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enthusiastic.

"On foot," says he, "if you keep close to the walls, it takes scarcely an hour to make the circuit of Jerusalem. The walls form an oblong square, the four sides facing the four winds, and the longest running from west to east, two points of the compass to the south. They are flanked with square towers, and may be, on the platform of the bastions, about 30 feet thick, and 120 feet high, having no other ditches than the valleys surrounding the city. When seen from the mount of Olives, on the other side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with towers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the city all round, excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which it formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the city towards Calvary, the houses stand very close; but in the eastern part, along the brook Cedron, you perceive vacant spaces, among the rest that which surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly deserted spot, where once stood the castle of Antonia, and the second palace of Herod. "The houses of Jerusalem," he adds, " are heavy square masses, very low, without chimnies or windows: they have flat terraces, or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres, The whole would appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cyсуpresses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan." I shall only add, what Captain Light says of this celebrated city when he visited it, A. D. 1814. "Jerusalem," says he, "known to the natives of Syria only by the name of El Kodts, a contraction for Medinat-el-Kadess, that is, the sacred city, stands on the

Travels, vol. ü. p. 53. 84, 85. 179, 180.

west side of a valley, of which the east is the mount of Olives. It contains within its walls several of the hills on which the ancient city was supposed to have stood; but these are only perceptible by the ascent and descent of the streets. The town, viewed from the Mount of Olives, appears lying on the inclined plane of the side of the valley, on which it stands, having all its principal buildings exposed to sight, in an oblong inclosure by walls. The streets are narrow, and without pavement: the houses are seen to more advantage from the hills about the town; whence the cupolas give even an air of grandeur to them. The population is said to be twelve thousand, of which the largest portion is Musselmen ; but of the sects, the greatest is that of the Jews, and the rest are composed of Christians of the east, belong ing either to the Armenian, Greek, Latin, or Coptish

sects."a

SECT. III.

Jewish Atmosphere, and its Phenomena.

Day and night antipodes; dews abundant; rain; snow; frost; hail; land and sea breezes; tornadoes; water-spouts; hurricanes; sand wind; hot wind of the desert; Samoom or Samiel; coup du soleil; the Serab, or visionary lake of the desert; thunder; lightning; aurora borealis, the reason why never mentioned by the ancients. The winds in Judea: east wind; the Euroclydon; the west wind; the north and south winds.

THE atmosphere of every country is composed of nearly the same materials, being all those parts of the original chaotic mass which were rendered volatile and permanently elastic by means of heat, and which are mixed with all those exhalations that are constantly arising from animals and vegetables. In a chemical

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point of view, it is composed of twenty-one parts bulk of oxygen, or the basis of pure air, and seventy-nine of azote or foul air very nearly; but it is very different in weight in different elevations, and even in the same elevation at different times, from the addition or loss of those vapours, which are constantly ascending from or returning to, the earth's surface. Hence the variations which are visible every day in the barometer. But besides the general laws which regulate all climates, every individual country has its atmosphere affected by local circumstances. Thus, the geographical situation of Judea has a peculiar effect on the column of air which is suspended over it. Casting a bird's-eye glance over that district from west to east, we have three leading varieties: first, a gradual rise from the Mediterranean to the top of the mountains; secondly, a gradual descent from the top of the mountains to the river Jordan; and thirdly, another ascent from the river Jordan to the top of the mountains of Gilead. It is easy to see that, from the situation and degree of latitude, the district nearest the sea will have its otherwise natural temperature cooled by its vicinity to that element, which is nearly the same summer and winter, or 48° of Fahrenheit; and that the deep vale of Jordan will be warm like an oven; while the ridges of mountains on either side will often feel exceedingly cold: for cold is both relative and real: relative, when a person with open pores ascends from a warm to a cold elevation; and real, because the air is there chill from its increasing rarity, and the want of reflection of the sun's rays from an extended, solid, and heated surface. Hence we are told, that the cold is great on Mount Sinai, Lebanon, Antilibanus, and the other high mountains, while the valleys below have excessive heat; and that the persons visiting, or residing

on them, often use furs in the night, from the intensity of the cold."

The phenomena of the atmosphere depend much on its difference of temperature, and the presence or absence of electricity. The day and night in these climates are antipodes to each other: for the nights are very cold, even when the mornings are warm, and the days excessively hot. Nor is this to be wondered at, if we consider the force of a vertical sun for many hours together, and the copious precipitation of vapour which follows his setting. Indeed, the dews in the Holy Land are abundant; for, from the excessive heat of the sun, a vast quantity of vapour is raised during the day, which is suspended in the air, and chemically united with it; but, as the colds of night are very piercing, no sooner has the sun left the horizon, than the dews begin to fall, from the want of capacity in the air to keep it suspended, in its cooled state; just as a quantity of salts is completely dissolved in boiling water, but, as the water cools, they are precipitated, and formed again into crystals at the bottom. Travellers have felt the truth of these observations while visiting that country. Thus Maundrell tells us, that "he was sufficiently instructed by experience, what the holy psalmist meant by the dews of Hermon, his tents being as wet with it as if it had rained all night," (March 22.) And Dr. Shaw, when speaking of the mists and dews of Arabia Petrea, remarks, that "the dews particularly (as they had the heavens only for their covering) would, in the night, frequently wet them to the skin; but no sooner was the

■ Sir John Malcolm, in his Persia, a poem, informs us, that "when the camp of the British mission, which visited Persia in 1810, was pitched on the plain of Hubatoo, which lies about 37° of north latitude (nearly parallel with the north of Judea,) and is situated near the centre of Kurdistan, the water kept in the tents froze during the night of the 17th of August." Note z. b Harmer's Qb. vol. i. p. 73, &c. Page 440.

sun risen, and the atmosphere a little heated, than the mists were quickly dispersed, and the copious moisture which the dews had communicated to the sands would be entirely evaporated." How descriptive is this of those temporary impressions of goodness which too many feel! And how forcibly does Jehovah represent by it the conduct of Israel in Hosea vi. 4: "O, Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O, Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud; and as the early dew it goeth away." See also Hosea xiii. 3, where the effects of the divine wrath in consuming the wicked are expressed by the same similitude. Such dews as these, however, are indeed needful. They cool the heated surface of the earth, and supply that nourishment to the vegetable creation of which they were deprived by the sun's heat. Accordingly, it is a law of nature, that the one is always made to counterbalance the other: that, when the heat is moderate, the dews are trifling; but when the heat is great, the dews are abundant. Rain is nothing else than very copious dews. When the atmosphere is considerably heated, the air is clear, and the sky cloudless: but, as it becomes cooled, the clouds appear, and a precipitation in the form of rain is at length felt. The rains in Judea, however are very different from what they are with us. For months together they are never seen; but, when they do come, it is in torrents rushing down the steep hills, destroying grain, soil, houses, flocks, and herds. (Hence the beauty of the still waters mentioned by the Psalmist in Psalm xxiii. 2.) A person long acquainted with them described them as descending not in drops, but in pipes like fingers. Snow is vapour frozen before it hath had time to form into drops by falling through the atmosphere; and hail is rain congealed. Both of them are met with in Judea. In winter the dew assumes the appearance of

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