campments, in their pursuing a war, and especially when they had to stay any time in such a place.

The thought then of Hezekiah, who proposed to his princes the stopping of all fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, when Sennacherib was making his approaches to Jerusalem, was on this account very natural; but it may be thought to be a proof of the great simplicity of antiquity, to entertain such a thought, and more so, if he was able to effect his scheme. How could fountains and a brook be so stopped as totally to be concealed? How easy was it for such a mighty army as the Assyrian to sink a multitude of wells?

But odd as this contrivance may seem, it was actually made use of at the same place, many centuries after Hezekiah's time, and greatly perplexed an European army, and that too assembled from various warlike countries. For William of Tyre, describing the besieging of Jerusalem by the Croises in 1099, tells us, that its inhabitants having had advice of their coming, stopped up the mouths of their fountains and cisterns for five or six miles round the city, that being overwhelmed with thirst, they might be obliged to desist from their design of besieging it. This management of theirs occasioned, he informs us, infinite trouble afterward to the Christian army: the inhabitants in the mean time not only having plenty of rain water, but enjoying the benefit of the springs too, without

the town, their waters being conveyed by aqueducts into two very large basons within it. These precautions indeed did not hinder the Croises from persevering in the siege from June 7 to July 15, and succeeding at last; but he says, the army was distressed with thirst in the most terrible manner, notwithstanding it had the assistance of some of the Christian inhabitants of Bethlehem and Tekoa, who being in the army, in considerable numbers, conducted the people to fountains at four or five miles distance. For as for the nearer neighbourhood of Jerusalem, it was very dry and unwatered soil, having scarce any brooks, or fountains, or pits of fresh water, and all those they filled up with dust, and by other means, as much as they could; and either broke down the cisterns of rain water, or maliciously hid them, that they might be of no advantage to the pilgrims. And as for those distant fountains to which they were conducted, there was such pressing, and hindering one another from drawing, that it was with difficulty, and after long delays, that they got a little muddy water in their leather bottles, of which a draught could not be purchased but at an extravagant rate. As for the fountain of Siloam, which was near, sometimes it had no water, and sometimes when it had, it was not agreeable to drink, so that it did not afford a sufficient supply to the army by any means. The men however made a shift, one way or another, to save themselves from perish

b Gesta Dei, &c. p. 749.

ing by thirst; but the horses, mules, asses, flocks, and herds, died in great numbers, and occasioned a dangerous pestilential corruption of the air. The besieged in the mean while, by their frequent sallies, cut off great numbers of those that were dispersed about in search of provisions and forage.

What the Archbishop of Tyre has said concerning the nature of the country about Jerusalem, shews the impracticability of an army's supplying itself with water by sinking of wells; springs in the earth being rare there, and the soil on the contrary extremely dry. It shows also how easily such wells as have a supply of water may be concealed which is what the term ayanoth, translated fountains in the 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 4. frequently means, and what Hezekiah must mean, since there was no fountain to form any brook in the near neighbourhood of Jerusalem, excepting that of Siloam, as St. Jerom expressly affirms, in his commentary on Jeremiah xiv. which the accounts of travellers of later ages have confirmed.

That stream which flowed from Siloam is, I presume, the brook that Hezekiah speaks of, which in the time of the Croisades was not at

Gesta Dei, &c. p. 751, 752.

The term means no such thing; or y ayin signifies simply either a fountain or an eye; not covered or concealed, but open and exposed to view. EDIT.

f Uno quippe fonte Siloe, et hoc non perpetuo utitur civitas, et usque in præsentem diem sterilitas pluviarem, non solum frugum, sed et bibendi inopiam facit.

tempted to be stopped up. What the cause of that was we are not told, but it seems the waters of some springs without the city were conveyed into Jerusalem at the time; and that Solomon in his reign had attempted to do the like, and effected it: as to part of the water of the springs of Bethlehem, it was no wonder then that Hezekiah should think of introducing the waters of Siloam in like manner into the city, in order at once to deprive the besiegers of its waters, and benefit the inhabitants of Jerusalem by them. Probably it was done in the same manner that Solomon brought the waters of Bethlehem thither, that is, by collecting the water of the spring or springs into a subterraneous reservoir, and from thence, by a concealed aqueduct, conveying them into Jerusalem, with this difference, that Solomon took only part of the Bethlehem water, leaving the rest to flow into those celebrated pools which remain to this day; whereas Hezekiah turned all the water of Siloam into the city, absolutely stopping up the outlet into the pool, and filling it up with earth, that no trace of it might be seen by the Assyrian. Which seems indeed to be the account of the sacred writer, 2.Chron. xxxii. 30, The same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, (which is another name for Siloam,) and brought it straight down to the West side of the city of David. Thus our translators express it: but the original may as well be rendered; "HezeMaundrell, p. 89, 90.

kiah stopped the upper going out

motsa, of the waters of Gihon, and directed them underneath lemattah, to the West of the city of David;" and so Pagninus and Arias. Montanus understand the passage-he stopped up, that is, the outlet of the waters of Gihon into the open air, by which they were wont to pass into the pool of Siloam, and became a brook; and by some subterraneous contrivance directed the waters to the west-side of Jerusalem.

But besides these methods of stopping up wells, and breaking down cisterns, the same writer informs us of another way the Eastern people have sometimes practised, to deprive their enemies of the use of their waters; that is, the throwing into them such filth as rendered them not drinkable. This was done in particular by the people at a place called Bosseret. Accident also has sometimes, after much the same manner, made them unfit for drinking: so, in describing the expedition of Baldwin III. against the same town, he says, that his army underwent very great thirst at that time: for passing through the country of Traconitis, which has no fountains, only cisterns of rainwater, it happened that at the time he passed through it, these cisterns were rendered useless by means of the locusts, which had a little before swarmed to an uncommon degree, and dying, had occasioned such putrefaction in their waters, as to render the drinking of them

Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 1031,