The olive root makes beautiful cabinet work; and, desirous of procuring some from the Mount of Olives to be worked up for my friends, I took one day an interpreter and a couple of natives, and ascended the mountain to see if I could purchase some. Southward of Absalom’s monument is the village of Siloa, standing in what appears to have been a quarry; and consisting partly of houses erected on the rocky platforms, and in part of caves cut in the side of the declivity. This was quite deserted; but near the summit of the mountain I was fortunate enough to find a house with occupants, from whom I purchased the privilege of cutting some roots.[64] It may afford an idea of the state of the arts at Jerusalem, when I mention that the best axe which we could find in the city was a species of blunt grubbing-hoe; and that we actually grubbed through the thick roots; and this, they informed me, is the usual way of cutting wood in that country. Mr. Nicholayson had owned an English axe, but his Arab guards had carried it off at the conclusion of the siege. Soon after commencing operations on the trees, we found ourselves surrounded by a dozen wild looking men, who seemed to have started up from beneath the ground, where probably they had been concealed in the caves and artificial pits with which the country abounds. They were induced, by the offer of a trifling compensation, to assist us; and while they were tugging away at the wood, I sat down a few yards off to make some plans and sketches of the city. In half an hour the interpreter came to say that they had all fled; and on returning I found that not an individual of them was to be seen. The soldiers at the city gate below had spied them out with their glasses, and a detachment had been sent up to seize them; but they were too cunning, and escaped; and as we stood by the tree, we heard them, in their flight, calling to the soldiers, and using epithets that were any thing but complimentary. I have introduced this simple circumstance, however, not so much for its own sake, as to give me an opportunity of carrying the reader once more to the top of the Mount of Olives. And here I wish him to sit down at the spot which I have just been occupying on the central eminence, and gaze down on this place of wonderful history, and of tender and thrilling association. But my object is not to speak of the present city of Jerusalem; I wish to blot out all that picture, defaced in so many places by wretchedness and unsightly ruins, and to place before his imagination the ancient city of Jerusalem, when she sat upon these hills in her jewelled ornaments,--when “glorious things were spoken of thee, O city of God.”