to be free and exposed in the Jews' quarter. Every Friday the court is crowded with Jews who come to read and pray, and bemoan the condition of their temple, their holy city, and their scattered people. The scene is striking from the great size and strength of the mighty stones, which rise without door or window up to the domes and cypresses above, suggesting how utterly the original worshippers are cast out by men of alien race and faith. Here we may see venerable men reading the Book of the Law, women in their long white robes kissing the ancient masonry, and praying through the crevices of the stones, Russian Jews, Spanish Jews, German Jews, men, women, and children, with gray locks, or blue-black hair, or russet beard, and dressed variously, according to their country—strange and unique is the spectacle! "It reminds one forcibly" (says Conder) "of the unchanged character of the Jews. After nineteen centuries of wandering and exile they are still the same as ever, still bound by the iron chain of Talmudic law, a people whose slavery to custom outruns even that of the Chinese to etiquette, and whose veneration for the past appears to preclude the possibility of progress or improvement in the present."
Pools and Fountains of Jerusalem.—Jerusalem is at present chiefly supplied with water by its cisterns. Every house of any size has one or more of them, into which the winter rains are conducted by little pipes and ducts from the roofs and courtyards. These private cisterns are generally vaulted chambers with only a small opening at the top, surrounded by stonework, and furnished with a curb and wheel. Many of them are ancient.
