the matter in hand, and hope to find the source from which the water was derived. In my notes to the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, page 78 (published 1866), I pointed out the possible existence of an aqueduct in this position, connecting the large pool north of the so-called "Tombs of the Kings," with the subway in the Convent, and should future researches prove this view to be correct, we may possibly identify the aqueduct with that made by Hezekiah, when "he stopped the upper watercourse (accurately, source of the waters) of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David " (2 Chron. xxxii. 30). It may also be the "conduit of the upper pool," mentioned in Isaiah and the Second Book of Kings. The existence of the aqueduct lately discovered, is a strong argument in favour of the belief that the city of David occupied a portion of Mount Moriah, and it may possibly enable us to identify the Pool, or some source near it, as the Upper Gihon, and Silvaur as Gihon in the Valley.

Mr Schick has also discovered a second series of caverns a little east of those previously known, and has made a sketch of the great aqueduct, more than fifty miles long, which formerly supplied Jerusalem with water. A full account of these discoveries would, I fear, be to long for insertion in your paper; but I may add that a detailed description of them will be given in the next quarterly statement of the Palestine Fund. C. W. WILSON, R.E.

Junior United Service Club.

Mount Vesuvius.

NAPLES, May 4, 1872.-My telegram of yesterday informed you that the eruption of Vesuvius occasioned a greater loss of life than was stated in the report which was first given to me. The fact is it has been impossible to do anything more than give an approximation to the number, and I cannot sufficiently blame the hasty reports which have been sent off, calculated as they were to awaken the greatest anxiety at a distance. You will ask me how it was that no foreigners were among the victims. The reason is that they are usually accompanied by guides who are well acquainted with the paths, with the means of escape therefore, and the indications of an approaching eruption, whereas Italians are, perhaps, less cautious. It happened, too, that on the fatal night there were many of the poorer classes up the mountain-coachmen, facchini, keepers of wineshops; some, too, out on a spree, as it were, confident in their numbers, as the ten or twelve students, for instance, and who paid for their rashness with their lives. I have just returned from another visit to the scene of destruction, and send you my pencillings by the way.

A short distance before one reaches Resina the road turns sharp off to the left in the direction of St Ivrio, Sebastiano, and Massa, where the greatest amount of damage has been done. The road was still encumbered with ashes, and ton-loads were being swept off the roofs. Looking right and left over this once fertile tract of land, I never saw a scene of greater desolation. As far as the eye can search everything is withered, and the budding promise of a rich harvest is reduced to what I might have taken in my hand and crumbled into dust. Tall trees, poplars, and cypresses, and mulberry, instead of quivering in the gentle breeze, are rigid and immovable. Rows of festooned vines, giving hopes only last week of an abundant vintage of that delicious wine called Lachrymæ

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Christi, seem as if they had been decorated for the tomb-all are dead; while underneath, just peeping above the bed of ashes, are beans and peas, and all the great variety of vegetables which abound in the Naples market, utterly destroyed. The same scene of desolation extends all round the mountain, and many thousands who are grateful for the preservation of their lives and homes are reduced to absolute want. We saw many of these on the road or at the doors of their cottages, imploring help, and declaring now with more than usual truthfulness that they were dying of hunger. Such is the sad spectacle which this once rich and lovely district presents as far as the bed of lava, which cuts off further progress. St Ivrio, St Giorgio, and Cremano, through which we passed, have had a narrow escape indeed. It is a favourite place of villeggiatura for the Neapolitans, who have handsome villas there, and the lava stream stopped within half a mile of it. Judge what the apprehension of the inhabitants must have been when they saw the river of fire coming down upon them and heard the crackling of the scoria as they rolled over and over and looked on the shrubs and trees withering in their agony! On approaching the lava the peasantry flock round us like locusts, each offering his services, and each anxious to earn a sous or two. We take a man from Resina, and under his guidance we cross the first stream, burning hot to the feet, and still emitting sulphurous cloudlets of smoke. "The hot lava," says our guide, "is still running down slowly underneath." I take up some pieces, shining with all the colours of the rainbow; but they are too hot to hold, and I throw them down. This was the stream which skirted St Ivrio, and was flowing down towards Barra. Standing in the middle, I look up and down and see a mighty sheet covering many acres of rich ground, from which smoke is still issuing from a hundred-nay, a thousand-fissures. Like huge pieces of coke piled one on the other are the component parts of that river. It has crossed the high road, on which we descend from our fiery eminence very carefully, to the great relief of our feet, and then, accompanied by a multitude of the peasantry, we traverse the interval between this sheet of lava and that which destroyed portions of San Sebastiano and Massa, "Here," says our guide, "I will show you a miracle-this church has been spared; the stream passed by it, only cutting down the houses at the farthest extremity of the town of Sebastiano." We climb up as best we can over the scoria full 20 or 30 feet, until we arrive at the summit of the stream-nay, ocean. I tread on fragments of houses, intermingled with the scoria-gaily-painted fragments of houses not long since the abodes of happy, thriving families. How fiercely burns the lava beneath our feet; how the heat shimmers all around us; and how insufferably strong is the sulphurous odour of the vapour! It takes a long time to walk across this fiery sheet before we arrive at Massa, where the same scene of destruction is repeated. A church has been miraculously preserved here also, but all the houses nearest to the lava have been thrown down, broken into a hundred fragments, and intermingled with the scoria. The squalid poverty of these two townships it would be difficult to describe, for portions of each remain. Some have lost their dwellings, many their land; all have lost their industrial occupation, and the promised produce of the season. "No lives were lost in San

