Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/307

Rh Hospital of the Municipality. Still further out, on the water shed, a piece of ground has been selected for a Jewish Hospital by the German Jews, who have already applied to Constantinople for a firman. In regard to its plan, I had to give my assistance. So there will be nine hospitals, one after the other, on the same ridge, and the road going along it (passing also my house) will rightly bear the name "Sanatorium Road," which we gave to it many years ago on account of the above-mentioned Mission Sanatorium.

4. The Russian Orthodox Palestine Society is getting by degrees nearly all the Russian establishments in this country under its rule, except those of the Government. The Russian Hospital, some time ago, came under it, and is now about to have the arms of the society put on the top of the building, as has already been done on several other buildings, to mark them as the property of the society.

5. Rock-cut Aqueduct on Skull Hill.—The ground with the so called "Gordon's Tomb" at the "Skull Hill" having been sold to an English association, they are now about to enclose it with a wall. In doing this an interesting rock-cut channel was found just on the top of the said tomb or rock-cut cave. It comes from the east, at the northern brow of the hill in a south-western direction, and near the edge of the rock turns due west, as I have shown in the plan.' The channel is on an average 6 feet deep, 2 feet wide at the top, and 15 inches at the bottom, where it is rounded. It has a strong decline towards the west, where also the rock becomes low, as the section shows. It seems to me that it was intended to take all the surface water falling on the "Skull Hill" to the cisterns now in the ground of the Dominicans, and made deep enough for the rain falling on the eastern part of the summit to be brought hither.

On the top of the sides of this channel there is the rock, but another smaller channel crosses the large one, by which the water, if stopped in the large channel, could flow over the edge of the rock scarp as a cascade into the cistern of the ground with Gordon's Tomb, as plan and section show. At first I had an idea that this large newly-found aqueduct might be the long looked-for continuation of the one coming from the twin pools under the Sisters of Zion, to the northern town wall—the most distant trace of which, outside the wall, was found near the entrance to the Cotton Grotto. If this is correct, it would have surrounded the Skull Hill; but would the levels allow such an idea? In order to solve this question I have levelled from the nearest bench mark (which is on the Sheikh's buildings west of the Nâblus road, and 1,400 feet north of Damascus Gate) to the bottom of the rock-cut aqueduct, 700 feet south of the said Sheikh's Tomb, and found it to be 2,521 feet above the sea. It agrees with the contours there as entered in the Ordnance Survey Plan, being at the point where the ground over the aqueduct is highest, 2,529. The surface of the rock is near under it, viz., foot, and