In a country where water is scarce, and the mechanical art is in a rude condition, the pools and fountains of the wiser and more opulent ancients are preserved with care. The traveler is therefore not surprised to find himself standing beside fountains as old as the reign of David. In the southern part of the vale, where the buildings stretch across the valley from east to west, is the pool over which were hanged the murderers of Ishbosheth.[355] It is a square tank, solidly built of large hewn stones, measuring 130 feet on each side and fifty deep; and in the northern section of the town there is another reservoir, eighty-five feet long, fifty-five broad, and eighteen deep. But the chief attraction in Hebron, alike to the Christian, the Jew, and the Moslem, is the cave of Machpelah, now bearing the Arabic name of El-Khulîl――“The Friend of God.” Approaching it with a reverence almost religious, with head uncovered, and with emotions excited by the hallowed associations of the place, I had hoped to have entered its precincts, and to have read the Bible story of its purchase and of the interment of the patriarchal families, but a Moslem fanaticism, as inhuman as it is irreligious, drove me from the sacred inclosure. What a stinging rebuke to such conduct is found in the courtesy, the justice, the goodness displayed by Abraham in the purchase of the field from the sons of Heth! His memory should soften religious asperities; his character should pacify the rage of fanaticism; his spirit should harmonize the discordant elements of sectarian strife; but a Moslem is too selfish, too bigoted, too depraved to rise to such sublime conceptions.