As in happier days, so it is still the scene of festivity and delight. Here children frolic in all the freedom of Arab life, and here the veiled beauties of the city recline in sweet repose beneath the shade of fruit-trees. On the green slopes of Ophel a group of Jewish maidens were dancing to the sound of the timbrel and song. It was a bridal party celebrating the nuptials of a happy couple on their ancient hills, and in the golden light of their ancestral sun. The scene recalled the triumphal song and dance of Miriam and her women on the shores of the Red Sea.[149] One charming creature, more beauteous than the rest, led the song and dance, while her fair and joyous maidens responded in chorus with voice and instrument, and followed in the merry dance. Unlike the veiled and seclusive Moslem women, these fair daughters of Abraham were exceedingly affable, and with open, happy faces bade us welcome to the festive scene. Less than 500 yards from the Fountain of the Virgin, the Tyropean Valley descends, dividing Mount Zion from Mount Ophel, and intersecting the Vale of the Kidron. Its mouth is fifty feet higher than the bed of the latter, and is reached by verdant terraces. Two hundred and fifty feet up the valley, and situated in a nook in the mountain, is the Pool of Siloam. The water flows from Mary’s Fountain, through an irregular and semicircular stone conduit, conducting it into a rectangular reservoir fifty feet long, fifteen broad, and nineteen deep. The pool is constructed of masonry, now green with the moss of ages. In the southwest corner a flight of stone steps leads to the edge of the water. Though the western side is much broken, yet time has dealt more gently with the opposite portion, in which are six marble columns half imbedded in the wall, apparently designed to support an arch or roof over the fountain. In the centre of the pool is “a nameless column, with a buried base.” In the northeast end a flight of steps leads down to a vaulted chamber excavated in the rock, where the water is gathered, flowing in from the Virgin’s Fountain. From this reservoir it flows beneath the steps into the pool, where, having accumulated to the depth of three feet, it falls through an aperture into a subterranean aqueduct, conducting it to the gardens of Siloam below. Illustration: POOL OF SILOAM. With unusual accuracy the inspired writers refer to this celebrated pool, leaving us without doubt as to its location and identity. By a bold metonymy, Isaiah substitutes the “waters of Shiloah that go softly” for Jehovah, and the waters of the Euphrates for Rezin and Remaliah’s son, reminding the Jews, as they had rejected the former, that those of the latter should overflow their land.[150] Referring to repairs made by Shallun, the son of Col-hozeh, Nehemiah speaks of the rebuilding of the “wall of the pool of Siloah by the king’s gardens;”[151] and hither Jesus sent the blind man to “wash in the pool of Siloam.”[152]