Sebastiano," says our guide, "and only two in Massa, but full a hundred on various parts of the mountain; my eldest son was one. He was at the Hermitage on Thursday night, when a carriage with five persons drove up. He recommended them not to proceed farther, but they

insisted, and he was overpersuaded to accompany them. All were lost. The King sent me 200 lire by the hands of one of his generals, but what consolation is that for the loss of a son?" Retracing our steps over the lava, we arrive at length where we had left our carriage. Many people are employed in making a new road from San Sebastiano to St İvrio; the inhabitants of the district are employed, and are thus assisted in the most prudent manner.

Professor Palmieri, who came down from the Observatory on Friday afternoon, was to have given a lecture this morning in the University on the terrible eruption; but the vast crowd which assembled from early morning rendered it impossible. The lecture has been deferred, therefore, until some hall sufficiently large to hold the expectant multitude has been found, and entrance will then be secured by tickets, the profits from which will be given to the sufferers. This morning at six o'clock the Professor started for the mountain to give a lecture to his pupils on the places which have been damaged by the catastrophe, and a large number of persons accompanied him.

Since beginning this letter I have received a visit from the Prætor of Torre del Greco. He tells us that certainly 15,000 persons fled from his commune only to Torre dell' Annunziata and Castellamare. The authorities of Naples sent over twenty-five omnibuses to carry off the sick and infirm, large quantities of bread, and, what was as necessary, detachments of soldiers. Bands of thieves infested all the country, and he himself arrested thirty. The lava stopped within two miles of Torre del Greco, but the intense heat and dust have destroyed vegetation, and in that neighbourhood, and in what are called the paludi, the market-gardens of Naples, lying between that city and Portici, everything is withered up, as I have already described.-Times' Correspondent.

A Retrospect of Vesuvius.

Of its pristine eruptions few traces remain. In 63 A.D., Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabia, were visited by a violent earthquake, which partly destroyed them. Ten years after these cities had been restored, the fatal volcanic explosion that destroyed these three gems of Southern Italy occurred in 79. Subsequently, in A.D. 203, 471, 512, 685, 983, 993, 1030, 1049, happened the eight great eruptions threatening all the inhabited parts around, and ruining many villages, as in modern times. New cities rose on the ruins of the old as now. Torre del Greco has been destroyed eleven times, and eleven times has been rebuilt. In 1631, after being silent for 130 years, Vesuvius broke out in flames, and overran with its lava five-sixths of the territory adjoining it. New towns arose on the lava. In 1794 an immense torrent of lava reached the sea. Another disastrous eruption happened in 1860. In all these latter disturbances Torre del Greco has suffered. In referring to the description given by Pliny the younger of the eruption, during which his uncle Pliny the elder lost his life, the similarity of the attendant phenomena is very striking, and one might be reading an article from a journal of the 25th of last month; "ashes mixed with water," and the suffocating atmosphere (the cause of Pliny's death) were the same in both. Naples now, as then, is black with fine ashes like soot. The terrific visitation occupies all minds. The bustling, progressive city for the time has forgotten its plans of aggrandisement-and it has many in view.-Builder.

The Portuguese and the Pope.

THE following translation of an article in the Commercio (Lisbon newspaper) of Saturday, May 13, 1871, illustrates the resistance which infallibility" is provoking even in priest-ridden Portugal :—

"A fatal blindness impels the clergy of the present day to complicate the most grave questions which agitate Europe and the whole world. In the midst of violent controversies, political and social, which make the future of all countries so uncertain, a voice bitter, violent, insulting, is heard, speaking in the name of God, vomiting forth excommunications, reproachfully cursing the present, condemning the future, and looking only at the past, whose restoration it premeditates.

"The clergy, since Rome has become reduced to a mere parish, is as the body of an army which marches compactly to the destruction of existing society in order to build on its ruins the edifice of Gregory VII.

