have pitched upon a more agreeable situation, affording, at the same time, both delight and security.

Here are still remaining several rows of porphyry, and granate pillars; with a large fragment of an aqueduct, the same perhaps that Josephus* informs us, was built by Herod. It is a massy structure without arches, and stretches towards the S. E. But the chief surviving monument of the ancient grandeur and magnificence of this place, is a large triumphal arch of the Corinthian order, now converted into a mosque. The architrave is adorned with trophies, shields, battleaxes, and other military weapons; whilst the rest of the entablature is exceedingly bold and sumptuous. We see, dispersed all over these ruins, several fragments both of Greek and Latin inscriptions, but all of them are entirely defaced.

A furlong to the westward are the ruins of a beautiful cothon, in figure like an amphitheatre, and capacious enough to receive the whole Brifish navy. The mouth of it, which opens to the westward, is about forty feet wide, and defended by a small fort. The whole appears to have been a work and structure of great labour and design, though at present it is so much filled up with sand and pebbles, that half a dozen small vessels can only be admitted. The like accidents, arising chiefly from the large billows that attend the westerly storms, and bring along with them great

* Λαοδίκευσι δε τοις παραλίοις, ύδατων εισαγωγήν-ανέθηκε. Jos. de Bell. Jud. 1. i. c. 16.

great quantities of sand raised from the bottom of the adjacent shore, have entirely filled up the cothon of Jebilee; that a little to the northward of Tortosa, those of Rou-wadde, Tripoly, Tyre, Acre, and Jaffa. At all these places, we cannot sufficiently admire the great industry and contrivance of the ancients, in making such safe and convenient stations for vessels; at the same time, we must have the utmost contempt for their later masters, who out of avarice, or want of public spirit, have suffered them to become either altogether useless, or else of very little service to the trade and navigation of this rich and plentiful country.

About two furlongs to the northward of the city, near the sea shore, there are several sarcophagi, which are generally of an oblong square shape, though larger than those that are commonly found in Italy. They are, most of them, adorned with several beautiful decorations in shells and foliage, or else with busts of men and women, ox-heads and satyrs; besides others that are panelled, having moreover their covers sup ported by pilasters of the Ionic and Corinthian orders. They are each of one stone; some of which have their covers, or opercula, still remaining, and might be what were called formerly monubiles or monolithi*.

The rocky ground where we find these sarco, phagi, is hollowed below into a number of cryp tæ, or sepulchral chambers, some ten, others twenty

* Vid. Itinerar. Hierosolym. cum notis Wesseling, p. 595.

or

or thirty feet square; but the height is low, and never proportionable. The ingenious architect has left upon the front and the side walls of the stair-cases, which lead us down to them, several curious designs in sculpture and basso relievo, like those upon the sarcophagi. A range of narrow cells, wide enough to receive one coffin, sarcophagus, or him, and long enough sometimes for two or three, runs along the sides of most of these sepulchral chambers, and appear to be the only provision that was made, provided indeed they were only made for the reception of the dead.

The Greeks have one of these cryptæ in great esteem and veneration. They call it St Teckla, in commemoration of some acts of penance and mortification that are said to have been here performed by that first virgin martyr. In the middle of it there is a fountain, supposed to be instrumental in producing miraculous visions and extraordinary cures. For hither they bring such persons or children as have the rickets, jaundice, or other distempers; and, after they have washed them with holy water, and perfumed them, they return with a strong faith in a speedy cure. Here likewise the aged and the infirm pretend to receive the warnings of their approaching dissolutions; whilst the young foresee a long train of circumstances and events that are to fall out in the future course of their lives.

The sepulchral chambers near Jebilee, Tortosa, and the Serpent Fountain, together with those

that

that are commonly called the Royal Sepulchres at Jerusalem, (all of them communicating with one another by small narrow entrances), are of the like workmanship and contrivance with the cryptæ of Latikea; as were likewise, in all probability, the cave of Machpelah, and the other sepulchres, which appear to have been many, of the sons of Heth, Gen. xxiii. 6. An ancient sarcophagus still remains in one of the sepulchral chambers of Jerusalem, which is of a Parian-like marble, in the fashion of a common round lidded trunk, all over very elegantly carved with flowers, fruit, and foliage. Instead likewise of those long narrow cells that are common in most of the other cryptæ, some of these are single chambers, others have benches of stone ranged one over another, upon which the coffins were to be placed. To these we may join the sepulchre, where our Saviour was laid, which was also hewn out of the natural rock, Matt. xxvii. 60. and lay originally under ground, like the others; but by St Helena's cutting away the rock round about it, that the floor or bottom of it might be upon the same level with the rest of the pavement of the church, it is now a grotto above ground, uaguagonλaxoμırı, or curiously overlaid with marble. It consists of one chamber only, without cells, benches or ornaments, being about seven feet square, and six high; and over the place where the body was laid (whether this was a pit, or whether the body lay bound up only in spices and linen upon the floor) here, for many years, an oblong table of stone or

thorus,

thorus, x, of three feet in breadth, and nearly of the same height, has been erected, which serves the Latins for an altar. The low narrow door or entrance where the stone was fixed and seated, till rolled away by the angel, still continues to conduct us within it; and as this was not situated in the middle, but on the left hand; as the grave likewise, or place where Christ was laid, may well be presumed to have been placed within it, on the right hand, or where the altar is at present, we may, from these circumstances, well account for Mary and John (John xx. 5. 11.) being obliged to stoop down, before they could look into it.

But the learned Salmasius* has attempted to prove, that this sepulchre was not hewn out of the rock, but was built with square polished stones, in the fashion of a rounded arch, vault or cupola, (specus, sc. cameratus et fornicatus erat), with a hole upon the top (cum foramine desuper) through which the body was to be let down ; which hole was afterwards to be covered with a great stone (vice operculi) instead of a lid. But such a hole, especially in such a situation, could with no propriety be called a door, or uge, as the entrance into this sepulchre is often named; neither could Peter and the women, without ladders, or such like assistances, have so easily gone in and out of it, as they seem to have done, Mark xvi. 5. &c. Neither will this learned author be the better supported in the other part of his position, viz. that this sepulchre was not hewn out of

* Plin. Exercit. p. 1207.

the