Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/262

 galleries, almost flowing like a fluid, and drives the men out. In the Siloam tunnel they more than once ran the risk of being drowned. In the Ophel shaft a loose stone, weighing eight cwt., threatened momentarily to fall upon their heads. Once when the Arab labourers had gone down a shaft, where the ancient bed of the Tyropœon runs out, 90 feet from the south-west angle, they had descended 79 feet when they came upon a stone slab. They began breaking it up with a hammer, when presently the pieces fell in, the hammer disappeared, and the men, in terror lest they should fall into unknown depths, rushed to the surface, sought out the serjeant, and assured him that they had found the bottomless pit! The awful depth proved to be just 6 feet more to the solid rock!

Warren had often to dig in people's gardens, or to mine under their houses, or sink shafts near to their sacred places, and it required much tact to deal with the prejudices of the Mohammedans, and to satisfy all claims for compensation. In the neighbourhood of Jerusalem a piece of garden ground may belong to one man, be rented by another, while a dozen people claim an interest in the crops that grow upon it. Sometimes Warren's labourers have been dragged before the judges and threatened with imprisonment, or told that they shall be sent to do forced labour on the Jaffa Road. When Warren was working at the Virgin's Fountain there was much commotion among the people of Siloam. Work was to be resumed in the morning; but one cantankerous sheikh, taking it into his head that Englishmen had no business out of their own country, effectually stayed proceedings by sending a bevy of damsels to the Fount to wash. On one occasion a Turkish officer of Engineers, dressed in full uniform, approached, in no friendly spirit, to examine one of the shafts. If he had chosen to give an adverse report the work would have been stopped. He knew that Warren