"Animated by the most violent passions, the clergy speak in the name of Jesus Christ with eyes set upon things of the world, they invoke the name of the Son of Mary in order that they may impose upon the spirits of men, and enslave them by credulity. They vociferate against liberty, progress, civilisation, in order to regain their former power, which day by day is vanishing as a shadow. But just in proportion to the decay of their influence do they become the more insolent in language and more furiously vent their objurgations. Encyclicals, bulls, briefs, pastorals, at every step distribute indulgences and excommunications. The indulgences move no one, and the excommunications explode in the air, and that only which is real and true in this wicked clerical work is the fatal blindness which withdraws the clergy from the only path which would give them the importance they ought to have.

"The pastors turn themselves into writers of mythical pamphlets; the clergy into mere echoes of the barbarous apostrophes of the bishops; the journalists who call themselves Catholic exalt and amplify the vehement language of the bishops and clergy, with vituperation and the most infamous insults toward their opponents.

"It would be a comfort, amid the outburst of passions which rage tumultuously in the markets, in the assemblies of the people, in the press, to hear in this struggling search after bitter political and social destinies the serene evangelical and august voice of the pastors, and to see them as a lighthouse scattering its rays on the tempestuous ocean, illumining the spirits of men and helping them by the sublime word of Jesus. But no-hatred, anger, vengeance, are not less vehement in them who speak to us in the name of God, and who should be examples of Christian virtues, than in us who are misnamed impious freethinkers and socialists.

"What an unhappy spectacle the Catholic Church at this moment presents to us! The supreme Pastor has been declared infallible. The whole world must submit to him. He is the bolt of the social vault. Nationalities are at end. All have one common native country. In Rome is the dictator, omnipotent and unchangeable, to whom kings and people shall reverently bow, waiting the beck of his will.

"Civilisation will stand still, and the times go back six centuries, for the Pope and the clergy lord it over all.

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Portugal is also suffering the consequences of these clerical aberrations. The clergy and the press (called Catholic) now go a-begging for the prayers of the faithful, that God would put an end to what they call the usurpation of the Roman States, and at the same time they beg

alms for the Pope; but these beggings are a series of insults and vituperations against the King of Italy, and against the liberty and Liberals of that nation. They ask the said alms in a threatening way, hat on head, and stick held over you; it is true they promise many indulgences to those who give said alms, but they also deal out many affronts and much rancour against liberty, civilisation, and those who have the simplicity to disbelieve the poverty of the Pope, and to condemn the indecorous manner, and even the unseasonable times, in which they insolently make these requests."

The Draining of the Tiber.-The Whereabout of the Seven-branched

Candlestick.

THE interest excited by the project attributed to the Italian Government of subjecting the bed of old Tiber to a complete investigation, in order to disinter therefrom the treasures of ancient art and wealth which it is supposed still to conceal, is likely to increase rather than diminish as the scheme is further developed and becomes more familiar to the imagination. . . . But how far is the thorough draining of the Tiber likely to reward the public spirit of its projectors? That is the question to which the answer can after all be only conjectural ; although there is probability enough to render the indulgence of even splendid hopes permissible. There is, it must be confessed, a good deal of popular exaggeration in the current language about the great elevation of the modern soil above the strata of ancient Roman ruins, with their deposits of values which may be supposed to be buried below, particularly when applied to the Tiber. It seems to be thought that its venerable mud might be dug down to an indefinite depth, with a constantly increasing probability of hitting on some vein of abandoned statues, gems, or other relics of priceless art. But there is an obvious limit to these anticipations, and a near one. Whatever change of levels may have taken place in parts of Rome, whether by a gradual elevation of soil or by earthquakes, it is pretty certain that the surface of the Mediterranean remains at the same height as in classical times. Now the surface of the Tiber at Rome is just thirtythree feet above the Mediterranean; such, at least, was the result of Sir George Shuckburgh's measurements in the last century, which have been generally relied on since, the point taken being apparently that where the river leaves the city. That the level of the Tiber is a little higher now than in ancient times we know, because at mean height it half covers the arch whence issues the Cloaca Maxima; but it must be very little, for the Tiber is in places some twenty feet deep, its bottom consequently very little above the sea level. It is difficult, therefore, to believe in any great accumulation of silt there. The rapid stream must have swept it steadily away age after age, and probably left whatever solid substances had been thrown into it within such easy reach that superficial exploration-in the course of fourteen hundred years since the desolation began-has had every facility for recovering them. Moreover, although the spoliation of Rome has been a favourite theme of poets and historians, it is not easy to point out any epoch at which such spoilation actually took place under circumstances which would render it probable that much of the spoil got thrown into the river. Alaric certainly did not "loot" Rome, although he has the credit of it; Genseric, the Vandal, certainly did; but then Genseric