About 150 yards further on, as we were passing along the steep descent to the valley of Jehoshaphat, an opening in the rock suddenly presented itself on our left, and we found here the _Fountain_ of Siloam--the spot from which the _Pool_ is said to draw, by a subterranean channel, its supply of water. It is called the Virgin’s Fountain, from a tradition that she used to resort to it frequently, and its waters are still used for diseases of the eye. It may, perhaps, have some medicinal qualities; for it is brackish, and not very pleasant to the taste. The fountain is subterranean, and is reached by a descent of thirty steps cut in the solid rock. At my first visit the water was gushing out at the bottom of this in a full stream as clear as crystal, and in this land of drought was really an attractive object. At my second visit, I could scarcely recognize it to be the same. The flow had ceased, and it was a stagnant pool; which a lad, filling some jars on a donkey alone, had defiled with sediment so as to give it a yellow muddy color. Its flow is periodical, and my visits must have been at times when the phenomenon is most striking in its operation. The waters of the Pool of Siloam have always been represented as sweet and pleasant, and those of this fountain are brackish. Can the former be supplied from this? It appeared to me also that the latter is lower than the _Pool_ of Siloam; but my time did not allow me to settle the question. The water is conducted off from it by a subterranean channel deeply sunk in the hill.