Half a mile to the north from the Damascus Gate, and sixty yards to the right of the Nablous road, are the “Tombs of the Kings.” In the western side of a sunken court hewn in the rock, twenty feet deep and ninety square, is a grand portico fifteen feet high, thirty-nine wide, and seventeen deep. Formerly this portal was decorated with two columns and as many pilasters, which, however, are now gone, except a fragment of one of the capitals depending from the architrave. Over the entrance was a heavy cornice and frieze, adorned with clusters of grapes and wreaths of flowers, alternating over a continuous garland of fruit and foliage, extending down the sides to the ground. But time and plunderers have defaced this elegant façade, leaving it a wreck of former grandeur. A solitary palm now rears its graceful form near the spot, and ferns grow out of the cracked face and sides of the portal, covering the broken entablature. Illustration: TOMBS OF THE KINGS. Entering the portico and turning to the right, we found the entrance to the sepulchre to be at once peculiar and complicated. Judging from what remains, the doorway was excavated below the floor of the vestibule, and was approached by a covered passage-way tunneled through the solid rock. At the commencement of this subterranean way there was a trap-door which was secretly covered with a slab. To secure greater safety against those who would sacrilegiously disturb the repose of the dead, there was beneath this trap-door a deep pit so located that none save the initiated, and they only with the greatest caution, could land upon its brink as they stepped upon it. The door of the tomb in turn was guarded with the utmost secrecy. It consisted of a heavy circular slab which was made to run in a groove. The groove inclined upward, and the slab could only be turned by means of a lever. To add to the difficulty of turning the door, both the groove and the slab were nearly concealed by the side of the passage-way, and to the left of the end of the passage-way there was a smaller slab sliding in another groove, which, running at right angles with the former, served as a bolt, and, when pushed in, was received into an aperture cut in the stone door, not only rendering the door immovable, but defying all effort to open it except by the initiated. Though to all appearance these precautions were sufficient to protect this mansion of the dead from the hand of the despoiler, yet, to render the repose of the departed doubly sure, there was an inner door of great weight, so arranged as to fit exactly in the deeply-recessed doorway, and so hung on pivots that it yielded to the slightest pressure from without, while it immediately fell back to its place as soon as the pressure was withdrawn, sealing the doom of the unfortunate one who had entered, as it fitted so exactly in its place that it was impossible to open it again from the inside. The peculiar construction of the door and its