About an hour after leaving Bethlehem, in a secluded valley, is one of
the few remaining public works of the great Hebrew Kings, It is in every
respect worthy of them. I speak of those colossal reservoirs cut out
of the native rock and fed by a single spring, discharging their waters
into an aqueduct of perforated stone, which, until a comparatively
recent period, still conveyed them to Jerusalem. They are three in
number, of varying lengths from five to six hundred feet, and almost
as broad; their depth, still undiscovered. They communicate with each
other, so that the water of the uppermost reservoir, flowing through the
intermediate one, reached the third, which fed the aqueduct. They are
lined with a hard cement like that which coats the pyramids, and which
remains uninjured; and it appears that hanging gardens once surrounded
them. The Arabs still call these reservoirs the pools of Solomon, nor is
there any reason to doubt the tradition. Tradition, perhaps often more
faithful than written documents, is a sure and almost infallible guide
in the minds of the people where there has been no complicated variety
of historic incidents to confuse and break the chain of memory; where
their rare revolutions have consisted of an eruption once in a thousand
years into the cultivated world; where society has never been broken
up, but their domestic manners have remained the same; where, too, they
revere truth, and are rigid in its oral delivery, since that is their
only means of disseminating knowledge.
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