Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/184

 1 66 A History ov Art in Sardinia and Jud.i.a. sanctuary wall, where the terms of the firman authorizing the excavations did not allow to penetrate ; on the other hand, the pool was always half filled with water, so that it could not be explored. It is highly probable that the plastering of the tank covers a wall with stones of great size ; but this, for obvious reasons, was not verified. 1 2. The middle of the east face, where the English investigators came upon Moslem tombs, which line this portion of the slope facing the Kedron. Here operations had to be suspended, lest they should create a disturbance among the Mohammedans. In some places shafts were attempted be- tween the intervening spaces not occupied by the cemetery ; but the subsoil, consisting of loose boulders and layers of shingle, endangered the life of the men so that further diggings had to be abandoned. 2 A word of mention upon the method they adopted may find its proper place here. With the aid of faithful Sergeant Birtles, a miner of great skill and experience, and knowing that the wall was on the scarp of the rock, shafts were sunk some ten yards from the exposed wall. The mining cases, consisting of four pieces, were made of two or three-inch plank, twelve inches wide, the side pieces fitting into each other upon a tenon and mortise principle. The men went down and came up in them, fastened by cords, through thick layers of potsherd and shingle, sometimes 33 metres from the orifice. From the shaft, they pushed towards the wall at different heights ; from the galleries, the tops and sides of which were also made of wood, they proceeded in the same manner ; and, when the wall was reached, they crept along right and left, until the want of air and masses of falling shingle and stones obliged them to stop and try their fortunes a little further. The sketch which follows, although — on the confession of the authors — somewhat out of proportion, gives a fair idea of the way these excavations were conducted (Fig. 117). Readers of the Recovery of Jerusalem need not be told that the innumerable soundings executed by Messrs. Warren and Wilson were attended with considerable danger and difficulties at every step from within and from without ; but that the indomitable will, self-abnegation, inventive genius, promptness of action, and consummate tact of Sir C. Warren rode triumphantly over all obstacles, 3 The real service rendered by these excavations is to have 1 Recovery, p. 171. a Ibid., pp. 153-159. 8 Ibid., pp. 56-75.