=The Kidron Valley.= The Kidron is a characteristic Palestinian wady. It runs almost due north past the city and then gradually bends to the west. It is about two hundred yards in width and is flanked by hills, which rise four to six hundred feet on either side. During the winter and spring rains a brook rushes down this ravine, but in the summer it is waterless, although many olive trees find sufficient moisture in the bottom and on sides of the valley. At its southern end the Kidron is joined by the broad valley of Ben Hinnom,^{(55)} which runs due west nearly half a mile and then turns northward, thus, with the Kidron, enclosing on three sides a nearly regular rectangle half to three-quarters of a mile in width. =The Tyropœon Valley.= The southern promontories or hills thus enclosed were in ancient times divided by a small shallow valley, the Tyropœon or Cheesemongers' Valley, which ran northward from the Valley of Hinnom, separating the rectangle into two unequal parts. The city has been so often besieged and razed to the ground that its original site has been largely obscured by the masses of débris scattered everywhere and especially in the Tyropœon Valley. At many points the native rock lies from forty to one hundred feet beneath the present level. East of the temple area a shaft was sunk one hundred and twenty feet before the virgin rock was reached. Hundreds of such shafts have been sent down at different points throughout the city so that the exact site of the ancient town is now well known. The Tyropœon Valley, which cuts through the heart of Jerusalem, is the key to the understanding of the ancient city. From the point where it joins the Kidron and Hinnom valleys in the south to its northern end, a little outside the present Damascus Gate, this valley is about sixteen hundred yards in length. The hills on either side originally rose to the height of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet above the bottom of the valley, which becomes broader and shallower toward the north. Opposite the present temple area a western branch extends about three hundred yards, nearly cutting off the southwestern hill from the northern plateau.