The second section of the ravine is called “The Valley of Gihon.” Running north and south, its sides and bottom are tilled, covered with patches of wheat, barley, and lentils, and dotted with olive and other fruit-trees. Situated in the broadest part of the vale, and directly opposite the Tomb of David on Mount Zion, is the Lower Pool of Gihon. It is a reservoir 600 feet long, 260 broad, and forty deep, and, when full, contains a sheet of water of more than three and a half acres in extent. Its sides are formed by the opposite hills, which have been excavated for the purpose, and the ends are inclosed with walls forty feet high. It is now dry, and the flat ledge of rocks on its eastern side is used by the peasants for a threshing-floor. Seventy-three yards to the west is Solomon’s Aqueduct, which, first running parallel with the western side of this pool, crosses the valley at its northern end, and, after winding round the base of Zion, gradually ascends the mount, and enters the Temple inclosure at the southwest corner. It was from this aqueduct that the Lower Pool was formerly supplied with water. At the southern end of the pool there is an embankment sufficiently broad for a road, leading from the Gate of Zion to Bethlehem and Hebron. In the centre of the path is an artificial fountain, into which water was conducted from the aqueduct by means of a branch pipe, and thence distributed into troughs for the accommodation of man and beast. Illustration: LOWER POOL OF GIHON. It was at this pool the youthful Solomon was anointed king in the room of his father David, and up the slopes of Zion he ascended, “and all the people came out after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them.”[168]