Note Note IV — NOTES ON CHAPTER II.

In the environs of the city, with the exception of the north and north-west, are frequently found walls, conduits, and scattered stones of large size, rusticated or not, and with or without marks of clamps; but they have been constantly broken up because of the want of will, and also of mechanical means, to make the most of them, or to remove them. Owing to this vandalism, the most precious remains of antiquity are daily disappearing from the soil of Jerusalem. Not seldom trunks of columns, capitals, pedestals, have been found, but some rude clown has broken them up, to be able the more easily to transport the fragments into the city. Sometimes old walls have been broken up by blasting, without any one's taking the trouble to preserve them, or even to delay their destruction, so as to allow of some examination of them. These cases are repeated daily on Mount Sion, on the east of the Mount of Olives, and on the western side of the valley of Kidron; but never in any part where it is not known from human memory, or received tradition, that there have been found remains of Jewish buildings, or large stones scattered over the soil.